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 that MacDonough had 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 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. (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.