 At Palermo on 1 September, Captain Gwinn died of chronic gastritis and was buried near Lazaretto on the 9th. Captain Thomas Conover assumed command on the 18th and resumed routine patrolling for the rest of the tour, heading home on 1 December 1850. She was involved in a severe collision with the English brig Confidence, which sank with the loss of her captain. The surviving crew members were carried back to America, where Constitution was placed in ordinary at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in January 1851.
