USS Brandywine
U.S.S. Brandywine off Malta, November 6, 1831
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
|
|
| Name: | USS Brandywine |
| Namesake: | Battle of Brandywine |
| Ordered: | as Susquehanna |
| Builder: | Washington Navy Yard |
| Laid down: | September 20, 1821 |
| Launched: | June 16, 1825 |
| Commissioned: | August 25, 1825 |
| Out of service: | September 3, 1864 |
| Struck: | 1867 (est.) |
| Fate: |
|
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | frigate |
| Tonnage: | 1708 |
| Length: | 175 ft (53 m)(between perpendiculars) |
| Beam: | 45 ft (14 m) |
| Draft: | 22 ft 4 in (6.81 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 14 ft 5 in (4.39 m) |
| Propulsion: | Frigate sail |
| Speed: | 13 kn (15 mph; 24 km/h) |
| Complement: | 480 officers and enlisted |
| Armament: |
|
USS Brandywine (formerly named Susquehanna) was a wooden-hulled, three-masted frigate of the United States Navy bearing 44 guns which had the initial task of conveying the Marquis de Lafayette back to France. She was later recommissioned a number of times for service in various theaters, such as in the Mediterranean, in China and in the South Atlantic Ocean.
During several instances she served as a role player in American gunboat diplomacy, a role she was well suited for with her large long-range 32-pounder guns and her short-range carronades which produced fragmentation and fire damage to the ship fired upon, as well as splinter and shrapnel injury to its crew.
From July 1824 to September 1825, the last surviving French General of the Revolutionary War, the Marquis de Lafayette, made a famous tour of the 24 states in the United States. At many stops on this tour he was received by the populace with a hero's welcome, and many honors and monuments were presented to commemorate and memorialize Lafayette's visit.
Susquehanna—a 44-gun frigate—was laid down on September 20, 1821 at the Washington Navy Yard. Shortly before she was to be launched in the spring of 1825, President John Quincy Adams decided to have an American warship carry the Marquis de Lafayette back to Europe, in the wake of his visit to the land he had fought to free almost 50 years before.
The general had expressed his intention of sailing for home sometime in the late summer or early autumn of 1825. Adams selected Susquehanna for this honor, and accordingly—as a gesture of the nation’s affection for Lafayette—the frigate was renamed Brandywine to commemorate the Battle of Brandywine, in which Lafayette was wounded fighting with American forces. Launched on June 16, 1825 and christened by Sailing Master Marmaduke Dove, Brandywine was commissioned on August 25, 1825, Captain Charles Morris in command.
...
Wikipedia