USS Constitution is launched.

Subsequently known as “Old Ironsides” it is built by Joshua Humphreys and launched from Edmund Hartt’s Shipyard at today’s Constitution Wharf at 408 Commercial Street. Its sails were made in the Town Granary and its 11-story masts are the tallest structures in Boston. Samuel Nicholson is its first captain. The oldest commissioned battle ship afloat in the world, it wins all its 42 battles and earns its nickname in a battle in 1812.* The ship circumnavigates the earth from 1844 to 1851, is decommissioned in 1855, and is saved from being scrapped in 1830.* It is converted training ship and then a barracks ship at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, returns to Boston in 1897,* and serves as a Naval museum at the the Charlestown (then Boston) Navy Yard from 1909 to 1925, when a campaign to restore the ship is begun.