Old Ironsides

The opening stanza focuses on the Constitution’s “tattered ensign” (Line 1). The ensign is the national flag flown on the stern, or the back, of a ship. The tattered condition suggests the ship’s long record of courageous sea battles. In speaking to a nation barely 50 years old, the speaker’s impassioned plea to spare the warship is grounded in associating the doomed ship with America itself, to argue that it needs to be spared and returned to its majestic place in the open ocean. Better, the speaker argues, to tear down that ensign in the pitch of battle, signaling defeat in the furious chaos of fighting, than to allow that noble flag to be lowered quietly, ingloriously by shipwrights and carpenters in some North Boston salvage yard.

Thus, the ensign renders the ship a symbol of the courage and defiance of America itself. After all, the ensign establishes the identity of a ship and makes the ship itself a dramatic assertion of cultural integrity, a proud part of the nation itself, however far out into the open ocean it goes. With the long history of the Constitution’s engagements with the British, that flag, the speaker assures, has long occasioned celebration when it comes into sight because it represents American sea power, domination, and, most importantly, the subjugation of the British fleet.