The Coming of Iron and Steam

The 24-Pounder Long GunA gun crew of 6 to 14 men wrestled with this 5,600-pound gun. To adjust elevation, a crew member placed a handspike on one of the steps (A) and levered the breech (B) up or down; the gun captain slid the quoin (C) in or out.

The 24-Pounder Long Gun

A gun crew of 6 to 14 men wrestled with this 5,600-pound gun. To adjust elevation, a crew member placed a handspike on one of the steps (A) and levered the breech (B) up or down; the gun captain slid the quoin (C) in or out.

U.S.S. ConstitutionHigh-resolution Map

Constitution’sSailsSail area, with studding sails (not shown), was more than 43,000 sq. ft.

Constitution’sSails

Sail area, with studding sails (not shown), was more than 43,000 sq. ft.

Sinking of Union sloopCumberlandby Confederate ironcladVirginia (ex-U.S.S.Merrimack)in 1862, by Alexander C. Stuart.

Merrimack,Virginia,Cumberland: names that point up the ironies of war. As the steam frigateMerrimackwas being launched in July 1855 (see pages32-33), the partially built ship-of-the-lineVirginialay in another part of the yard. It had been laid down and named in the 1820s, a more harmonious time. Even if the old 74 had finally come down the ways, it is not likely that, amidst the sectional acrimony of the 1850s, it would have kept the old name—and certainly not after the secession of the state whose namesake it was.

A year afterMerrimack’slaunching, the frigate was back in the yard after going aground during its shakedown cruise (when the crew becomes familiar with a ship and problems are ironed out). While workers replaced damaged coppering and repaired the propeller on the big warship, a smaller sail frigate waited its turn.

Launched 13 years earlier,Cumberlandhad served as flagship of the African Squadron, whose mission was to suppress slave running. Now back home,Cumberlandmoved into the dry dock soon afterMerrimackwas towed out. It was cut down to a fast sloop-of-war with one gun deck of 28 guns and a crew of 376.

Cumberland’sworth as a leaner warship was proven in the first months of the Civil War. Assigned to the Atlantic Blockading Squadron, the vessel took eight Confederate prizes in three weeks. But the next yearCumberland, among the last sailing ships launched by the Navy, came up hard against the future.

On March 8, 1862,Cumberlandand other vessels were on blockade duty in HamptonRoads, Virginia, when the men on deck sighted a bizarre new war machine steaming out of Norfolk. Approaching them was a dark, monolithic vessel—decks awash, no masts, no sails, no sailors. C.S.S. (Confederate States Ship)Virginia, the much-rumored ironclad blockade-breaker, had finally taken the stage.

Architect’s rendering of the Charlestown machine shop’s “Great Chimney,” 1858.

It was a slow, clumsy vessel, but menacing nevertheless. Using a full mile to gather momentum,Virginiasteamed steadily towards the Union vessels. It passed the frigateCongressand headed straight forCumberland, its sloping iron casement shedding the Union ships’ barrage of heavy shot and explosive shell as if they were “peas from a pop-gun,” in the words of aCumberlandsailor. ButCumberland, though clearly outmatched, could not avoid engagement. It was at anchor in a dead calm, the crew’s wash drying in the rigging. The Union sailors could only take the punishing return fire, clear the decks for battle, and wait for the inevitable.

Longer thanCumberlandby half, with a submerged iron ram projecting from its bow, the approaching vessel looked to the Union ship’s pilot like a “huge, half-submerged crocodile.”Virginiatore intoCumberland’sbow below the waterline (see pages28-29), then backed off, leaving its ram imbedded in a seven-foot hole. Both vessels now loosed volleys at point-blank range; dozens ofCumberland’screw were maimed or killed.

As the vessel listed and began to sink, the crew abandoned ship, but 121 men—already dead, too hurt to save themselves, or firing guns to the end—went down withCumberland. (As water flooded the gun deck, a young gun crew officer barely saved himself by squeezing through a gun-port. He was Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, who in 1890 became commandant of the Charlestown Navy Yard.) Before darkness ended the fighting, the ironclad also riddledCongress, killing more than a hundredmen and setting the vessel on fire.Congressburned on into the night and finally exploded.

The frightening weapon that had handed the U.S. Navy its worst defeat began its career as the hull of a wooden steam vessel. A week after the surrender of Fort Sumter, the loss of the important Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk to rebel troops became inevitable. Evacuating Union forces—under cover ofCumberland—burned and scuttled several warships to keep them from falling into Confederate hands. But some were salvageable, including a large steam frigate on which everything below the waterline was intact. Southern engineers converted the vessel into an advanced warship, removing the masts and topping the hull with a rooflike iron shell. The original name of the vessel they retrieved and transformed: U.S.S.Merrimack.

Merrimack’sreincarnation asVirginiaembodied two technologies—steam and iron (and then steel)—that were advanced during the Civil War and that eventually defined the modern Navy. Steam engineering had traveled a long road of acceptance in the conservative Navy. By 1850, the year the Charlestown Navy Yard built its first steamer, Great Britain had built or converted from sail some 25 propeller and paddlewheel steam warships. The U.S. Navy had launched only seven. Steam engines were still considered novelties by many old Navy men—at best auxiliary power, at worst dirty and undependable nuisances that called for machine tenders rather than sailors.

Their resistance was not entirely unjustified. There was the problem of range:Merrimack, for instance, could cruise only about 17 days with its coal bunker full. American steamers far from home had to depend on French or British coaling stations and machine shops in places like Hong Kong and Shanghai. Unlike self-reliant sail, steam alone could not meet the demands of distant squadrons. And in the early days of steam, it was no faster than sail: in fact it was often slower. More crucial, early steam engines were inefficient and unreliable, so captains would not trust them in combat. And coal took up valuable space needed for supplies, crew, and ammunition.

But the main problem was that early steamers were driven by big, ungainly sidewheels that caused captains no end of problems (seepage 35). They so harmed a vessel’s sailing qualities that steam was of necessity the primary power source on sidewheelers—but the Navy wanted to use steam only as auxiliary power.

Another way of employing steam power for propulsion was needed. The propeller (called a “screw”) was the answer, allowing naval steam to come into its own. Construction of the prototype screw sloopPrincetonbegan in 1841, before America’s first sidewheel warships even went into service. The Navy built only eight more deepwater sidewheelers before the famous 1854 class of six screw steamers (led by the Charlestown-builtMerrimack) made the cumbersome vessels a footnote in naval history. With the advent of the propeller, enough problems were solved that auxiliary steam power became feasible in warships. On an 1858 cruise from Honolulu to Acapulco,Merrimacksteamed only three days out of 32.

Merrimack, whose subsequent adventures we have already followed, was in the tradition of large American frigates likeConstitution. While its engines were never very dependable,Merrimackwas an excellent sailer, powerfully armed, and on its inaugural European cruise inspired Britain to build similar vessels with better engines.

Merrimackis launched at Charlestown in 1855;Cumberlandwas built in the same shiphouse in 1842.

The screw sloopHartford, launched at Charlestown in 1858, was one of a follow-up class of steamers. (These and other screw steamers of the ’50s were all frigates and sloops; no steam ship-of-the-line was built at Charlestown or any other yard. As we have seen, the era of such large wooden ships was over by the time the Navy was converting to steam.) These were smaller vessels with a shallower draft—better suited to coastal and river operations. As Rear Admiral David G. Farragut’s flagship in victories at New Orleans and Mobile Bay,Hartfordwas perhaps the most celebrated steamer in the Union Navy.

With propellers, even the most hidebound captains could appreciate the better maneuverability steam gave them during combat. Gradually the tactical roles of steam and sail were reversed, with increasingly efficient and dependable steam engines officially becoming the primary power source and sail the auxiliary. As a matter of economy, however, American vessels continued to use sail whenever possible on long-distance cruises.

Steam technology demanded a whole new set of skills of Charlestown’s mechanics. When the steam batteryFulton IIdocked there in 1839, the yard could repair only the vessel’s wooden components, having to contract work on the engine to local companies. But by 1845 yard personnel could fully service the screw sloopPrinceton. While some carpenters may have made the transition, it is more likely that most of those working with steam machinery had a background in the field.

As the yard adapted to the new age, it underwent a decade of modernization and quickened production preceding the Civil War. The dry dock was lengthened; gas lights were installed; the yard began manufacturing wire rope in 1857. But the most important improvement was a state-of-the-art machine shop—its 240-foot stack long a landmark at the yard—that replaced the old smithery in 1859. It contained such equipment as a machine that could plane a metal surface 10 feet square and a huge lathe capable of handling iron propeller shafts 35 feet long. The facility also helped the yard to incorporate a new technology dramatized (though not introduced) by C.S.S.Virginia: ironcladding.

Sinking of large warships had rarely occurred in naval battle. Solid shot either bounced off thick wooden hulls or left a small, patchable hole. So warships normally just blasted away at each other until one of them, casualties mounting and its deck and rigging a shambles, hauled down its colors. YetVirginiahad sunk or caused to eventually sink two of them in two hours. Its ironcladding allowed it to get close enough toCumberlandto use an ancient but still effective technique, ramming, and close enough toCongressto pound the ship at close range with its broadside shot and big rifles. While ramming would not remain a tactical option, ironcladding was universally adopted as every naval power raced to design hulls that could withstand ever more powerful explosive shells fired from rifled guns (see pages42-43).

As in every war, technology helped shape strategy in the Civil War and strategic considerations helped determine how new technologies were applied. The Navy’s major role in the war effort was to blockade some 3,500 miles of Southern coastline. The South’s blockade runners were typically the most advanced examples of British shipbuilding, steam-powered sidewheelers that were often iron- or steel-hulled. In the first year of the war, only about one in eleven of these runners were caught (partly because sidewheelers were still faster than screw steamers), and the Union Navy continued to build, borrow, and buy every vessel it could to strengthen the blockade.

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When steam was introduced as an auxiliary naval power source in the 1820s, paddle-wheels were the initial method of propulsion. In the late 1830s engineers began working with propellers—“screws” in naval terminology. Each technology had its partisans: the sidewheel provided greater combat maneuverability, was suited to riverine warfare, and presented no problems of leakage, as did the screw’s underwater shaft hole. However, the exposed wheels were vulnerable during combat, ate up deck space needed for guns, hindered sail handling, and created more drag than a screw when the vessel was under sail. The launching of the screw warships H.M.S.Rattlerin Britain and U.S.S.Princetonin the United States in 1843 signaled the coming ascendancy of screw propulsion. In the historic 1845 tug-of-war betweenRattlerand an otherwise-identical sidewheeler, the greater efficiency of the screw was publicly confirmed.

SECTIONAL VIEW OF THE U.S. STEAM FRIGATE MERRIMAC.1857 inboard plan of screw frigateMerrimack.Screw could be hoisted into a well to reduce drag when the vessel was under sail.

SECTIONAL VIEW OF THE U.S. STEAM FRIGATE MERRIMAC.

1857 inboard plan of screw frigateMerrimack.Screw could be hoisted into a well to reduce drag when the vessel was under sail.

Sidewheels:good maneuverability, but vulnerable above the water.

The screw:more efficient, and protected below the waterline.

Thus when naval officers learned of the conversion ofMerrimackinto an armored blockade-breaker, they were understandably worried. In the debate over the type of vessel the Navy should develop to counter the Southern threat, John Ericsson’s proposal for a turreted, shallow-drafted coastal ironclad won out over larger, oceangoing designs with traditional broadsides. His ironclad, called U.S.S.Monitor, was the prototype of the turreted ironclad class named after it. (While monitors andVirginia-type ironclads continued to meet the needs of a mostly coastal and riverine naval war, two broadside ironclads were built by the Union. One of them,New Ironsides, was quite effective.)

MonitorfoughtVirginiato a standoff the day after the latter sankCumberland. It was the first clash between steam-powered ironclads, and the world took notice. Captain John Dahlgren, creator ofMonitor’stwo big guns, put it succinctly: “Now comes the reign of iron—and cased sloops are to take the place of wooden ships.”

It did not happen immediately:Monitor-class iron hulls were not very seaworthy. (Monitorsank in late 1862 while being towed during a storm off Cape Hatteras.) Wooden ships under both sail and steam power continued to fight the Civil War’s deepwater battles, but Dahlgren’s words came true after the war. The evolving iron, and then steel, warship incorporated elements from both ironclads: the deeper hull and superstructure ofVirginiaand, rather than multiple-gun broadsides, a few large guns in revolvingMonitor-type turrets that allowed the guns to be trained without turning the entire vessel.

Only four monitors were built by navy shipyards, but officers considered them the best produced during the war.Monadnock, a double-turreted monitor built at Charlestown, was generally thought the best of the lot and the only one of this class to see action. After the war, it proved its unusual seaworthiness by voyaging around Cape Horn to San Francisco.

Other thanMonadnock, ironcladding work at the Charlestown yard was performed on vessels built elsewhere, although the workers clad with iron the bulwarks of some of the double-ended sidewheelers built there. These vessels, a temporary reprieve for naval sidewheel technology, were designed for the narrow, shallow rivers of the South, allowing the “brown-water” Navy to reverse direction without turning around. The Charlestown yard built five double-enders—the biggest class constructed there during the war and, with those built at other yards, the biggest class of ships produced in the United States before World War I.

The Charlestown yard had in 1858 initiated its first machinist apprenticeship, acknowledging the inevitable transformation of the yard’s work. Steam had somewhat prepared the way for the yard’s artisans to work with iron: those already trained as boilermakers could adapt their skills to ironcladding. But increasingly the trades related to steam machinery and ironcladding were formalized with titles and apprenticeships. Through the 1850s and ’60s, machinists, iron moulders, and boilermakers accounted for an increasingly large part of the workforce: from a total of 26 (3 percent) in 1854 to 371 (19 percent) in 1866. But even though such trades were necessary in the yard by the mid-1860s, they were still in the minority and were paid less, considered less exacting and more easily mastered than the old wooden ship trades.

Samuel Cochran, a longtime employee at Charlestown, recalled later in life that when he arrived at the yard as a young man during the Civil War “the majority of the men employed were ship carpenters and joiners and most of the tools they used were cross cut saws and axes.” His own job was to turn the grindstone on which they were sharpened.

Cochran went on to paint a vivid picture of the yard during the war years when some 3,000 workers held jobs there: theordnance workers who had the dangerous job of retrieving powder from the magazine, donning canvas slippers to reduce the chance of sparks; the clandestine barrels of liquor in cellars, complete with drinking straws; the yard “politicians” who owed their jobs to patronage; sawyers in their six-foot-deep sawpits; the sailors (“Jackies”) on the receiving ships finding new ways to get extra grog on board.

A minor labor grievance in 1861 illustrates how the exigencies of war changed the working atmosphere at the yard and reduced the workers’ leverage. As it had in 1852, the government decided that yard employees should work sunrise to sunset from September to March, thus bringing their hours in line with those of private yard workers. Again the workers protested, although they continued to work, stating in their petition that they had no desire to hinder the government’s campaign to “crush out a foul rebellion.” This time the Navy made no concessions. Two strikes in 1862 over the same issue were half-hearted and futile; the longer hours remained in effect.

The sense of urgency and focus engendered by war and the accelerated pace of technological change pushed the yard to extraordinary levels of production. So it was not surprising that with the coming of peace the activity here and at other yards fell off. But the drop was precipitous. At war’s end, in sheer numbers and in engine technology, the U.S. fleet compared favorably with those of the European powers. In the weeks after Appomattox, however, the fleet shrank dramatically and continued to decline thereafter. In the postwar economic and political climate, the government’s priorities shifted. Massive funds were needed for reconstruction of the southern states and for war-deferred developments of the nation’s interior. The Navy would have to wait.

European navies, though, were riding the new wave of technology. In the 1870s their warships began to shed their sailing rigs as steam power became routine technology. But in America the old guard reasserted itself in peace, and there was a reaction against steam. After 1869, all naval vessels, steam or not, were required to have “full sail power,” and captains were on notice that they would pay for any coal they consumed other than for emergencies. Four-bladed propellers were replaced with two blades to reduce drag when under sail—with a corresponding loss of steaming efficiency.

As the British and European navies rapidly converted to lighter and stronger iron and then steel hulls on their largest ships, virtually all U.S. vessels built in the 1860s and ’70s were wooden-hulled (although some of these contained iron bracing). Even as late as 1885, theArmy and Navy Journalasserted that “a staunch, fast wooden vessel is still the best for cruising purposes.” But while wooden-hulled U.S. naval vessels were generally acknowledged to be fine examples of their kind, many were well past their prime:Independence, for example, flagship of the first Mediterranean squadron, had been a receiving ship at Mare Island Navy Yard in California since 1857.

It was not only romantic tradition that kept naval shipbuilding in its antebellum condition. Burning coal in warships cost money; the wind, if not as dependable, was free. Sails continued to make good sense on long-distance cruises. America still had no foreign coaling stations to support a distant steam fleet, and isolationist sentiment hindered their acquisition.

Marines guard the entrance to Charlestown Navy Yard in 1874. The gate no longer exists, but the building at right, dating to 1813, still stands.

Workers in the gun park, 1890s, load cannon and cannonballs onto a cart. Dry dock and carpenter shop can be seen in the background.

A baseball team of yard workers poses for its picture in front of the machine shop, about 1905.

For the same political and strategic reasons, America’s was a cruising navy, made up of ships not intended for naval battle but for scouting, showing the flag, and commerce raiding. Wooden hulls sufficed for such roles. The government and private enterprise continued to look inland, and iron was used instead for rails and bridges to speed westward expansion. In any case, American metallurgy lagged behind that of Britain, while diminishing timber supplies made British designers look to alternate hull materials—not the case in the United States.

If the Navy in general and navy yards in particular declined in the 1870s, Charlestown’s relative position was strong. From after the war to the early ’80s, Charlestown was the second most productive yard after New York. A large number of vessels came to the yard for repair—mostly wooden vessels with steam engines. To service these ships, Charlestown in the 1870s continued to hire more machinists, engineers, boilermakers, and patternmakers while retaining a solid contingent of wooden ship tradesmen.

Few new vessels were launched from any yard in this period. In the last three decades of the century Charlestown constructed three—all in 1874. The screw sloopsVandaliaandAdamswere launched on successive days, the latter (constructed at the yard by a private shipbuilder) being the last wooden warship laid down by the Navy. A few months earlier the yard had launched its first iron-hulled vessel, the torpedo ramIntrepid. But it was not part of a general transition to iron. The Navy built only four other iron-hulled vessels, none of them major warships. The 1874 launchings at the Charlestown yard reflected the U.S. Navy’s lukewarm and indecisive response to changing naval technology.

The yard by 1880 had changed little since the improvements of the ’50s. It had greater capacity now with four shiphouses and two building ways, but the physical plant also reflected the technological limbo into which the Navy had settled. There was a coaling wharf to service steamers and a new rolling mill for iron plate. But the large sail loft and wet timber dock were still very much in use, and oxen still pulled the timbers from dock to sawmill.

The dry dock was occupied byHartfordin 1879-80. It was receiving new engines after long tours in the 1860s and ’70s on Far Eastern stations. Its two-year stay in the dock—longer than normally needed for such a job—testified to the general state of affairs. The shrinking fleet had reduced the work load and slowed the pace at the yard. Under such conditions it was cheaper to use a smaller crew and take longer to do the work.

That the Navy was willing to give this much attention to so honored a ship asHartfordis understandable. But it symbolized the fact that it was only putting off the inevitable—modernization. By the early 1880s the U.S. Navy floundered in the wake of Europe’s navies—the victim of limited funds, tradition-bound officers, political neglect, and popular indifference. There were but 48 decaying vessels in commission, most at a Civil War or even prewar level of technology. On top of the other problems, the corruption associated with the administration of Ulysses S. Grant had touched the Navy—including the Charlestown yard—in the late 1870s. Here, as at other yards, politicians found jobs for men who were then expected to vote as they were told. It is easy to see why one historian has characterized this period as the “low water mark” of the Navy.

There were rumors of yard closings. Nothing happened immediately, but less and less work came to Charlestown. Then, in 1883, the Navy suspended all repair and construction work at the yard and reduced its role to manufacturing. So began hard times at Charlestown Navy Yard, during which it came perilously close to shutting down altogether.

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Before dry docks came into use in the 16th century, the only way to service a ship’s hull was to “careen” it—heave it over on its side, still floating (see pages6-7), or laying in the mud at low tide. It was difficult and time-consuming and put great strain on the hull. The answer was the dry dock. The concept is simple: float the vessel into a three-sided basin, then close the seaward end and remove all the water. The vessel settles on a cradle, its hull accessible. To undock: reflood the basin, open the seaward end and float the vessel out. But the concept’s execution required a finely-engineered complex of masonry, engines, pumps, reservoir, tunnels, culverts, valves, and gates—in effect a huge well-coordinated machine. The Charlestown dry dock and the one built concurrently at Norfolk, Va., were the first such naval structures in the country. Six years under construction, the Charlestown dock was inaugurated in 1833 with the docking of Constitution. It was 305 feet long (extended in 1856 to 370 feet and again in 1948 to 398 feet), 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep—the Navy’s largest dry dock until the 1890s. It took the original eight pumps four to five hours to empty the tremendous basin. Other operations were to some extent governed by Boston Harbor’s 10-foot tide. After the dock was enlarged the water level did not rise as rapidly as the tide during filling, so it took two high tides to do the job. For emptying and filling, the caisson was filled with water and sunk in place between grooves in the dock walls. For docking and undocking, the caisson was emptied and floated out of the way on the high tide (see inset). It took 24 men working hand pumps for an hour and a half to expel the water from the caisson. The original wooden caisson lasted until 1901, when the steel caisson still in use today was completed.

The Yard’s First Dry Dock

1.After its 1858 launching, U.S.S.Hartfordis docked for installation of its steam engine. To empty the dock, workers opened the discharge gates (A), releasing water to flow (red arrows) down discharge culverts (B) (on both sides of dock) to fill the reservoir (C).

2.The pumphouse (D), its steam engine driving two pumps in underground wells (E), pumped the water from the dock via the reservoir and sent it through an underground culvert back to the harbor.

3.To fill the dock, the discharge gates were closed and the filling gates (F) were opened. Water flowed (green arrows) first to wells (G), then into the dock through the same culverts used to empty it.

The clash of ships at sea embodies the ongoing technological battle between arms and armor: between deploying ever more destructive weapons and contriving ways to withstand them. As long as solid shot was the only way to attack a ship’s hull, heavy timbers were usually armor enough. Big wooden warships were rarely sunk by even the heaviest shot. (Constitutionis a particularly good example.) But the rules of the game changed with the coming of more powerful and more accurate guns, and especially with the development of the practical explosive shell in the 19th century. A shell could open a gaping hole in a heretofore impervious wooden hull. By 1860 France and then Britain had begun building ironclads. In Britain, especially, the rising cost of diminishing timber supplies was another incentive to experiment with iron, both as armor and for structural elements of the hull. But in the United States, wood was still cheaper than iron. Also, though the country had earlier experimented with ironcladding, the Navy resisted the new technology, putting emphasis on speed rather than armor. But it quickly made up for lost time after the beginning of the Civil War. The Confederacy took the lead, for the same reason that the United States had built “super-frigates” at the end of the 18th century. A country that could afford only a small navy had to build state-of-the-art warships. The blockade-breaker C.S.S.Virginiashowed the lethal effectiveness of its ironcladding on its first outing (seepage 28). The next day U.S.S.MonitorfoughtVirginiato a draw in the first battle between ironclads (right). The encounter spurred European navies to accelerate their ironclad programs, but new breech-loading rifled guns were demonstrating greater armor-piercing ability. In response iron, and then steel, armor was made thicker and harder, leading to still more powerful guns. The gun designers generally stayed a step ahead, with the biggest guns able to penetrate the thickest armor.

Monitor and Virginia

Inside a Turret

The monitorMonadnock(all turreted ironclads were designated monitors) was built at the Charlestown yard in 1862-63. The only monitor built there, it was quite successful, described by Admiral David Dixon Porter as “the best monitor afloat.”

Layers of Protection

Light battleship U.S.S.Maineon its first cruise in 1895. Maine,part of the new steel navy, blew up in Havana Harbor in 1898 under circumstances still unclear. The resulting Spanish-American War ended Spain’s days as a colonial power and made a popular hero of Theodore Roosevelt, who resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to serve in Cuba.

On first looking into the cavernous interior of Shiphouse I, a visitor during the winter of 1884 would have gotten the impression that Charlestown was a busy shipyard. Workers crawled over the almost completed ship-of-the-lineVirginia, swinging hammers, sawing, pumping hydraulic jacks—apparently applying the finishing touches. But behind the house, growing piles of four-foot lengths of wood told a different story. The workers were breaking up the old 74.Virginiahad occupied the shiphouse for more than 60 years, through all but the first two of the yard’s launchings. Back in 1824,Virginiahad been within two months of making its own trip down the ways. Now its day had passed, and its great timbers were being reduced to firewood and sold at auction.

Outside the shiphouse, very few workers could have been found among the silent buildings. Charlestown was a moribund yard, barely functioning since its repair and construction duties had been suspended the year before. Only the manufacturing divisions still showed signs of life. In 1886 the yard would be officially converted to a facility that manufactured equipment—especially rope—for vessels built and repaired elsewhere.

The yard was also stripped of much of its equipment and ordered to sell the vessels in ordinary. Repair work fell to an all-time low: between the 1883 docking of the Charlestown-built double-enderTalapoosaand 1890, the dry dock was used exactly five times to do repair work for the U.S. Navy—once on the yard tug and four times on the floating gate for the dry dock.

Joiner Shop foreman George W. Burroughs, about 1901.

New construction was out of the question. The yard had known for years that the vessels already in the shiphouses and on the building ways (labeled “Rotten Row” by a local newspaper in 1882) would never be launched. So it came as no surprise that the order closing the yard also condemnedVirginia, two wooden steamers, and a monitor—the latter three laid down during the Civil War. Still, it was disheartening that in the early 1880s a yard that had built and repaired ships was reduced to taking them apart.

At least the dismantling of vessels provided employment for the workers, who at this point felt quite vulnerable. Throughout the 1880s, “suspension” (being laid off) was always hanging over their heads. More than 500 men were employed at the yard when work was halted in mid-1883. There were around 300 by the end of the year and their ranks continued to thin, averaging less than 200 until 1888—most of them ropemakers, machinists, laborers, and watchmen.

Until World War I, jobs connected with supply would remain more stable than those related to construction and repair. In the late 1880s and ’90s, managers found ways to transfer men in the latter trades to other divisions within the yard in order to keep their services on call. But in the early ’80s the yard could find virtually no work for men skilled in the craft of wooden shipbuilding—formerly the elite of the workforce. AfterVirginiaand the other vessels had been turned into stacks of wood, those who had done the work were sent home.

Now let us look ahead some three decades to 1917, by which time we find a yard dramatically transformed. Eleven wharves described a great arc at the confluence of the Charles and Mystic Rivers. The familiar old shiphouses had been replaced by a large shipbuilding ways and steel plate storage yards. The timber basin that hadlong dominated the center of the yard was gone, replaced by a new dry dock twice as long as the first one. The other timber basin at the east end of the yard had been filled in and was now the site of gas and oil tanks, a locomotive shed, and a gas plant for acetylene torches.

It was a vital place, showing an intensity not seen since the Civil War. In fact it was again a wartime yard: after almost three years of neutrality the United States had entered the global conflict that was later called World War I. Some 4,500 workers worked two ten-hour shifts or around the clock in three eight-hour shifts, answering to a steam whistle instead of the bell that had summoned 19th-century yard workers. The wharves and docks were crowded with three- and four-stacker steel ships, some carrying the towering cage masts that were a short-lived experiment of the period. On the building ways, workers had laid the keel of the fuel shipBrazos.

Electric lights illuminated the thousands of men working on ships through the night. Vessels under repair were alive with the flare of welding torches and the tattoo of pneumatic rivet guns. Over them moved the arms of great cranes, including a 150-ton floating derrick and a colossus that traveled on tracks between dry docks. Materials and equipment were transported by yard locomotives that had replaced the oxen (although horses still did service). A mechanized coaling plant near the old dry dock helped ease the dirty and arduous task of fueling ships. But it was apparently undependable, and at times ships were coaled the old way.

Charlestown’s main responsibility was repairing the warships of a greatly enlarged fleet: steel destroyers, armored cruisers and battleships, submarines, and wooden sub chasers. The yard also outfitted and commissioned new vessels, converted civilian vessels to wartime use, armed merchantmen, and altered seized German passenger liners to transport U.S. troops to France.

More work came to the yard in 1917-18 than in any other comparable period in its history before World War II. Some 450 vessels were serviced during those two years. In addition Charlestown was a supply depot and embarkation point. In all, an average of 50 ships a day arrived at or departed from the yard during the war.

By 1918 some 10,000 skilled workers, laborers, and clericals worked at Charlestown. Reflecting the growth of the labor movement over the last three decades, many of them belonged to trade unions (although they could neither strike nor be represented by the unions in wage negotiations). Women working at the yard were mostly naval yeomen, but a few worked as radio and telephone operators, radio electricians, and ropewalk machine tenders.

Yard employees worked in 17 trade shops, the names of which characterized the needs of modern steel shipbuilding: Shipfitters (including riveters, drillers, welders, sheet metal workers); Electrical; Pattern (for cast metals); Chain; Copper/Pipefitting; and other skills employed in raising a steel ship.

Some of the old familiar shops survived in reduced or altered roles. The sail loft now produced mostly canvas bags, pea jackets, and hammocks. The riggers loft had become a versatile shop responsible for an array of shipyard tasks. They still worked aloft on stacks and steel masts; directed dry docking and crane operations; prepared shipways for launchings; dove beneath ships in hardhat diving suits; and continued to do the traditional rigger’s handiwork, such as the braided rope fenders that protected ships’ hulls and the fancy leatherwork and ropework still common on naval vessels. The workers in the joiner shop worked on the small wooden boats built at the yard, but spent much of their time making shipboard furniture. The ropewalk continued to turn out the large quantities of rope still needed on steel ships.

These young women were working as civilian clerks for the Navy when the U.S. entered World War I. Overnight they became Yeomen-F (female) naval personnel. (Yeomen is the naval term for clerical workers.)

Joiners were skilled workers in wood and traditionally the elite of the yard workforce. Even in the early days of steel ships, they remained among the highest paid of the workers. Here joiners are photographed in their shop, about 1897.

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