Layers of Protection
1 Typical ironcladding had wooden backing up to three feet thick. 2 A layer of India rubber or felt might be added to help absorb shock and retard corrosion. 3 The cladding was often made up of laminated one-inch iron plates. 4 Tallow was sometimes applied to the outer surface on the theory that it helped deflect shot.
Light battleship U.S.S. Maine on 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.
The New Navy
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-line Virginia, 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. Virginia had occupied the shiphouse for more than 60 years, through all but the first two of the yard’s launchings. Back in 1824, Virginia had 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-ender Talapoosa and 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.
