![]() Today, he says, the ship’s most formidable enemies are the New England elements and Boston Harbor’s burrowing mollusks. ![]() “She could go into battle with her huge armament and dish out punishing fire and take a lot of punishment in return without being damaged.” “Cannonballs would either stick in the side or they would bounce off,” says Kearns. The hull is the reason the undefeated warship is called Old Ironsides. More than two feet thick and covered with copper to protect it from wood-borers like crustaceans, it could withstand blows from 18-pound iron cannonballs. Kearns (ENG’94), who was the commanding officer of the Constitution from July 2013 until this past August, says the ship’s original hull was its secret weapon of sorts. Over the next two years, 35 such logs will be sawed into planking to replace much of the storied hull of the 218-year-old frigate commissioned by George Washington. White oak, 45 feet long, and weighing about 10,000 pounds, they had been trucked more than 1,000 miles, from a naval base in Crane, Ind., which maintains a woodland preserve with 150 mature trees that have been set aside for the restoration of the USS Constitution. The tree trunks arrived at the Charlestown Navy Yard on July 7.
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