Sail back aboard ‘Old Ironsides’

“I clenched my teeth, close together, determined that no mortal should know by a sound from me how much I felt,’’ Moses wrote in 1811. “It was my first and last flogging.’’

Now, those words are on display at the USS Constitution Museum, affixed to the wall beside a replica of a gnarly whip with nine braided, pain-inducing leather tentacles.

The new exhibit at the museum, unveiled yesterday, is the culmination of 10 years of research into the everyday lives of the sailors aboard the ship during the turn of the 19th century.

Forty researchers and over $1 million in grants helped to unearth information about 1,182 men who lived and worked on “Old Ironsides,’’ which is docked in the Charlestown Navy Yard and is the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.

The exhibit - with no charge for admission - is expected to bring thousands of visitors over the holiday weekend and offers the closest thing to experiencing life at sea, because for the second consecutive year civilians will not be allowed aboard the Constitution’s annual turnaround.

“This gives people a real glimpse of what it was like for the people aboard the ship,’’ said museum curator Sarah Watkins, who coordinated the decade-long research project.

Visitors can try their hand at balancing on the beam of the mast, scrubbing the dock with a sandstone brick called a “holystone,’’ and maneuvering the canvas hammocks that hang from low ceilings and are meant to replicate the ship’s cramped sleeping quarters.

Using state and national archives to examine official logs, personal diaries, and wills, researchers found unexpected nuggets of information about the ship’s history.

A monkey was on board at one point, for instance, and it bit off a small piece of one sailor’s nose, which was repaired by the ship’s surgeon.

Researchers also discovered that between 7 and 15 percent of the sailors were freed black men who worked, ate, and slept beside their white counterparts in addition to receiving equal pay.

In the midst of a three-year renovation, the Constitution will sail on its annual Independence Day turnaround, during which the ship is steered out into the harbor and back into the dock. But no civilians will be allowed onboard during the short journey, and the upper masts, which give height and a sense of majesty to the naval craft, will be missing.

While the turnaround has a practical explanation - it prevents uneven water wear by alternating the sides of the ship that face the tide each year - the ceremony has been very popular, with as many as 600 civilians onboard in past years, said David Twiford, command senior chief of the Constitution.

Information on museum hours can be found at USSConstitutionmuseum.org.