To be fair to you, both are correct. Even though the Age of Sail had ended, sail ships continued to be used alongside steamers into the 30s. The last commercial sail ship sank in the 40s, I think.

We're so back, baby

What ships are these? Can someone provide the context.

and also how in/effective the bottom one would be in a conflict today

It could probably beat an alien invasion.

The top ship is the USS Constituion, llaunched in 1797.

But probably not a swarm of aliexpress drones

And subsequently re-launched in 2287 from atop Weatherby Savings & Loan.

The top ship is USS Constitution. One of the original 10 United States-class 44 gun heavy frigates, ordered in 1794 and launched in 1797, she's the second oldest commissioned warship in the world after HMS Victory and the oldest warship afloat and seaworthy. She's made of American live oak and is legendarily durable; in combat with the HMS Guerriere the British cannonballs simply bounced off of Constitution's hull. One of her sailors, which one lost to history, shouted "Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!" She carries the nickname "Old Ironsides" to this day. Most museum ships are transferred out of Navy ownership to a museum organization, but Old Ironsides is still in active commission under the Navy's History And Heritage Command, manned by a crew of 75 active duty officers and sailors. She can be visited at Pier 1 of the Historic Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston Harbor.

Bottom ship is USS Texas, BB-35, a New York-class battleship launched in 1912, she's the oldest surviving Dreadnaught era battleship. For her era, she's a marvel of forward thinking. She's the first battleship to mount anti-aircraft weapons, the first battleship to launch an aircraft, and the first battleship to use central directors and rangekeepers to aim the main battery, and the first American ship fitted with non-experimental radar. She was the first battleship in the world fitted with 14 inch guns, 10 of them in five double-turrets. She served in World War 1 and 2. In WWII she supported the landings in North Africa, Normandy, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the only ship to take part in all four battles. Possibly her most famous moment was at Normandy, where the captain flooded one side of the ship in order to roll her over a little to gain more elevation and thus range for her main guns so that she could shell the Nazi defenses. Retired in 1948, the Texas was pretty much immediately preserved as a museum ship, the first of eight American battleship museums. She's currently undergoing repairs, upon completion of those repairs she'll be displayed in Galveston.

Just wanted to say this was a great post and exactly what I'm here for, thanks :)

USS Texas is a Dreadnaught type battleship, rather advanced for the turn of the 20th century, but obsolete by the end of WWII. She's armed with a primary battery of 10 14-inch 45 caliber guns and a secondary battery of 21 5-inch 51-caliber guns. She was the first American battleship to be fitted with radar and centralized fire control, and the first battleship in the world equipped with anti-aircraft weapons and the first to launch an aircraft; she carried a Kingfisher spotter plane.

A harpoon missile or two would sink her long before she knew she was in combat. She was designed to fight in an era of piston powered cloth covered airplanes and big go kaboom guns, not in an era of spy satellites and GPS-guided autonomous cruise missiles. She's entirely unequipped to fight in a beyond-the-horizon electronic theater of combat. But if you were to blunder within 20 miles of her she'd pound you to scrap. Nobody builds battleship-class guns anymore nor armors ships against them.

There's a cool video done by Ryan Szimanski, the curator of the Battleship New Jersey museum, where he compares the USS New Jersey in her 1980s configuration (New Jersey, BB-62, an Iowa-class fast battleship is much newer than the Texas, built during WWII and upgraded with relatively modern missiles, electronic warfare and CIWS systems in the 80's) to a Russian Kirov-class cruiser. The conclusion was the newer Kirov has a chance of detecting the Iowa and had fairly comparable missile systems and a more effective complement of helicopters, but an Iowa-class battleship is VASTLY more armored and could likely shrug off the Kirov's attack with superficial damage, and if the Kirov made the mistake of closing within 30 miles the *Iowa"'s 16-inch guns would make iron filings out of her. For context, USS New Jersey sank an island once.

At the Pensacola Visitor's Center there was a 1' cube of live oak vs white (red?) oak on a chain and pulley. The difference in density is clear. The live oak feels like a block of concrete. To experience that and then to think men made ships out of it with only tools using running water, wow.

Does enough live ammo of those calibers exist today to fill Texas's magazines?

That's actually two questions, about shells and propellant/powder and the answers are "probably not" and "definitely not."

For this to make sense you have to understand how the ammunition for these guns works: The shells are separate from the propellant and often shared between different guns of the same bore. There were different types, like high explosive ones used for shore bombardments and armor piercing ones used for ship-to-ship combat. Stored in the ship ready to be fired, it looks like a man-sized bullet. Imagine a rifle bullet, removed from the cartridge, 14 inches in diameter and 4+ feet tall. The "gunpowder" (actually chunks of nitrocellulose the size of a D cell battery) was packed in cylindrical bags about the size of a rolled up sleeping bag weighing about 100 pounds each.

It's also important to note what "Caliber" means in this context. It's often used to mean the bore of the gun, but in naval guns "caliber" refers to the length of the barrel in multiples of its bore. A 14 inch 45 caliber gun is 45 times as long as it is wide, 14 inches wide and 52.5 feet long. It's common for guns of similar bore but different calibers to share some or all projectiles, but the powder might be different. I'm more familiar with the 16 inch guns of the later fast battleships, and the North Carolina and South Dakota classes used the same exact projectiles as the Iowa class, but the Iowas had longer barrels that required slightly different powder.

The 14 inch guns on the Texas entered service prior to WWI and were retired immediately after WWII with no plan on reactivating them. They used up some of the ammunition in training, some of the shells were dumped into the ocean, some were scrapped, some were deactivated and sold as memorabilia. I'm sure the Texas has quite a few of them on display, USS North Carolina has at least one full shell deck of 16 inch projectiles.

Now the powder: At the end of WWII, the Navy had a large number of 16 inch projectiles that the 4 Iowas could use, but not enough suitable powder bags. So instead of manufacturing new, they opened, examined and re-mixed powder from the 14 inch and earlier 16 inch guns to make more 16 inch 50 caliber powder bags for the Iowa class. And that's all of the battleship ammo that has ever been used since WWII. None has ever been manufactured after 1945. The shells fired during the Persian Gulf war in the early 90's were made during the Roosevelt administration.

The four Iowas took part in Korea, Vietnam, Various Cold War Shit and the Persian Gulf War, and even after all that, four decades of using WWII surplus ammo, the navy still had upwards of 15,000 16 inch shells and the powder to fire them left in inventory.

1940's America be BUILDIN shit.

As the powder aged, it became more unstable, so most or all of it has been destroyed by now and none new has been made since the invention of color TV. The stockpile of shells has either been scrapped or deactivated and sold for display; visit one of America's ten battleship museums, they've all got enough to make you sick of looking at them. We'll probably never hear those guns fire again, and here's hoping we'll never need to build more.

I'm less sure about the 5 inch guns, though I think the 5 inch guns in use today are a different, incompatible system than the WWII era ones.

The US Coast Guard operates a sailing barque, USCGS Eagle. She was originally a German sail training vessel taken as war reparations at the end of WWII. Now she trains coast guard cadets and poses for severely epic pictures:

Constitution has a partial set of sails, only topsails, jibs, I think staysails and a spanker. They tow the old girl out and let her splish splash in the bay on occasion. Eagle has a full set of sails and she sails the oceans and competes in races. She spent the summer touring the East coast for the 250th.

Old Ironsides is still in active commission under the Navy’s History And Heritage Command, manned by a crew of 75 active duty officers and sailors. She can be visited at Pier 1 of the Historic Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston Harbor.

a friend in college was one of the recreationists working on it. i did not think he was in the navy, but i guess i never asked.

thank you!

I would believe it if I was told that they have additional staff and/or volunteers in addition to the active Navy crew.

In a similar vein, I'd never guess that a 116 year old woman (Naomi Whitehead) is younger than cellophane (1908)! (Don't worry, she's still kickin'!)

Hell, she went from literally picking cotton well before penicillin (1928) to radio becoming a household norm, invention of TV, the moon landing... to quantum computing, genetic cloning, the James Webb telescope, et al. 🤯

yeah we met in an improv troupe. not saying navy folk don't do improv, just they seem to be separate and distinct cults.

Time, time, time
An imaginary line. Mine, nor yours,
nor yours mine.

I like it, but there was a sail only warship that was in service only 70 years ago.

The USS Constellation, which was launched in 1854, commissioned in 1855, and remained in various active and training roles until it was decommissioned in 1955.

Of course the ship itself was a hundred years old by then. Pretty incredible.