Let's Restore the Hemp Riggings on the USS Constitution

The USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides") giving a 21-gun salute on July 4 in Boston Harbor

As part of the country's semiquincentennial celebration this year, Boston Harbor is hosting a Sail 250 Tall Ships parade July 11- 16, lead by the USS Constitution, the world's oldest commissioned warship, which was originally outfitted with tons of hemp sails and ropes. 

The Constitution is the only survivor of the United States Navy’s original six frigates. Undefeated in battle, her mission was to "keep the sea lanes open for commerce, fight pirates, land Marines in trouble spots (...to the shores of Tripoli...), and prevent the slave trade." 

As part of what became known as the Barbary Wars, the ship was sent to Tripoli in 1803, after President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay an increased "tribute" to pirates for the protection of commerce at the Libyan port. The United States prevailed after a combined naval and land assault by the US Marine Corps. 

Britain continued to oppose American trade and navigation in the Mediterranean – a stance that would contribute to the War of 1812. It was during that war that the Constitution earned its nickname "Old Ironsides" after defeating the British warship HMS Guerriere and sailors watched as enemy cannonballs bounced harmlessly off the hull.

The ship went on to win additional battles before embarking on a world cruise in the 1840s, sailing more than 52,000 miles and visiting over 25 countries while protecting American commerce and gathering intelligence on foreign waters. By 1860, it was no longer needed as a frontline warship and instead served as a training vessel for midshipmen at the Naval Academy. The Constitution’s primary mission has now become education and public outreach, and since the 1930s, the vessel has been stationed at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, where it was built in 1797.  

Bales of hemp being unloaded onto Navy Yard railroad 
for rigging of the USS Constitution (March 1927). 

As one of several restorations the vessel has undergone, a restoration that began in 1927 used several tons of hemp, as recorded in The Frigate Constitution and Other Historic Ships by F. Alexander Magoun and reprinted in The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy. According to the USS Constitution museum, "All of Constitution‘s rigging for the 1927-1931 restoration was made at the Charlestown Navy Yard ropewalk....only hemp was used for the standing and running rigging, bolt ropes for the sails, cables, and other miscellaneous small lines." About 67 tons of hemp rope of various sizes was manufactured at the Boston Navy Yard for the restoration. 

About such a hemp ropewalk, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, 

In that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
 Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

Thomas Paine wrote in his revolutionary 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, "In almost every article of defense we abound. Hemp flourishes even to rankness, so that we need not want cordage." The US Navy has been quite concerned with the domestic production of hemp, and explored substituting manila hemp from the Philipines as a cheaper alternative. 

In the 1843 Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, it was reported, "A resolve was passed by the late Congress, appropriating four thousand dollars towards establishing an agency in the State of Kentucky, and one in the State of Missouri, for the purchase of American hemp for the use of the navy. An agent was appointed on the 1st of July last for the State of Kentucky; and, in obedience to directions, he visited the United States rope walk at the Charlestown navy-yard, for the purpose of gaining information as to the kind and quality of water-rotted hemp used in the navy, and the mode of testing its strength.... 

Speaking of the agent appointed to investigate domestic hemp production, the report continues, "Mr. Von Schmidt, an intelligent gentleman, well acquainted with the culture of hemp in Russia and in this country, has been employed, by the direction of the department, the last season, on the culture and preparation of hemp, in this vicinity. He is now engaged in constructing, a machine for breaking it and separating the fibres from the stalks without rotting. Should he succeed, (of which there is a fair promise,) a great saving of labor will be made; and the hemp thus prepared will be much superior, in quality and strength, to hemp prepared by the old method of rotting." (The invention of a machine to automatically decorticate hemp has long been an object of study. The latest and possibly best version has just been developed by Hemp Traders and Oregon State University.) 

Navy Commander Charles Wilkes led the first United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842) (aka The Wilkes Expedition) that traveled the world with a ship full of naturalists, botanists, taxidermists, artists, a mineralogist, and a philologist. In 1841 Wilkes made an extended study at Manila, sending scientific parties inland. "The islands had great potential for trade in a variety of goods: abaca hemp [aka manila hemp], indigo, cotton, coffee, sugar cane, and tobacco."  A 1932 photo shows customs and navy officials posing in the Phillipine port of Davao in front of a huge pile of manila hemp (pictured). 

Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, theorized that having supplies of manila hemp cut off in WWII lead the US to develop its "Hemp for Victory" program, which encouraged US farmers to grow hemp for the war effort.

Public law 83-523, passed on July 23, 1954, authorized the Secretary of the Navy to restore Constitution “as far as may be practicable” back to her original condition, although not for active service. In the 1960s a transition occurred replacing the hemp rigging on the Constitution to polypropylene, a petroleum product discovered by Phillips Petroleum chemists in 1951. Activist Chris Conrad, author of Hemp: Lifeline to the Future commented, "that's not restoring it, that's defacing it."

“[USS] Constitution really changed the world. It put our nation on the map. It connected us with people all around the globe,” said Jeff Draeger, president and CEO of the USS Constitution Museum. Another major restoration is expected within the next decade as the Constitution approaches her 250th birthday, Draeger says.

How about we restore Old Ironsides this time with its original hemp rigging? The 1992 replicas of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage to the Americas used hemp (and linen sails). Let's boost our domestic hemp farming industry and be true to our past, and our future.