Cane was made from wood that was part of the ship, the USS Brandywine. It measures 33” long, has a brass ring below the handle and a brass tip. Cane is in very good condition, with scattered small nicks. Label near the tip reads, “WOOD FROM U.S.S. BRANDYWINE, BEGUN, WASHINGTON, 1821, LAUNCHED 1828. FROM JAS. H. AND WM. H. SANDS, ANNAPOLIS, 25 DEC., 1931. STICK BELONGED TO THEIR GRANDFATHER HOLLAND”. Included are records of the Sands family of Annapolis, a Captain James Sands, who was married to Jane Catherine Holland Sands.

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.

Laid up in ordinary for more than a decade, Brandywine finally resumed active service as a result of the American Civil War. She was recommissioned at the New York Navy Yard on October 27, 1861, Commander Benjamin J. Totten in command, and set sail immediately for Hampton Roads, Virginia, where she arrived on October 29. Housed over and converted to a store ship, the former warship supported the operations of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron for almost three years. She spent much of that time anchored near Fort Monroe, her most conspicuous absence coming in the wake of CSS Virginia's attempt to break the Union blockade early in the spring of 1862. Towed to Baltimore, Maryland by Mount Vernon, Brandywine remained there until early June 1862, by which time the danger posed by the Confederate ironclad had waned considerably. Later moved to Norfolk, she also assumed the role of receiving ship for the squadron. She remained so employed until a fire broke out in her paint locker on September 3, 1864 and destroyed her. She sank at her moorings at Norfolk but was later raised and sold to Maltby & Co., of Norfolk on March 26, 1867.

Brandywine is notable as the final evolution of the 44-gun frigate design that began by USS Constitution and her sisters a quarter-century earlier; while ships such as Raritan were launched in the 1840s and differed in details, their basic design was identical to Brandywine. Brandywine was also the very first warship ever built with an innovative elliptical stern which reduced the chronic vulnerability of the traditional square stern ship to enemy fire and allowed her to carry stern-mounted guns.  [sm]

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