Caleb Schwenk HDC English 3 Crabtree 2/13/2023 The Deconstruction of “Old Ironside” and its meaning The Poem “Old Ironsides' ' is about a ship that the author would rather have sunk instead of letting it be torn up. Old Ironsides was the name given to the U.S.S. Constitution, it was given to her during battle with the British in 1812. Old ironsides was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. in 1830. The author read about the decommisioning of the Constitution and was shocked by the news it would be scrapped, so, he wrote this poem to protest the descision (Novick, 4). One of the literary devices he used to show his protest was imagery. The imagery used was of a ship that was worn out beyond its years. In the poem the lines, “Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!/Long has it waved on high,”(Holmes, Lines 1-2) and “O, better that her shattered hulk” (Holmes, line 17) speaks to the image of a ship that is …show more content…
the poem references the battle with the Guerreiere in the lines ``beneath it rung the battle shout/and burst the cannons roar;-" The poem also references the Constituion's speed, which made hunting it for the british a grueling task, "the meteor of the ocean air..." the speed and firepower of the Constitution made it formidable ship on its own, however, with a well trained navy crew and smart officers, it became a scourge on any nation that dared to challenge the newborn nation. Its most famous engagement was the Guerriere, for good reason, as it played to the strength of the ship, its wood. The Constitution is made of a special type of construction, where regular wood was used on the outside and inside, but in the middle of those two, Southern Live Oak was used. This wood was only found in the U.S. and could either reflect or hold cannon shot in its wood instead of breaking apart, leading to her nickname, "Old