The Yard Transformed

Yard’s floating crane, shown here in 1913, could lift 150 tons. Dry Dock 1 is visible in left background.

The traditional shipyard hierarchy was virtually unchanged: the crews of mechanics, apprentices, and laborers were headed by leadingmen; several leadingmen were supervised by quartermen; and the quartermen were under a chief quarterman or they answered directly to the master who headed the shop.

Unlike the hard times of the 1880s, the employees at Charlestown had reason to feel secure. Civil Service reforms of the ’90s had already gone a long way toward making merit, not political advantage, the criterion for hiring and firing. And now, in the hour of war, the Navy wanted to keep its shipyard workers. In the months before the United States entered the conflict, officials had worried that employees swept up in the popular sentiment for preparedness would enlist. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels declared it the “patriotic duty” of the workers to remain at the yard, asserting that “their services to their country ... [are] as important as if they were actually in the field.”

When the draft was initiated in 1917, the Navy responded by gaining exemptions for crucial classes of yard workers such as supervisors, draftsmen, and skilled mechanics and their helpers. The military draft gave new meaning to the yard’s “six-muster” rule, by which any worker missing six successive roll calls for any reason could be fired. One week after any worker was dismissed, the yard informed his draft board.

The demand for workers and the boosted war economy drove up wages. No doubt prompted by this incentive and by the exemption policy, some 240,000 men applied for work at the yard in 1917-18. But while Charlestown didn’t lack for applicants, filling the most skilled positions was a continuing problem. To remedy this (and to help workers gain exemptions), the yard cut a year from the term of apprenticeship and established a trade school to train unskilled workers as mechanics.

While World War I sped up Charlestown’s evolution from naval backwater to modern shipyard, other factors had set the process in motion. Time and expected technological advances accounted for some of it. But the transition was accelerated at the yard by a larger transformation of the Navy, prompted by the country’s position in a changing world and completed on the stage of the Spanish-American War.

Historians have tagged this transformation the “New Navy.” If we simply compare the numbers of the 1880 Navy, when its aging fleet of wooden vessels ranked 12th in the world, to that of the 1900 Navy, when there were in commission or on the stocks 17 steel battleships and a number of armored cruisers, the label “new” is certainly accurate. But there was more to this than simply building new steel ships to catch up to Europe. The Navy’s mission underwent a strategic shift in this 20-year period.

The early phase involved a strengthening of the Navy’s capacity to carry out its mission. For a century its job had been to defend the shores and to ensure that other navies allowed American merchant vessels free trade anywhere in the world. Its tactical traditions were one-on-one engagements and hit-and-run commerce raiding. But it was clear by the early 1880s that the U.S. Navy was inadequate for even these limited operations. Reformers could point to obvious deficiencies as European navies converted to armored steel hulls in the 1870s and ’80s. The old wooden navy had become a disgrace.

Powerful voices were raised in the House Naval Affairs Committee, and in1883 Congress appropriated money for the steel cruisersAtlanta,Boston, andChicago, and the dispatch vesselDolphin. These vessels could still spread a large area of sail, and by European standards were not formidable, but the so-called “ABCD” ships were the core of the New Navy, the first small step towards making the United States a true sea power.

For Charlestown, they were a mixed blessing. The New Navy’s need for maintenance and repair bode well for the future, but the immediate effect was devastating. For the same legislation that authorized new ships also established a new criterion for repairing existing vessels. Only repairs that cost less than 30% (later reduced to 20%) of the cost of a new ship of the same size could be performed. This freed up funds to build the new ships, but it also meant so little work for shipyards that both repair and construction work at Charlestown and three other yards was suspended.

In its new role as manufacturing center, the yard kept the ropewalk, rigging loft, and sail loft open. The forge began producing chain and anchors for the new steel ships. But even these activities were sporadic until later in the decade. A survey done one March day in 1884 showed that the ropewalk was spinning rope forDolphin—literally the only thing done that day to help put warships to sea.

During the worst years of the 1880s the ropewalk almost singlehandedly kept the yard alive. It made itself an indispensable facility by supplying virtually all of the Navy’s rope. Other shops followed its lead, and by 1890 the Charlestown yard had become an important general manufacturing center, the only naval shipyard producing rope, sail, anchors, and chain. It was still unable to service ships, however. In August 1890Chicagowas directed to the yard for repairs, only to turn back because the old dry dock wasn’t in good enough condition to accept the steel cruiser. “Repairs to engine bolts” forBostontypified the kind of task the yard could perform.

But 1890 also marked the beginning of the yard’s rebirth. Congress appropriated $152,000 for new machine tools and modernization of Charlestown’s crumbling facilities. It wasn’t enough to remake the yard, but it was a start. It was also the year that Commander Alfred Thayer Mahan, president of the Naval War College and one-time aide to the Charlestown Navy Yard commandant, publishedThe Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. This important book helped to stimulate the world-wide buildup of naval forces prior to World War I. His thesis (greatly simplified) was as follows: A combination of geography, population size, and “national character” makes a great seafaring nation. Essential to the continued well-being of such a nation is a government that actively promotes a vigorous maritime commerce. “Sea power”—command of the sea lanes—protects this commerce. Only large concentrated fleets of capital ships able to engage and destroy the enemy’s navy can create and maintain sea power.

Mahan’s influence, both as author and adviser to the Secretary of the Navy, was pivotal. His writings strengthened the hand of imperialists and reformers who had called for new strategic thinking. The United States, they reasoned, was a growing industrial power with increasing overseas interests, and some—among them Mahan disciple and future Assistant Secretary of the Navy and President Theodore Roosevelt—believed the nation should have a navy befitting its role, one able to open markets, protect those economic interests, and project U.S. power.

In a burst of enthusiasm recalling that for the ship-of-the-line at the end of the War of 1812, Congress in 1890 authorizedthe country’s first full-sized battleships. They represented enormous commitments of resources, time, and money. Called “coastline” battleships to placate still powerful coast defense advocates, they were nevertheless another step in the United States’ emergence by the turn of the century as a world power with a widening sphere of influence. The Navy kept its faith in battleships until their vulnerability to air power and the superiority of aircraft carriers as attack weapons were demonstrated in World War II.

Although a succession of battleships, cruisers, submarines, and other vessels were now being laid down, Charlestown didn’t immediately reap the benefits. The majority of the warships launched between 1883 and 1905 were built by contract in private yards, and Charlestown built none of them. For most of the 1890s, the yard continued to be primarily a manufacturing facility. The New Navy’s hulls did account for much of the yard’s repair work. Steel hulls didn’t rot, but they more easily fouled with barnacles and seaweed than a coppered wooden hull and were less resistant to corrosion than iron. Maintaining them became the Charlestown yard’s bread and butter.

The Spanish-American War broke this pattern, making Charlestown once again a repair yard. Besides the new warships the United States was trying out against the Spanish navy, there was also the “mosquito fleet” (old monitors, converted yachts, and other small craft used for coastal defense during the war) to be maintained and repaired. In all some 50 vessels were serviced by 1,200-1,400 workers.

To beef up its workforce for war, the yard began hiring more foreign workers, especially from Scandinavian countries with shipbuilding traditions. Charlestown thereafter maintained a workforce averaging over 2,000 during the two decades before World War I—compared to the fewer than 400 workers there through most of the 1890s. The Spanish-American War was pivotal, marking a permanent expansion in the size and diversity of the Charlestown workforce.

At war’s end the United States was recognized as a world power with attendant responsibilities. This new status was symbolized by the establishment of a coaling station in the recently acquired Philippines. The capital ship building program continued apace—given renewed vigor by President Theodore Roosevelt, staunch advocate of big ships and a strong navy.

The yard continued to be mainly a repair facility with a steadily increasing workload. The new 750-foot Dry Dock 2, authorized three months after the sinking ofMaine, was built to receive the Navy’s biggest ships. But soon after the massive structure’s 1905 completion, Britain launched H.M.S.Dreadnought, ushering in an even larger class of battleship the dock could not accommodate.

In this period the yard specialized in the smaller battleships and the newest type of warship: destroyers. These fast, versatile ships had evolved from British “torpedo boat destroyers” built in the 1880s to counter the new torpedo boats. The mobile torpedo, also developed in Britain, was a self-propelled explosive device launched from a warship’s deck, traveling underwater to open the hull of its target.

Developments in naval technology from the 1880s to the eve of World War II included nothing quite so dramatic as the epochal shifts from sail to steam and wood to iron, but the period saw advances in strategic weapons such as submarines and aircraft carriers, and major innovations that resulted in ships and shipbuilding essentially like what we see today. In the period before the age of flight, sophisticated warships were highly visible embodiments of the state of a nation’s technology, and the rapidly expanding U.S. fleet was an unmistakable sign of its growing industrial and technological prominence.

Charlestown’s machine shop in 1913. Overhead belts transferred power from a central steam engine to the machines. The potentially hazardous belts were later replaced with electric motors on each machine.

Lathe operator shapes steam turbine rotor for destroyer tender Whitney in 1923.

The major innovations were again in hull material and propulsion. The transition from iron to steel hulls further liberated naval engineers. Lighter, stronger, and less brittle, steel allowed them more play in hull size and proportions. Despite extensive use of ironclads by the United States during the Civil War, its navy essentially skipped the iron stage in seagoing warships, moving fromHartford-type wooden steamers to the steel ABCD ships of 1883. While the Charlestown yard launched no steel warships until the 1930s, it did construct the tugPentucket(1903) and training barkCumberland(1904), both steel-hulled.

As steam engines grew more efficient in the 1880s and ’90s, sailing rigs were made smaller and vestigial masts served mainly as radio antennae and platforms for directing big guns. But a revolution in steam technology sent reciprocating engines the way of masts on most large naval vessels. Steam turbines, which were much more efficient at sustained high speeds, were developed in the 1880s in Europe and used in 1905 onDreadnought. In America they became truly practical during the World War I period.

Along with the introduction of turbines came an innovation in the fuel that powered them. During the 1890s oil was introduced, used in combination with coal. By 1910 the United States had built its first all oil-burning warship. Besides providing greater power more quickly, oil needed less storage space and fewer engine room hands than coal.

These advances and refinements completed the evolution of the U.S. Navy warship from wooden-hulled sailing vessel to powered steel ship. But perfecting the new technology was not the onlychallenge associated with the transition. The demands of modern naval design provoked growing controversy over how work should be performed at naval shipyards and how those yards should be organized. Charlestown Navy Yard played a central role in the debate.

Since 1868 the nation’s naval shipyards had each been organized into departments corresponding to those at the Navy Department level. Each department head, though nominally under the yard commandant, really worked for his boss in Washington. So each department became in effect a separate plant protecting its own interests and budget. When a yard built relatively simple wooden-hulled ships powered by steam engines, the tasks of the Construction and Steam Engineering departments differed enough that there was little overlap. The old organization was not then a problem. But as warships became complex, integrated machines the system broke down, providing little coordination between departments and a great deal of duplication. By 1910 it was grossly wasteful and inefficient, a public scandal.

At about the same time as reformers were calling for a shakeup of naval shipyards, the phrase “scientific management” was being bandied about. Everyone recognized that the 19th-century industrial system, while highly successful, had to be managed differently to best incorporate 20th-century technology. The most famous of the new management systems was that of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor’s system called for the strict application of scientific methods to industrial management and organization in order to produce the maximum output. Specifically, efficiency experts would study workers’ tasks and break them down into their smallest components; perform time-and-motion studies to eliminate wasteful motions and determine the optimum time in which a task should be completed; and offer wage incentives and penalties for meeting or falling short of the new standards. There would be no reason for bargaining or for unions since non-debatable scientific principles, rather than human foibles and emotions, would govern management decisions.

The workers’ response to Taylorism was speedy and unequivocal. They fiercely resisted any system that would analyze their movements as if they were machines to be fine-tuned (not an exaggeration of Taylor’s stated beliefs). Such a system, they said, would demean them and their skills—robbing them of their autonomy and individuality; eliminating craft from the job; turning workers into mere cogs performing sped-up, repetitious tasks “to the physical breaking point”—not to mention the threat to collective bargaining. So visceral was their reaction to Taylorism that any kind of management system became suspect.

Thus when the Navy attempted in 1912 to introduce a British management system—less doctrinaire than Taylorism, though with the same ends of efficiency and increased production—workers at Charlestown were immediately on their guard. The system’s reorganization of the yard’s divisions also upset established power relationships between traditional sea (line) officers and newer and often younger engineering (staff) types, tilting the balance in favor of the latter. Not surprisingly, line and staff were polarized over the merits of the new order, accusing each other respectively of obstructing progress and overmanaging.

In this charged atmosphere, when two overzealous junior officers attempted to introduce minute Taylor-like task breakdowns at Charlestown, the metal workers at the yard took action. They asked their congressman to hand-deliver a protest to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. While Roosevelt agreed in principle with scientific management, he was generally sympathetic to labor and refused to implement a system that the yard workers opposed.

Machine shop workers pose for a group picture in Dry Dock 1, about 1905. At this time a little more than 2,000 employees worked at the Charlestown yard.

U.S.S.Whitneyrises amid a forest of scaffolding. The keel of the 484-foot destroyer tender—the largest vessel ever built at Charlestown—was laid down in 1921. It took two and a half years to build. After surviving the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Whitneyserved in the Pacific during World War II.

Roosevelt’s visit to the yard in 1913, during which he let it be known that certain junior officers were being reassigned, focused national attention on the controversy and encouraged other yard workers around the nation. A delegation representing them lobbied against Taylorism, eventually persuading Congress to outlaw such management systems in navy yards. Yet when it was all over, the Charlestown yard was organized quite differently than in the 19th century, making it a more efficient builder and repairer of modern naval vessels and helping it to perform as it did during World War I.

U.S.S.Bridge, commissioned as the first American troops were enroute to France, exemplified the yard’s progress since the dark 1880s. Following a long campaign by a job-desperate Boston to have the ship built at Charlestown,Bridgewas laid down in 1914 and launched two years later. It was the Navy’s first refrigerated supply ship, with a steel hull and a boiler that could burn oil or coal. Its 423-foot length madeBridgethe largest vessel yet built at Charlestown and its first major ship since the 1870s.

After demonstrating its competence withBridge, Charlestown was assignedBrazos, two other fuel ships, and a destroyer tender. The war-spurred building program helped Charlestown stay busy when peace came, as the last three vessels weren’t laid down until after the armistice. In fact the number of employees actually rose, to almost 13,000 in 1919. Besides the shipbuilding, there was work converting ships to troop transports to bring the soldiers home and stripping military gear from ships returning to civilian service. Charlestown repaired a large number of destroyers, subs, and battleships small enough for Dry Dock 2. To increase its docking capacity, the yard purchased in 1920 a new state-built dry dock in South Boston. At the time it was the country’s largest dry dock, becoming the nucleus of the yard’s South Boston Annex.

Events conspired in the 1920s to dampen the yard’s postwar prosperity. The 1922 Five-Power Treaty limited new ship construction and the overall number of vessels, meaning less repair and outfitting work for naval shipyards. In any case the political mood was to spend money on other things. After the destroyer tenderWhitneywas launched in 1923, there was no more construction at Charlestown, other than a couple of tugs, for the rest of the decade. And as the Japanese grew increasingly expansionist, much of the fleet was moved to the West Coast, further reducing work at the yard.

Nevertheless, Charlestown kept up its steady repair work, especially on destroyers, albeit at a more modest level and with a workforce reduced to below 3,000 by 1922. The addition of a marine railway in 1919 allowed the yard to more easily service smaller ships of up to 2,000 tons.

By the end of the decade further developments seriously threatened the Charlestown yard. The London Naval Treaty of 1930 extended the moratorium on new capital ship construction for another six years. The treaty further required the U.S. to scrap three battleships and 94 destroyers—the latter a mainstay of Charlestown. The deepening Depression also hurt the yard, as the government’s austerity program in the early years of the crisis reduced work at naval shipyards. The Hoover administration threatened to close most federal yards, including Charlestown. Yet in the Depression itself we can trace the roots of the coming boom.

Beginning in the 1880s, steel rapidly supplanted wood as the primary material in U.S. naval vessels. Charlestown began building large steel vessels in 1915-20, the period depicted below. Stronger per pound than wood or iron, steel enabled naval architects to design bigger ships that could carry more armament. Steel was also better suited to bearing the massive weight of steam engines and boilers. The structural members of early steel vessels were riveted together, with limited gas welding in use by World War I. Shipyard artisans traded auger, saw, and mallet for pneumatic drill, gas cutting torch, and pneumatic rivet gun. Massive steam-powered cranes replaced the old hoisting shears. Yet, while a riveted steel ship demanded vastly more complicated plans and a higher level of coordination between shops, it was assembled in much the same way as a wooden vessel. From the keel rose the stem, sternpost, and frames. Transverse beams, longitudinals, vertical stanchions, watertight bulkheads, decking, and plating completed the hull, all held together by rivets. Electric welding (below), developed in the 1930s, allowed still lighter construction and the prefabrication of sections. Designers, however, still called for rivets for some parts of the hull throughout World War II.

When the Charlestown yard began constructing steel ships in 1915, a new building ways was erected on the site of the shiphouse in which the wooden screw frigateMerrimackhad been built 60 years earlier(see pages32-33).The yard built three 475-foot fuel ships (“oilers”) on this shipways between 1917 and 1921, reducing the time between keel laying and launch from two years for the first ship to less than a year for the last.

Electric welding

Until World War I, forged iron chain was used on naval vessels, and the forge shop at the Charlestown yard was a leader in the industry. But it was a laborious process, and the demands of war spurred the development of cast steel chain, which could be produced more quickly. Charlestown was soon experimenting with detachable links to connect standard chain lengths. This led to the development in 1926 of a new chainmaking process, in which each link was made from half-links joined in a die under a drop-forge hammer—“die-lock” chain. It was clearly superior: more uniform, stronger, cheaper to make. By the early 1930s Charlestown was producing die-lock chain in several sizes, and by 1936 die-lock had superseded cast steel chain for all sizes. The shop made the chain used in most U.S. naval vessels built during World War II and was the only forge to make chain for the largest postwar aircraft carriers.

Finished chain is loaded for shipping.

Decorative background

The Die-lock Chainmaking Process

1Rolled nickel-steel rods (from ¾-inch to 4¾-inch in diameter) are cut into shorter bars.

2The cut bars are heated in a gas furnace to 2100°F. The now-malleable bars are bent by machine into U-shapes.

3The U-bars are stamped to form stems, with tapered and ridged ends, or they have holes punched in the ends to form sockets.

4Stem is hooked onto last completed link and placed in die; socket is heated, and the two are joined under a 10,000-pound hammer (next page).

5Largest 4½-inch chain for supercarriers could withstand up to 2.5 million pounds. Each two-foot-long link weighed 360 pounds. Red undercoat and grey paint helped retard rusting.

10,000-pound hammer

At a shift change in 1943, departing workers hurry past destroyer escorts being outfitted for war. At its peak during the war, the Charlestown yard and its annexes employed more than 50,000 men and women.

It was not a dramatic launch—no gathering speed down the shipways and plunging into Boston Harbor. Instead, the water flowing into Dry Dock 1 rose slowly around U.S.S.MacDonoughuntil the destroyer lifted off the keel blocks and was towed out of the dock. The 1934 “floating” was low-keyed but significant.MacDonoughwas the first warship built by Charlestown since the wooden screw sloopVandaliaslid down the ways in 1874.

The technological leap between the two vessels—partially bridged by the steel supply and fuel ships Charlestown built in the World War I period—was considerable. Except for its coal-fired auxiliary steam propulsion, the 216-footVandaliadid not differ significantly from the oldConstitution.MacDonoughwas a modern destroyer—the sloop-of-war’s 20th-century counterpart—incorporating the advances of the past 60 years. It was powered by geared turbines driven by steam generated in oil-burning boilers, and relied on sophisticated electrical, hydraulic, and communications systems. At 341 feet, its steel hull took up most of Dry Dock 1.

As soon asMacDonoughwas moved out of the dock, the destroyerMonaghan, just floated from Dry Dock 2, was moved into #1 for completion and outfitting. Two more keels were immediately laid in #2. It is noteworthy that neither dry dock was being used to repair ships. In fact, the whole yard’s traditional role as repair facility had given way in the past year to a new one as shipbuilder, a status it maintained through World War II. Charlestown built 12 destroyers in the 1930s and 24 more bythe end of the war. Of course the yard built and serviced other types of vessels—especially destroyer escorts and LSTs (Landing Ship Tank)—but Charlestown acquired a reputation as a “destroyer yard” and thereafter specialized in this workhorse of the Navy.

Navy Yard Complex During World War IIThis map of Boston Harbor in 1942 shows the five units of Charlestown Navy Yard during World War II. By war’s end the South Boston Annex was the largest, with dry docks big enough to repair battleships and heavy cruisers. The Chelsea and East Boston Annexes repaired small vessels, and the Fuel Depot Annex served the great number of naval vessels entering the harbor during the war.

Navy Yard Complex During World War II

This map of Boston Harbor in 1942 shows the five units of Charlestown Navy Yard during World War II. By war’s end the South Boston Annex was the largest, with dry docks big enough to repair battleships and heavy cruisers. The Chelsea and East Boston Annexes repaired small vessels, and the Fuel Depot Annex served the great number of naval vessels entering the harbor during the war.

Ironically, the change had been brought about by the same economic crisis that almost put an end to the yard. After considering closing all yards but Norfolk and Philadelphia to save money, the Hoover administration in 1931 proposed closing only the Charlestown yard. Reaction was swift: committees were formed in Boston; petitions protesting the closing were signed. But it was probably the fact thatMacDonoughhad been ordered a month earlier that tilted the scales in the yard’s favor. The keel was not laid for two years, however, and 1932 was the yard’s bleakest year since before the Spanish-American War, with only 1,500 people employed.

The Roosevelt administration’s program to stimulate the economy, provide jobs, and pull the nation out of the Depression was the first step in Charlestown’s transformation into a true ship construction yard. Under FDR’s 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, 32 new warships were authorized, 20 of them destroyers, of which two were assigned to Charlestown. The following year, growing worries about Japanese aggression moved Congress to further expand the Navy.

The yard kept a rapid pace in the 1930s, laying two keels simultaneously in Dry Dock 2 in 1934 and again in 1935. (As the shipways was inadequate for destroyers, all keels were laid in this dock until 1939.) After floating, the hulls were moved into Dry Dock 1 for completion, the whole process taking about two years.

Repair work was much reduced in the 1930s by federal economy measures specifying lengthened maintenance intervals. As both dry docks were in any case usuallytied up in construction work, and because most of the ships in for repair were relatively small, many of these vessels were floated into a large cradle and hauled from the water up the tracks of the yard’s marine railway. Others were taken across the harbor to the South Boston dry dock.

Technological change transformed many of the yard’s oldest trades by the 1930s, while the growing size and complexity of ships required more and more workers. Such large government employers as shipyards were seen by policy makers as places to both promote economic stability and save money. Early in the Depression these two goals were addressed, respectively, with lower and upper limits for each yard’s workforce—at Charlestown, 1,500 and 1,800. The workforce stayed generally within these limits until 1935, when it began growing, reaching some 5,000 workers by late 1939. (During hard times the yard kept its eye on the future, exempting apprentices from layoffs.)

By the time war had begun in Europe in 1939, with “readiness” again America’s watchword, the yard was operating at an even faster rate of production than in the mid-thirties. With the shipways enlarged to handle destroyers, six ships were in some stage of construction that summer. In October four destroyers were floated out of Dry Dock 2 on the same day. The yard also prepared 18 of the old World War I four-stacker destroyers for transfer to Britain under the 1940 destroyers-for-bases agreement.

Then came the war. If the thirties had been a period of gearing up, wartime pushed the yard into overdrive. It took a great war effort for the yard to realize its true shipbuilding and manufacturing potential, confirming a statement by Secretary of the Navy George von Meyer in 1910: “Navy yards are primarily for war and only incidentally for peace.” One historian’s conservative estimate: under the goad of war the yard built, repaired, overhauled, converted, or outfitted some 6,000 vessels between 1939 and 1945.

The raid on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 made every naval installation fearful of enemy attacks. Charlestown installed anti-aircraft batteries on roofs and camouflaged waterfront buildings. Some security measures were disruptive of yard routine. Blackouts and dim-outs were in force, especially in the early years of the war, to reduce the chances of ships being silhouetted against lights. When the air raid whistle blew, workers had to stop what they were doing and go to shelters. Throughout the war, yard officials juggled the conflicting demands of security and production.

Other security measures had more personal consequences. Some yard workers were banned from certain areas, and everyone was forbidden to speak foreign languages while at work. A number of workers were suspended in 1941 as security risks. “Remarks ... inimical to the government” were enough to earn an employee a place on the suspension list.

The huge number of people working at Charlestown was another sign that the yard had been remade by war. The U.S. Navy became the world’s largest single employer of industrial labor during the conflict, and the Charlestown yard held the same status in the Boston area. The yard’s force rapidly swelled from 5,000 workers in 1939 to a high of about 50,000 at Charlestown and its annexes in mid-1943, working around the clock in three eight-hour shifts.

As in World War I, the yard again had to protect its essential employees from the draft board. But voluntary enlistment proved to be the real drain on the workforce. Although yard foremen tried to dissuade crucial employees from going, some 13,000 workers left the yard to join the fight. Throughout the conflict, even when more than 50,000 people worked there, the yard was shorthanded.

After the construction boom created by World War II, Charlestown resumed its traditional role of “serving the fleet” (the yard’s motto). In the early 1950s it was the home yard for 121 vessels, including U.S.S.Cassin Young, the destroyer now on exhibit at the yard. All types of ships, but especially destroyers, came for everything from minor repairs to overhauls on established cycles. The latter, which often involved some degree of modernization, could require 800 to 900 workers a day. After the war the yard preserved decommissioned vessels of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet berthed at the South Boston Annex. Charlestown also prepared ships for transfer to allies, outfitted vessels built elsewhere, and repaired equipment, especially sonar.

U.S.S. Wasp plaque

Charlestown was busy in 1960 with overhauls and modernizations. In the foreground: aircraft carrierWasp(whose crew presented the yard with the plaque shown above); floating dry dock (in a yard dry dock); heavy cruiserMacon (CA-132).

To make up for the shortages, the yard began for the first time hiring significant numbers of women and African Americans. Their door of opportunity, unlocked by the needs of a war economy, was kept open by pressure from civil rights groups on the Roosevelt administration (often relayed by a sympathetic Eleanor Roosevelt). Women at the yard had traditionally worked in clerical positions and as phone operators, and this remained true at war’s outset. But more and more women found work in the industrial shops, notably as welders and at the ropewalk (the latter having employed them during World War I). At least in some shops, however, there were restrictions. Gloria Brandenberg, who worked in the Paint Shop, recalled that all painter’s helpers were female, supervised by a woman (the “leading lady”), while all painters were male. Brandenberg said there was no chance for advancement.

By 1943 female blue-collar workers outnumbered women in clerical positions. Some 7,700 women were on the rolls in late 1944—far above their prewar level and about 19 percent of the workforce. Many worked as welders on ships under construction, but yard officials wary of contact between female workers and male crews barred women from all vessels in for repair. Painter’s helper Brandenberg recalled that the women were not allowed even to talk to sailors.

While African Americans were not officially excluded from Charlestown’s prewar workforce, few had been employed. When the war created opportunities for them, some whites openly resisted their presence in skilled positions. But this was not a universal attitude. Allan Crite, a black illustrator in the Design Department, said he experienced no racial problems. Inevitably, though, tensions arose in some areas. Gloria Brandenberg recalled an evening at a social club with her coworkers from the Paint Shop, one of whom was African American. She was asked to leave. The group talked it over; they all left. But the records show no major racial conflict at the yard. At war’s end more than 2,300 African Americans were in the force of 32,000 workers.

By late 1942, the yard had settled into a wartime routine—to the extent that routine is possible during war. Normal peacetime constraints didn’t apply. “During the war there wasn’t much emphasis on estimates,” recalled plumber Lyman Carlow. “For one thing, there wasn’t time. Here’s the job; we need the ship right away; get it done and whatever it costs it costs ... it was just a real frantic pace ... the material just flowed in ... plenty of people, so we could really get the work done.”

More than the higher level of general activity and the large numbers of workers (around 36,000 at this point), it was the volume of new construction that characterized the wartime yard. A walk around the yard on November 23 would have revealed ships being built in every facility but Dry Dock 2, used only for repairs.

Workers generally laid down and launched large vessels in pairs. But while floating two at a time out of a dry dock was standard practice, it was never approached casually. John Langan, a shipfitter during the war, recalled: “It was quite a feat, two destroyers right alongside each other, flooding the dock, and not having them crash.”

A new shipways built in early 1941 helped quicken the pace of production. In that year 10 destroyers were laid down, the most in any one year. By late 1941 the yard’s workers had pushed the time for building a destroyer down to a little over a year and would cut it to three or four months from keel to launching by the end of the war.

“We all felt that we were doing our job, and the harder we worked, the faster we would get the ships out and the faster it would get over. Deep down, everyone was very serious about it, because ninety-nine out of a hundred people had a husband or a brother or somebody close to them that was overseas.”—Gloria Brandenberg, WW II Charlestown yard worker

Welders at Charlestown during World War II.

As enlistments and competition from private industry depleted the pool of male workers during World War II, the Navy looked to the large numbers of women who wanted to do their part for the war effort. Women had long worked at the Charlestown yard, although almost exclusively (except during World War I) in clerical positions. But beginning in 1942 the easing of state workweek restrictions for women hastened their recruitment into the yard’s manufacturing and traditional shipyard shops. The intention was to have them replace men in relatively unskilled positions requiring little training. And in fact most women did work as helpers in their shops, often with little chance of advancement. But some moved into the trades as machinists, riveters, painters, riggers, pipefitters, and especially as welders and ropewalk workers. At the same time women still occupied more than half of the yard’s clerical positions. Altogether, they made up about one-fifth of the yard workforce by 1945. Those in the trades knew their jobs would likely end when the war did, but the point had been made. In 1945, a yard historian wrote: “Experience over the past two years has proven that female employees are able to work efficiently on an equal basis with men on many jobs that were formerly considered to be men’s jobs.”

Welders at Charlestown during World War II.

The yard’s clerical workers enlisted as Yeomen-F (female) at the outbreak of World War I. Women also worked as radio operators and at the ropewalk.

Many responded to posters urging women to fill an industrial job and “free a man to fight.”

The new shipways was also used to build destroyer escorts (DEs)—smaller, slower, and less expensive versions of destroyers designed for escort duty and antisubmarine warfare. Escorted convoys had proven to be the only effective way to thwart U-boat “wolf packs” preying on allied shipping. In 1942, after the Navy ordered the first of more than a thousand DEs, Charlestown built a new dry dock in which it could turn out four at a time. The next year 50 DEs were laid down at the yard, half of which were destined for Britain in accordance with the Lend-Lease Act of 1941. Charlestown got the production of DEs down to an art: of the 62 it built, workers launched an impressive 46 in the first eleven months of 1943.

If 1941 was the year of the destroyer at the yard and 1943 belonged to the DE, 1944 was the year of the LST (Landing Ship, Tank). These seagoing assault vessels carried tanks and other vehicles during amphibious landings. The yard laid down 30 in 1944, taking only a month to complete one of the 328-foot vessels.

In all, Charlestown built 174 large vessels during the war, including 12 barracks ships and four submarines. There were also hundreds of smaller craft, such as wooden motor launches and diver boats. The South Boston Annex played a part in the yard’s strong wartime performance, doing much of the repair and conversion work and fabricating hull sections that were towed to Charlestown for incorporation into ships under construction.

Not all vessels were built outside: in the summer of 1942, shipfitters fabricated in their shop 150 fifty-foot LCMs (Landing Craft, Mechanized)—also called “tank lighters”—for the British-American invasion of North Africa. Shipfitter John Langan remembered it as a “crash program.... We just stopped everything else and concentrated on them and delivered them for the invasion.”

While this kind of rapid, assembly-line construction was Charlestown’s specialty during the war, there were other claims on the yard’s time. By late 1942 war’s reality was being brought home to Charlestown in the shape of battle-scarred ships needing quick repair. When a damaged ship arrived, it was given priority until it was ready to return to combat.

There was another reason for the air of urgency around war repairs: ship repair generally called for more skill than did shipbuilding. Because workers often had to work blind on battle damage until its nature and extent could be determined, such work called on all the workers’ resourcefulness. John Langan remembered “everybody fighting to get them [war-damaged vessels], because it is good work.” Langan recalled one vessel towed into the yard: it had been “torpedoed and cut right in halves ... and the fireroom was open to the seas ... [They had] tied her down with big I-beams ... tied them the full length, all the way around”—to keep the ship afloat until it reached the yard.

Even without the shell-torn hulls and shredded superstructures, war is hard on ships. Pushed faster, farther, and longer under less than ideal conditions, they needed more than routine maintenance. And on top of the already demanding schedule of ship construction, repair, and maintenance, other tasks competed for time and resources. Yard workers outfitted naval vessels built at other yards. They converted private vessels and old naval ships to wartime uses. They manufactured turbines and thousands of tons of die-lock chain (see pages60-61). They “degaussed” hulls—neutralized their magnetic fields so they would not trip mines. Together these activities suggest the scope and grueling pace of the yard’s war effort.

In such an atmosphere, mishaps caused by fallible humans dealing with complex machinery were inevitable. One particularlyembarrassing, and nearly tragic, incident was related by electrical shop foreman Mel Hooper. His men were completing electrical work on the new submarineLancefish(built at another yard) in 1945. “Some machinist went down,” he recalled, “and opened up the front gate on the torpedo tube and forgot to close it; then he went back in the ship and opened up the inside one and then it started to flood. And they had a hell of a job trying to close it, and they couldn’t close it, and everybody ran aboard the dock to get the hell out of there before they got drowned. And then the ship sank.”

The stepped-up safety program was almost certainly an improvement on the pre-war conditions, when, as remembered by plumber Lyman Carlow, “It seemed to me that everyone was supposed to look after himself.” But while the program called for more protections for workers from open machinery, hazardous fumes, and other dangerous conditions, a survey in 1944 noted that workers were rarely disciplined for safety violations, machines lacked guards, and most workers did not wear their hard hats, goggles, or ear protection. “You [went] down to the tanks with the chipping hammers and riveting guns going all around,” recalled Carlow, “and you wouldn’t be able to hear for a couple of hours afterward. But nobody did anything about it, or thought anything of it. You just got deaf, and that was it.”

A shipyard was a dangerous place to work even in peacetime; war multiplied the hazards. Charles Snell, an apprentice rigger at the yard, recalled 40 years later, “We had a lot of close escapes, because safety wasn’t really stressed then as much as it is today ... we lost a lot of riggers, strangely enough, and I can never account for this, being run over by the cranes ... the operator of the crane, when it was traveling, had very limited visibility close ahead. And we lost an inordinate number of riggers because they’d stumble and the crane would run over them.... We had quite a few falls into the dry dock, not riggers, but all trades.”

Snell left the yard in 1943 and served in Europe for the duration of the war. He recalled his impressions upon returning in 1946, comparing the yard to “a runner, which was running for an objective, and all of a sudden, the objective wasn’t there. The need for everything had suddenly evaporated. And it was a question of what do you finish and what don’t you finish, and what’s important.”

With peace came the end of Charlestown’s brief period as a major shipbuilding center. But the war-seasoned yard did not simply revert to what it had been before. Charlestown found a new postwar role as a place where old vessels were remade from the inside out, transformed into modern warships. Old did not necessarily mean long in years. In the 1950s, ships that had performed admirably in the late war were being left behind in a world of accelerating technological change. Charlestown extended their careers, installing state-of-the-art electronics. When advances in missile technology opened a new era in naval weapons and strategy, Charlestown played a leading role in the changeover. The life of the crowded and aging yard itself was extended by such activities, enabling Charlestown to render another three decades of service to the country.

In the months after war’s end, the level of activity naturally fell off, but the yard remained busy converting transports to bring home the troops, inactivating ships, and completing the last few LSTs, barracks ships, and subs laid down in 1945. Charlestown also carved a niche for itself in sonar, a technology dating to the World War I period and considered standard equipment since the 1930s. Beginning in 1948 the yard became a center for therepair of sonar equipment, establishing a sonar laboratory and developing techniques adopted by other electronics repair centers throughout the Navy.

Radar, developed in the 1930s, had come into widespread use during the war. The yard undertook a major conversion program in 1950 when it began upgrading radar and sonar systems on a number of destroyers and destroyer escorts, converting them to radar picket and antisubmarine warfare (ASW) roles. Charlestown also planned and designed all alterations, wherever they were performed, to cruisers, destroyers, escort carriers, LSTs, and several auxiliary vessel types.

While the yard accepted a variety of vessels, including aircraft carriers, it continued its traditional specialization in destroyers and destroyer escorts. In 1955 the yard converted the 10-year-oldGyattinto the world’s first guided missile destroyer.

That year the yard laid down the keel of its only postwar vessel and the last one it built: the LSTSuffolk County, first of a larger and faster class of LSTs. Charlestown also served as the design yard for the other six LSTs, built in private yards.

In the 1960s the yard stayed busy with outfittings, missile and ASW conversions, and Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) overhauls that added five to seven years of service to aging warships. Charlestown’s FRAM program specialized in World War II-era destroyers. Ranging from brief dockings to major operations of a year or more costing millions, these projects involved such sophisticated work as installing or upgrading sonar (see pages76-77), radar, communications, and computer equipment; major alterations such as replacing engines and entire superstructures; and the more prosaic tasks the yard had been performing for over a century: cleaning and painting hulls, renovating propellers and rudders, and rebricking or replacing boilers.

Nevertheless, by 1972 work was falling off at Charlestown, and signs did not bode well for the yard’s future. For years the Navy had invested little there for maintenance or modernization, making it harder to stay efficient. The marine railway and ropewalk had been shut down in 1971. Elsewhere, superfluous or inefficient military bases were being closed to save money. (The New York Navy Yard was closed in 1966.) A massive infusion of funds was needed to upgrade the old Charlestown yard—too small in any case for proper expansion of its facilities.

The Navy in general was retrenching for economic reasons. The destroyer fleet, especially—the lifeblood of the yard in the 20th century—had steadily dwindled since 1960. The fewer destroyers there were to service, the harder it was to justify the Charlestown yard’s existence. The failure of the Navy to carry through modernization plans, including one whereby the majority of the yard’s industrial activity would be transferred to an enhanced South Boston facility, helped to hasten the inevitable. Many associated with the yard also suspected that Massachusetts, as the only state going Democratic in the 1972 presidential election, would pay a penalty for failing to back the winner.

On April 16, 1973, the yard commander, Captain R. L. Arthur, announced that the Charlestown yard, along with the yard at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, was to close. Over the next year it ceased all fleet servicing and manufacturing operations, and on July 1, 1974, nearly 175 years of service to the nation ended with a formal disestablishment ceremony. Only one naval activity remained at Charlestown: the protection and maintenance of the old warship long associated with the yard, U.S.S.Constitution.

Back to Index Next