Charlestown Navy Yard: Boston National Historical Park, Massachusetts

Charlestown Navy Yard: Boston National Historical Park, Massachusetts

Deep within Boston Harbor, Charlestown Navy Yard was birthplace, repair center, outfitting base, and port of refuge for thousands of U.S. naval vessels. This is the story of the yard, the ships it served, and the people who kept them seaworthy. Boston Harbor; about 1870. Visible in the foreground are Charlestown Navy Yards timber dock (left) and dry dock (center left, with docked vessel). The ships anchored off the navy yard piers are (left) U.S.S. Ohio, the yards receiving ship (for housing recruits and sailors transferring between vessels), and U.S.S. Wabash in ordinary (that is, out of commission and in storage). The U.S. government established Charlestown Navy Yard as the newly-formed republic was meeting early challenges to its merchant shipping. In the decade after gaining independence, the young nation kept no standing navy. But continuing raids on U.S. commerce by Barbary pirates and French privateers in the 1790s spurred Congress to authorize the construction of new warships. Realizing that existing private shipyards were inadequate for the increasingly ambitious shipbuilding program, the Secretary of the Navy established in 1800-1801 six federal yards to build, outfit, repair, and supply naval vessels. These facilities at Portsmouth, N.H.; Boston; New York; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; and Norfolk, Va., were the nucleus of the naval shipyard system. Except during the Civil War, they launched most of the Navys vessels until the advent of steel hulls in the 1880s, when private yards began building them in greater numbers. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55010
Author: United States. National Park Service
Release Date: Jun 30, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English