Read Ebook: Charlestown Navy Yard: Boston National Historical Park Massachusetts by United States National Park Service

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 153 lines and 27960 words, and 4 pages

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Yard's First Dry Dock

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 , 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 , 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 . 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.

Steam windlass Timber dock Swing gates Caisson

Ironclad Technology

Pilot house Turret rotated on central spindle Ammunition gantry Two 15-inch Dahlgren guns Ammunition

Ventilation shaft Auxiliary steering position Shot locker Ericsson engine Stokers' quarters Coal bunk Funnel Officer's quarters Boilers Crew's quarters Turret rotation gearing Stores Chain locker

Specifications: Length overall: 259.5 ft. Beam : 52.5 ft. Displacement: 3295 tons Draft: 12 ft., 8 in. Armor: turrets, 10 in.; pilothouses, 8 in.; over wooden hull, 3-5 in.; deck, 1.5 in. Engines: Two Ericsson 1426 HP steam engines, 32-in. cylinders; four boilers Screws: Two 4-bladed screws, 10-ft. diameter Speed: 9 knots Crew: 167 Armament: Four 15-in. Dahlgren smoothbore muzzle-loading guns; fired shot or shell

The New Navy

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.

At least the dismantling of vessels provided employment for the workers, who at this point felt quite vulnerable. Throughout the 1880s, "suspension" 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.

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 had long 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.

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 . 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.

Yard employees worked in 17 trade shops, the names of which characterized the needs of modern steel shipbuilding: Shipfitters ; Electrical; Pattern ; 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.

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 ... 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 , 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.

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% 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.

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.

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" 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.

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.

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 only challenge 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.

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 . 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 officers and newer and often younger engineering 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.

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.

Building a Steel Ship

Chain for the Navy

The Yard Transformed

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. 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 usually tied 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.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet