The 44-gun frigate USS Constitution - Karl Heinz Marquardt

The Constitution was one of the US Navy's first six original frigates, ordered as a counter to the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean. Fast and heavily built, she was nominally rated as a 44 but mounted thirty 24-pdr and twenty-two 12-pdr cannon. Her most famous encounter, after which she became nicknamed 'Old Ironsides' due to British shot being seen bouncing off her hull, involved HMS Guerriere, which she smashed; the same treatment was meted out to HMS Java four months later. She is now berthed in Boston Harbor.

As with all the 'Anatomy of the Ship' series, this book contains the finest documentation of the ship ever published. It has a complete set of superbly executed line drawings, both the conventional type of plan as well as explanatory views, with fully descriptive keys. These are supported by technical details and a record of the ship's service history.