At top: "Published in 1966 by Frost and Reed Prints Limited of Bristol and London, England. Copyright in all countries including the U.S.A. (painted in England)."
Includes the Frost and Reed blind stamp lower left and Dawson's pencil signature in the lower right margin.
USS CONSTELLATION was a 38-gun wooden-hulled, three-masted frigate of the United States Navy, one of the first ships built to represent the United States at sea.
Built in Baltimore's Fell's Point maritime community, CONSTELLATION was launched on 7 September 1797. The ship was one of the original six frigates whose construction the Naval Act of 1794 had authorized.
The name "Constellation" was among ten names submitted to President George Washington by Secretary of War Timothy Pickering in March of 1795 for the frigates that were to be constructed. The Flag Act of 1777 speaks of how the stars in the flag are "representing a new constellation".
Joshua Humphreys designed these frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so CONSTELLATION and its sisters (USS CONSTITUTION and USS UNITED STATES) were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. The CONSTELLATION's first duties with the newly formed US Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.
