Old Ironsides

* “Constitution Sails on Waves of Time, History,” July 22:

I thought I was going cuckoo. Every story I read or saw about the USS Constitution indicated it hadn’t been to sea in 116 years.

Yet I knew my dad had taken me to see the venerable ship at L.A. (or Long Beach) Harbor in about 1932 when I was 8 or so.

So I looked in Encyclopedia Britannica, and sure enough, a final paragraph said: “After a restoration (1927-31) she called at 90 U.S. ports on both coasts and was visited by more than 4,500,000 people.”

NICK MARTIN

Dana Point

* Your article referred to the Constitution as the oldest warship in commission in the world. This is incorrect. The Royal Navy first-rate HMS Victory (Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar) was launched in May 1765, and is still the flagship of the Second Sea Lord, Naval Home Command.

ASHLEY GERARD DAVIES

Glendale

* What a thrill to see the Constitution back on the open sea--the old warrior’s noble history written in its wake! Before we give all the credit for its restoration to Sen. Edward Kennedy’s grandfather, we should remember that it was Oliver Wendell Holmes with his gripping poem “Old Ironsides,” who roused public indignation over the secretary of the Navy’s announcement of the ship’s imminent demise.

Holmes’ vision of “the eagle of the sea” being plucked by “the harpies of the shore” was too much for the Bostonians to bear.

MICHAEL MOE

Irvine

* To correct what otherwise was a much admired editorial on Old Ironsides (July 22), please note that after the restoration, the Constitution was towed farther up the California coast than you stated. My father filled the Rockne with us children and our friends and took us from Petaluma to Vallejo, to the Mare Island Navy Yard in the San Pablo arm of San Francisco Bay, where we saw what our pennies had accomplished.

A glorious, memorable day.

MARGARET F. SOBEL

Los Angeles