Navy Shipbuilding Site

in Charlestown

November 1943, destroyer escort U.S.S. Mason was launched from the Shipways. Her crew helped change the U.S. Navy.

Courtesy of the National Park Service

Visible below is Shipways 1; the wooden remains are testament to the extraordinary war-time shipbuilding effort in the Charlestown Navy Yard. In the 1930s, midst rising tensions in Europe, the U.S. Navy ordered the Navy Yard to pivot from ship repair to ship construction. Workers lengthened and widened Shipways 1 so two vessels could be built side-by-side. In 1941, Shipways 2 was added alongside, further accelerating production. Destroyers, destroyer escorts, dock landing ships, tank landing ships—all slid off these Shipways.

U.S.S. Mason (DE 529) was among the 45 vessels built on Shipways 1 and 2 during World War II. It was the first of only two U.S. warships during that war manned by a predominantly Black crew who served in positions ranging from radiomen and sonar operators to machinists and gunners. For years, the Navy had limited Black men to serve as cooks and stewards aboard ships. The U.S.S. Mason crossed the Atlantic eight times, protecting convoys transporting vital supplies. The crew spurred changes in the Navy.

In July 1948, President Harry Truman’s Executive Order #9981 abolished discrimination in the United States Armed Forces.

This detail from the 1873 Currier & Ives lithograph of Boston shows the ship-houses that stood here until 1906. During the 1800s, shiphouses covered shipways to protect workers during bad weather.

Courtesy of Library of Congress

When Shipways 1 was completed in 1915, hammerhead cranes were installed to move large steel vessel components into place.

Courtesy of the National Park Service

Crew members stand at the bow of U.S.S. Mason on Pier 8, where the ship was outfitted and commission-ed. The pier is now part of the marina.

Courtesy of the National Archives

Two barracks craft await launch from the Shipways in October 1944. Twelve years later, the last major naval vessel constructed at the Yard was built here.

Courtesy of the National Park Service

Sign Location

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Petitioning by the NAACP and Black activists, as well as public pressure from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt forced the Navy—the most restricted and segregated branch of the armed forces—to open all ranks to Black men, rather than restrict them to serving only as cooks or stewards. Starting in June 1942, Black men could train at Camp Robert Smalls, a segregated facility that was part of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois. Thousands graduated from Camp Robert Smalls service schools, but they were still kept off ships going into battle, assigned instead to shore stations or small coastal vessels.

Additional pressure led to the Navy’s “experiment”—a ship sailing with a crew of predominantly Black men (160 out of 190). Some derisively referred to the U.S.S. Mason as “Eleanor’s Folly,” because of the First Lady’s activism. The Mason sailed out of Boston June 1944—two years after Black men were permitted to enlist as seamen.

Source: Kelly, Mary Pat. Proudly We Served: The Men of the U.S.S. Mason. Naval Institute Press, 1995.

In the fall of 1944, the U.S.S. Mason was one of four destroyer escorts shepherding a convoy of army tugs and long barges across the Atlantic. (The barges would serve as temporary piers in France for ships supporting the Allied liberation of Europe.) The convoy encountered a wild storm and the Mason’s crew performed exceptionally. The convoy commander recommended that each member of Mason’s crew receive a letter of commendation. They never did.

Fifty years later, President William Clinton honored the Mason’s crew and all other African American World War II veterans, celebrating their pioneering efforts: “We’ve come a long way since then, largely because of you and many tens of thousands like you who disproved the false stereotypes, who showed that American troops were, are and always will be the best trained, the best prepared fighting force in history. Regardless of the color of their skin…. In Europe, North Africa, the Pacific, or stateside, in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, more than a million African American men and women helped to win this [20th] century’s greatest fight for freedom. In helping to show the world what America was against, you helped to show America what America is for. You helped to liberate all of us from segregation.”

After the shiphouses that covered the shipways were demolished in 1906, the shipways lay unused for several years. The Navy Yard repaired vessels at that time; there was no new construction. In 1914-15, in order to build a new supply ship, what remained of the ways had to be converted into a modern shipways. The new ways had an inclined concrete base and wooden ways extending into the harbor.

In 1938-39, as tensions simmered in Europe, Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers renovated the shipways once again, significantly enlarging them. June 1939, the keels of two destroyers were laid down simultaneously side-by-side. The shipways remained in constant use until July 1946.

The architects for phase 1 and 2 of Shipway Place (completed in the mid 1980s) took advantage of the shipways’ concrete sloping ramps to build four rows of housing at different elevations.

Community activists. Colonial law. Political will. New state regulations. The combination created the 43-mile Boston Harborwalk–a public path, stretching from Logan Airport through seven neighborhoods to the Neponset River. In 1978, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) sought to improve public access to the waterfront. They succeeded by integrating early Colonial laws into new state regulations.

In the decades that followed, community activists, city and state government, and developers of shoreline projects have worked together to ensure the Harborwalk is always constructed along the waterfront. Some sites also provide public amenities–bathrooms, meeting places, kayak launches,
etc. The result is a fabulous path welcoming residents and visitors to our vibrant clean harbor.

Early Colonial laws established public right of access along tidelands to protect citizens’ rights to fish, hunt, and navigate at sea and along the shorefront. These laws go back even further: They stem from Roman law, which was incorporated into English law and brought over to Massachusetts by English
settlers. Then, in the 1640s, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed laws permitting private docks in the intertidal area (between low and high tide) as long as public access was retained. Almost all of Boston’s waterfront is filled land that was once the intertidal area. This, together with the centuries-old legal right of access, served as the underpinnings for the 1978 CZM regulations.

Resources

Acknowledgments

  • Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind and David W. Cook for their partnership in creating the audio files.
  • Thank you to David Henderson and Stephen Carlson of the National Park Service for their expertise and support.