Tag: Charlestown Navy Yard (Boston MA)

Wikipedia says: The Boston Navy Yard, originally called the Charlestown Navy Yard and later Boston Naval Shipyard, was one of the oldest shipbuilding facilities in the United States Navy. It was established in 1801 as part of the recent establishment of the new U.S. Department of the Navy in 1798.

The earliest naval shipbuilding activities in Charlestown, Massachusetts across the Charles River and Boston harbor to the north from the city of Boston, began during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). The Charlestown Arsenal of United States Army was established in 1794.[6] Shortly thereafter, in 1800, the land for the Charlestown Navy Yard was purchased by the United States government and the yard itself was established. The yard built the first U.S. ship of the line, USS Independence in 1814, and at least twelve small vessels for the American Civil War, but was primarily a repair and storage facility until the 1890s, when it started to build steel ships for the “New Navy”. By then, it was called the Boston Navy Yard.

On 24 June 1833, the staff and dignitaries including then Vice President Martin Van Buren, Secretary of War Lewis Cass, Secretary of the Navy Levi Woodbury, and many Massachusetts officials, witnessed “one of the great events of American naval history”: the early United States frigate Constitution was inaugurating the first naval drydock in New England designed by prominent civil engineer Loammi Baldwin, Jr.

The ropewalk supplied cordage used in the Navy from the time it opened in 1837 until the Yard closed in 1975. After the Civil War (1861–1865), the Yard was downgraded to an Equipment and Recruit Facility.