Marblehead unveils tribute to USS Constitution

MARBLEHEAD – Former Item editor Frederick Goddard still recalls the day he saw former Highway Director Thomas Murray dig a 2,000-pound boulder with “a perfect slant” out of a Marblehead street.”I asked him to save that and he asked me why and I said, ‘I don’t know,” Goddard told a crowd of 30 locals and town officials on a brisk and breezy Thursday afternoon at Fort Sewall. “It’s like saving string.”Moments later Goddard and former Selectman and Town Clerk Thomas McNulty lifted a U.S. Flag to reveal a bronze plaque honoring the town’s relationship with the USS Constitution, firmly implanted in that saved boulder.The plaque reads as follows: “Huzzah! for Old Ironsides, Marblehead citizens have embraced USS CONSTITUTION on three historic visits: 3 April 1814 when beneath the guns of Fort Sewall she found refuge from an overwhelming British force, 29-31 July 1931 when under tow on the nationwide pennies campaign tour to assure her preservation, 20-21 July 1997 when during her Bicentennial she sailed from Boston and moored here to the cheers of thousands, A safe and welcoming harbor.”One of Goddard’s ancestors, Isaac Hull, commanded the Constitution in her first battle, when she took cannonball after cannonball closing with the British warship she eventually blasted to nothing, an encounter that earned her the nickname “Old Ironsides.”He noted in his remarks that Marblehead had a fourth encounter with the Constitution in 1961, when three companies of Marbleheaders dug the beached ship out of Maryland coastal mud so she could make her way to New York and remain on the Union side in the Civil War.He admitted that he and McNulty have been thinking about an appropriate tribute to the legenday warship since the Constitution’s visit in 1997, but plans really came together about a year ago. Former USS Constitution Commander David Cashman assisted the two with the historic research. Cashman was unable to attend Thursday’s event.