AN  HOUR  IN  THE  GOVERNMENT  DOCKYARD.      45

The  Independence  was  launched  July  20,  1814,  during  hos-
tihties  with  Great  Britain,  and  was  the  first  seventy-four  afloat  in
our  navy,  —  if  the  America,  launched  in  1782,  and  given  to  the
French,  be  excepted.  Her  first  cruise  was  to  the  Mediterranean,
where  she  carried  the  broad  pennant  of  Commodore  Bainbridge,
and  was  the  first  of  her  class  to  display  our  Stars  and  Stripes
abroad.  Owing  to  a  defect  in  her  build  she  was  afterwards
converted  into  a  serviceable  double-banked  60-gun  frigate.
As  such  she  has  been  much  admired  by  naval  critics,  and  was
honored  while  lying  at  Cronstadt  by  a  visit  from  the  Czar
Nicholas, '"^  incognito.
The  Vermont  has  never  made  a  foreign  cruise,  though  in-
tended in  1853  for  the  flagship  of  Commodore  Perry's  expedi-
tion to  Japan.  The  Virginia,  sleeping  like  another  Rip  Van
Winkle,  in  her  big  cradle  for  half  a  century,  until  she  had  be-
come as  unsuited  to  service  as  tlie  galley  of  Medina  Sidonia
would  be,  remains  in  one  of  the  ship-houses,  a  specimen  of
ancient  naval  architecture,  with  her  bluff  bows  and  sides  tum-
bling inboard.  It  would,  perhaps,  require  a  nautical  eye  such
as  we  do  not  possess  to  determine  which  was  the  stem  and
which  the  stern  of  this  ship.  The  Cumberland  went  down  at
Hampton  Ro^ids  in  the  unequal  conflict  with  the  Merrimac  in
March,  1862.  The  Cyane,  named  after  the  British  ship  cap-
tured by  the  Constitution,  was  broken  up  at  Philadelphia  in
1836.
