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 in 1883 Congress appropriated money for the steel cruisers Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago, and the dispatch vessel Dolphin. 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 for Dolphin—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 1890 Chicago was 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” for Boston typified 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, published The 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.