The "old ship" in one of the pictures -- there was a caption where the original sender wondered what ship it was -- happens to be the U.S.S. Constitution, a 44-gun wooden frigate constructed in 1797 and much celebrated for her role in the War of 1812. She was among the very first ships the U.S. Navy ever built. Knowing that we could only afford a few ships, the new navy built them to incredibly high design and construction standards. The interiors of the hulls of these ships were braced with whole live oak tree trunks brought from Georgia. In 1812, the ship in the picture, already 15 years old, completely destroyed a brand-new British ship of similar classification without suffering significant damage. Observing British cannon balls literally bouncing off their ship, the crew dubbed her "Old Iron sides." The navy almost scrapped the old ship in about 1840, but Harvard medical school professor Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a popular poem about her, which led to a letter-writing campaign that resulted in her preservation. Some years later, Walt Whitman wrote an even more famous poem describing her successful War of 1812 battle with the British ship she shot up so badly. She was used as a training vessel until 1881, when she was permanently berthed in Boston harbor and turned into a tourist attraction and floating museum, remaining an officially commissioned navy vessel down to the present day. In the early 1990s, with her 200th birthday approaching, the navy completely reconditioned the old ship, and the research they did in preparation for this project turned up a great deal of long-lost information about it. At this time, about 40% of the material of the ship is original to it. The high point came in July, 1997, when, on the bicentennial of her launching, she was towed out to sea and, surrounded by pleasure boats and naval vessels and overflown by assorted aircraft including the Blue Angels, traveled about 30 miles under her own sail for the first time in 116 years. The lesson learned was that trying to sail a 200 year old wooden ship is not all that good an idea. Pumps had to run constantly to keep her afloat, so her sea days are indeed now over. The photos in this email were evidently taken during the ship's short voyage under sail and were meant to contrast our original navy with our present-day one.

That should answer the "what ship is that" question.