World's Oldest Serving Warship

[SASless]

http://michaelthompson.org/ironsides/

The link takes you to an article about the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides). She is still commissioned, crewed, and sails. Prospective Chief Petty Officers embark on training courses designed to instill Old Navy traditions and historical perspectives.

Corrective training conducted! Ten lashes of the Cat.


http://michaelthompson.org/ironsides/ussconstitution_files/s200-sal.jpg

[WE Branch Fanatic]

Not IT, SHE..........please report onboard for corrective training.;)

[Bing]

I reckon this one's older. http://www.hms-victory.com/

[Pontius Navigator]

Bing, unfortunately Victory does not sail and is not fully manned.

[Navaleye]

I suspect she would probably sink if allowed to. :ouch:

[The Helpful Stacker]

Bing, unfortunately Victory does not sail and is not fully manned.

But the tread was titled "World's Oldest Serving Warship".

HMS Victory may not be afloat or have a full crew compliment (same as many modern naval vessels when alongside) but she is still a serving line ship of Her Majesties Royal Navy. In fact I believe HMS Victory is the personal ship of the Commandant of Portsmouth Naval Base.

[nutcracker43]

Ah, a pi$$ing contest.

The fact is the USS Constitution sails round Boston harbour every 4 July and is the world's oldest surviving sailing ship...HMS Victory does not sail.

Thank you.
NC43

[tablet_eraser]

USS Constitution - World's oldest commissioned sailing warship.

HMS Victory - World's oldest commissioned warship.

It's not a tough distinction, is it?

[ORAC]

sails round Boston harbour every 4 July
We call them ferries..... :hmm:

[Daysleeper]

putting these museum pieces aside I wonder what is the worlds oldest ACTIVE service warship? Untill recently there were still a few WW2 carriers around the third world. Anything more definite?

[SASless]

HMS Victory stands today as the world's oldest commissioned warship. Still manned by Officers and Ratings of the Royal Navy, the Victory has seen over 200 years of almost continuous service.

Best known for her role in the Battle of Trafalgar, the Victory currently has a dual role as the flagship of the Second Sea Lord and as a living museum to the Georgian navy.

Launched in 1765 at Chatham Dockyard, the Victory was commissioned in 1778 and continued in active service for the next 32 years. In 1812 the Victory was retired from frontline duty and anchored in Portsmouth Harbour, on the south coast of England. For the next 110 years the Victory remained at her moorings in Portsmouth Harbour fulfilling a combination of practical and ceremonial roles.

In 1922, amid fears for her continued survival, the Victory was moved into Portsmouth's Royal Naval Dockyard and placed in No2 Dry Dock. Work then began on restoring the Victory to her 'fighting' 1805 condition.
Open to the public all year round, HMS Victory allows the visitor to explore the world of the Georgian navy, experiencing both the ship herself and the lives of the men who lived within her 'wooden world'.

[Rev1.5]

Perhaps we should ask what is the oldest "warship" currently on active service.

[Farmer 1]

I believe each ship is rather like the axe that cut off Anne Boleyn's head.

"It's 'ad a new 'andle, an' a new 'ead, but it's still the same old axe."

Not much of the originals left - less than 1%, I believe, but wait to be corrected. Both are amazing ships, each with a very proud history.

[WebPilot]

I don't know about Constitution, but that stat is distinctly inaccurate in respect of Victory. Naturally a 250 year old wooden vessel that took a central part in one of history's fiercest naval close actions, was then left rotting in Pompey's harbour for another century and was damaged by a Luftwaffe bomb in the 1940s is not going to be 100% original.

However I understand that about 20% of the 1759 structure remains and the proportion of originality increases the further down the ship structure you go, as you might expect as the masts and upper works were heavily damaged at Trafalgar. Around 90% of the lower gun deck is thought to be original and much of the keel and stern.

[Farmer 1]

Hope you are right, WebPilot. Does anyone have the details?

[Junglie]

I recently visited the USS Constitution whilst i was in Boston and the tour was excellent and lead by a serving Petty Officer in the USN who was fiercely proud to be a memeber of her ships' company. An excellent tour as good as the one on HMS Victory and full of great stories.
They do 'doff their caps' to Victory during the tour and acknowledge her as being the older of the two and her status in history. Both are excellent visits if you get the chance. Regards Junglie

[WebPilot]

I recently visited the USS Constitution whilst i was in Boston and the tour was excellent and lead by a serving Petty Officer in the USN who was fiercely proud to be a memeber of her ships' company. An excellent tour as good as the one on HMS Victory and full of great stories.
They do 'doff their caps' to Victory during the tour and acknowledge her as being the older of the two and her status in history. Both are excellent visits if you get the chance. Regards Junglie


That's good to hear. Clearly to get Victory back in sea-going trim would be like returning a Spitfire or other historic to the air - much of the historic content would have to be lost in favour of operational constraints. I gather that when Victory was dry-docked in 1922 the integrity of the structure was very compromised and there was something like an 18" droop at the bow - the vessel is supported from beneath to order to keep it true.

Interestingly, in addition to all the other damage, she was rammed at hewr mooring by HMS Neptune in 1903 and came close to sinking.

[SASless]

Did not the Chinese say something about a photograph being worth a thousand words.

If she is sailing under canvas and putting out smoke from the gundeck...Lads....she is a warship.

The only thing missing is the chainshot and ball in the air.:E

[WebPilot]

Did not the Chinese say something about a photograph being worth a thousand words.
If she is sailing under canvas and putting out smoke from the gundeck...Lads....she is a warship.
The only thing missing is the chainshot and ball in the air.:E


Of course she's a warship. Just not an active one, in the sense of being used for that particular purpose. Of course, you could use the same logic to determine that a Harvard fitted with "cannon" and emitting gun smoke is a ground attack fighter....

[airborne_artist]

Brings it all back - my dad was in the Royal Navy, and I remember going to at least one kid's birthday party (I was about 5 or 6) on HMS Victory. I guess it was what you'd call a perk of the job! Marmite sandwiches, Twiglets and jelly, on the world's most famous warship :ok:

[Navaleye]

I vaguely recall that serving RN got free admission. I'm sure that's been stamped on by now!

[wessex19]

HMNZS Canterbury went close

[SASless]

Web,

A better analogy would be the BoB flight....arm up the guns...load up a Tall Boy...and off you go with a Spit and Hurri for escort as far as the French Coast.

Artist...in one part of the world maybe.

The shame is most youth of today know of neither of these two great ships.

[Maple 01]

a Harvard fitted with "cannon" and emitting gun smoke is a ground attack fighter....

Or a Chipmunk......er, didn't we do that somewhere?

I got a ride in one of Gatow's Photo Recon Chippies once......

[Schiller]

The masts in Victory are built in steel, supported by the dock bottom and stayed out to the dockside. Not much chance of floating her out, then.

[WebPilot]

The masts in Victory are built in steel, supported by the dock bottom and stayed out to the dockside. Not much chance of floating her out, then.


The lower masts are actually hollow wrought iron. They are from HMS Shah, an armored frigate, and were fitted in 1887 when she was docked to repair leaks. Following the 1922 dry docking steel supports to the mast bases were fitted to take the weight down to the dock bottom.

She'll certainly never float again as to make her sea worthy would require such extensive reconstruction that her historic contect would be lost.

[Loadmaster]

The light cruiser USS Phoenix (CL46) - sixth ship of the Brooklyn Class -* was launched on 12 March 1938.

On 7 December 1941 she was lying at anchor in Pearl Harbor,* at a point north-east of Ford Island.* When the Japanese surprise attack took place she got under way and sortied from the base, as did her sister ship St. Louis and the cruiser Detroit.* After the attack these three ships were ordered to join the heavy cruiser Minneapolis, and proceed westwards to meet the USS Enterprise and Task Force 16* -* which were on their way back to Pearl Harbor after ferrying aircraft to Wake Island.

Ironically a search aircraft mistook the group of four cruisers for a Japanese force,* with the result that American efforts to find the carriers which had made the Pearl Harbor attack were then concentrated in the wrong direction - south of Oahu.

Phoenix went on to establish a distinguished combat record in the Pacific,* most of her wartime service being with Seventh Fleet* -* the naval arm of General Douglas Macarthur's South-West Pacific Forces* -* commanded by Admiral Thomas Kinkaid.*** She became the flagship of Task Force 75,* a formation built around Phoenix and her sister ships Boise and Nashville and commanded by Rear Admiral Russell S. "Count" Berkey.* In April 1944 she led Task Force 75 in providing fire support for the landings at Hollandia in western New Guinea.

In the Leyte operation Phoenix again served as Admiral Berkey's flagship,* Berkey this time commanding Task Group 77.3* -* the Close Covering Group of Seventh Fleet* -* a group which included Phoenix,* Boise and the Australian heavy cruisers Shropshire and Australia.

On October 24 1944 - during the Battle for Leyte Gulf - Berkey's Task Group was organised as part of Rear Admiral Oldendorf's force,* which was deployed to stop the advancing Japanese Southern Force in Surigao Strait,* south of Leyte Gulf.* The Berkey group was placed on the right flank of the US disposition, close to the shore of Leyte Island.

In the small hours of 25 October* -* during the main gunfire phase of the Battle of Surigao Strait* -* she was in action against the Japanese flagship Yamashiro,* firing her main armament at a rate of four 15-gun salvos per minute (Phoenix, Boise and Shropshire together firing a total of 1,181 rounds from their main batteries in the 17 minutes between 0351 and 0408).

From Leyte she went on to support the landings at Mindoro,* Lingayen Gulf and Borneo.* After World War Two she was decommissioned,* and in 1951 sold to Argentina,* becoming a major unit of the Argentinian Navy,* finally acquiring the name General Belgrano.** In the 1970's she was modernised and equipped with British Seacat short-range missiles, and Dutch radar,* although she retained her original battery of fifteen 6-inch guns as her "main" armament.

She was to have been fitted with French Exocet sea-skimming surface-to-surface missiles,* but these were in the event never installed.

On 26 April 1982, in the opening stages of the "South Atlantic War" between Britain and Argentina, she sortied from the port of Ushuahia,* escorted by two guided-missile destroyers.* On 2 May,*she was attacked by the British nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine Conqueror,* and hit with two torpedoes.** She sank rapidly,* with the loss of 368 of her crew.

Thus a ship which had participated in the opening drama of the war in the Pacific and emerged unscathed,* and which - at the Battle of Surigao Strait -* took part in the last battleship action and the last great surface naval battle in history,* became the first large warship,* and the only cruiser,* to be sunk in action since 1945,* and* - even more notably* -* the first ship in history to be sunk in action by a nuclear submarine.