Charlestown Navy yard
In 1799 the United States was engaged in a naval war with France, and Congress called for the building of six ships-of-the-line, the battleships of the day, to protect American commerce from French attacks. Two years later Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert bought sites in six cities in which the ships could be built. The one in Charlestown became the Boston Navy Yard. It was primarily used as a storage facility until the War of 1812, but during that war the yard completed the Navy's first ship-of-the-line, the 74-gun Independence.
The Civil War forced rapid growth on Charlestown Navy Yard. As a repair and supply base it supported the squadrons blockading Southern ports and harbors. As a shipbuilding facility it converted a number of small vessels into warships and built Monadnock, one of the few monitors constructed at a government ship yard.
The yard employed nearly 50,000 people who worked around the clock, seven days a week. After Vietnam, Boston Naval Shipyard was closed, ending 174 years of service.
In 1975, after Constitution was drydocked, one phase of the yard's activities came to an end. But a year earlier Congress set aside part of the navy yard as a unit of the Boston National Historical Park. The yard now has a new mission: to interpret the art and history of naval shipbuilding.
