Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Good Ol' Ironsides

Earlier this spring, Rob and I met up with Amanda and Jeremy to tour the USS Constitution (aka Old Ironsides). Named after the Constitution of the United States by President George Washington in 1797, she is the oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat in the world. She earned her nickname of "Old Ironsides" during the War of 1812 when she captured many British merchant vessels and 5 British warships. (see Wikipedia for more info).

Rob and Jeremy have a long history of causing trouble when they are together. Somehow, they think rules don't apply to them...

Luckily our navy tourguide was busy sharing interesting factoids with the rest of the group while Jeremy and Rob were snooping around all of the little exhibits otherwise they probably would have had to walk the plank....or something.
Interesting piece of trivia about Old Ironsides: The special effects production crew from the movie Master and Commander used the Constitution as a model for the ship in the movie. We also got to tour a retired battleship that is in the same area as the Constitution. It's a WWII gunboat with anti-aircraft guns and 4 torpedos. It was cool to see their mess hall/operating room, the tiny sleeping bunks, the command center (like something from an old war movie), as well as the intense kitchen with 3 industrial-sized kitchen mixers.

Rob said that when we have 12 boys I can have 3 industrial-sized kitchen mixers too...I can hardly wait!

3 comments:

Mark and Aupreille said...

Oh a new post, I love it!! What fun activities you guys get to do.

Unknown said...

Wow, it looks SO cold! I am not jealous of that part!

Mama KK said...

I think it's great y'all can be doing fun things with Amanda and Jeremy Jones!