This particular piece of the past has a distinct resonance for the U.S. Naval Institute; it ties us to a landmark chapter in the long saga of the Navy’s oldest commissioned ship. But while the venerable USS Constitution holds that honorific, it’s worth noting that for seven decades and more, “Old Ironsides” was decommissioned. By the 1920s, she was an aging museum ship in a sorry state of decrepitude. America came to the rescue, and between 1925 and 1930, the public raised more than $985,000 to give the historic frigate the major restoration she desperately needed. The Constitution’s rebirth was a cause célèbre throughout the land. She was recommissioned on 1 July 1931, and the very next day, amid a 21-gun salute and great fanfare, she departed Boston with a crew of 81 and a monkey named Rosie.
The Constitution National Cruise of 1931–34 was a smash hit. As the Constitution Museum puts it, the ship “sent entire communities into patriotic frenzies” as she visited more than 70 U.S. ports. So you tour this grand old vessel, you’re going to want a souvenir, right? Enter the Naval Institute with Some Stories of Old Ironsides, a commemorative pamphlet recounting the frigate’s early glories. Tens of thousands of copies were sold, raising serious cash for the Navy Relief Society (the service’s widows-and-orphans fund).
There’s a poignant note to this readable artifact: It was written by one of the Navy’s rising stars, a young man who displayed remarkable gifts as officer, strategist, and historian. Commander Holloway H. Frost (Naval Academy class of 1910) authored a string of popular and influential books published by the Naval Institute. A recipient of the Navy Cross for his service during World War I, he would gain most lasting fame for his oft-reprinted magnum opus, The Battle of Jutland. Pictured below as a lieutenant commander, Frost had attained the rank of commander by the time his Old Ironsides pamphlet was selling like hotcakes at ports of call around the country. But in 1935, a promising career and life were cut short by meningitis following a mastoidectomy. In the words of historian Russell F. Weigley, “Before his premature death,” Frost “was emerging as the leading American naval writer on strategy after Alfred Thayer Mahan.” He left us too soon, but he is remembered as an exemplar of the Naval Institute ideal embodied in our emblem: the pen and the sword.