Budget-minded Naval Commissioners in Washington allowed the commandant to pay just enough to hold on to his workers. He generally matched the rates of private shipyards in the area to keep workers from being lured away. The daily rates thus fell with the coming of cold weather and the slowing of work, since the workers were then in low demand elsewhere. The Navy defended this hard-nosed practice, maintaining that with fewer daylight hours (workers mustered at sunrise and were dismissed at sunset), the yard got less work out of the men. The niggardly pay policies sometimes backfired: in 1821 the low-paid sailmakers left en masse to work at private yards.
More than the skilled craftsmen, the laborers’ jobs depended on the amount of work at the yard, but most of the workforce awaited the coming of cold weather with some anxiety. The yard’s practice was to retain only as many people as it could keep working, and bad weather sharply reduced the volume of work. The completion of a new ship or of a major repair job also meant the letting go of large numbers of workers, at least until the next job. In effect many in the workforce were not given permanent jobs, but only hired on to perform seasonal work, much like house carpenters, or to complete a single project.
Though the situation was normally weighted in favor of the employer, the scales could occasionally tip the other way, especially for skilled workers. In 1825, when the coming of spring coincided with a surge in building brought on by a recent Boston fire, Commandant William Crane was forced to raise wages to compete for skilled workers. He sent his Master Builder Josiah Barker up the coast as far as Portland to recruit mechanics.
At times skilled workers attempted to force the Navy’s hand, organizing to protest conditions. When the caulkers struck for higher wages in January 1835, the commandant, Commodore Jesse Elliott, fired them and quickly found others willing to work at the established rate. Two days later the “refractory caulkers,” unable to find work in the middle of the winter, asked to be rehired at their old wages. Wanting to remain on good terms with his employees, Elliott allowed the men to return.
Sometimes the walkout worked. Yard workers considered unreasonable a change in their working hours made in 1852. By this time they were working a straight 10-hour day. But under the new policy, they had to work sunrise to sunset if that period contained even a minute less than 11 hours, thus adding up to an hour to their day during the winter. They walked off the job, forcing the Navy to rescind the policy.
These actions represent a period when the yard workers, though not yet unionized, could strike—an option later denied to government employees. While workers were generally forced to accept the prevailing pay and conditions at the yard, they were not completely without power.
In the Charlestown Navy Yard’s first half-century, world events, U.S. politics, and sectional rivalries affected the ebb and flow of work and the hiring and firing of men. The yard was born in the midst of a world at war and grew to prominence in a time of relative calm—in retrospect, the lull before the storm of civil war.
Sloop-of-war (U.S.S. Decatur or Dale) dry docked in Charlestown has its rigging tarred and its hull sheathed with copper, about 1852.
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