I was digging around on the Internet today looking to see if I could track down some reliable online ship plans for 18th and 19th century US ships. I found one website where they offer National Archives plans as reprints, but without some reliable images I'm not likely to place orders sight unseen. http://marylandsilver.com/Ship.htm

Name: 19-4-43-2011-001_a.jpg Views: 757 Size: 150.0 KB

Consequently, I tried searching the Archives directly using images on the web. Clearly if you have access to the physical collections you can have them make copies although I don't know if they're from microfilm or in house prints?

Here's the Record Hierarchy I found for one USS Constitution sail plane that came up on the web:

Record Group 19:
Records of the Bureau of Ships, 1940 - 1966 Series:
Ship Design and Construction Drawings, 1862 - 1909 Item:
USS Constitution, Outboard Profile with Sail Plan, 1817

The image can be found here:

https://research.archives.gov/id/5956232

More images are showing up, but not some of the US ships I see listed on that website above. Those I'd like to see include the USS Pennsylvania, USS Independence, USS Franklin, etc. I wish there was more content available online? In any case here are some other images you might enjoy viewing:

https://research.archives.gov/search...naIdSort%20asc

Cheers!