[Illustration: _The launching of a ship celebrates the time, energy, and skill spent in its making. Here U.S.S._ Guest, _one of 24 destroyers built at Charlestown during World War II, slips into Boston Harbor in 1942. The big_ Fletcher-_class destroyer took only five months to build_.]
[Illustration: _A destroyer is traditionally named for a distinguished naval figure, and if possible the closest female relative sponsors the namesake ship. In a centuries-old ritual, DD-461’s sponsor Eileen Fairfax Thomson breaks a bottle of champagne against the ship’s bow in 1941, sending it down the ways with the words, “I christen thee_ Forrest, _and may God bless all who sail in her.” Captain French Forrest commanded the Charlestown-built_ Cumberland _in the Mexican War. Siding with the Confederates during the Civil War, he oversaw conversion of the burned U.S.S._ Merrimack _into the ironclad C.S.S._ Virginia—_destroyer of_ Cumberland (see pages 28-29).]
From 1933 to the end of World War II, the Charlestown yard moved outside its traditional role as repair yard and became a shipbuilding facility. It began with destroyers—ships it had long specialized in repairing—averaging two a year in the 1930s. This period of steady production was preamble to the World War II crash building program. Charlestown launched almost 200 vessels, including 24 destroyers, between 1939 and 1945. In 1942 it began building destroyer escorts—smaller, less expensive versions of destroyers designed to counter German submarines. The final big program was the production of LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank) for amphibious assaults in Europe and Asia. LSDs (Landing Ship, Dock) for carrying other vessels; submarines; and various auxiliary vessels also came down the ways during the war. These programs spurred major changes at the yard. Greater specialization, for instance, broke up traditional shops. The biggest change was in construction methods, most notably prefabrication. Several bow and stern sections, each with its own keel, were built separately—many in the Shipfitters Shop, but also “in playgrounds and schoolyards and parts of the yard, and all around greater Boston,” remembered Rigger Charles Snell. These were then joined to the midship hull section rising on the shipways. “Economy was not the name of the game,” recalled Snell. “The name of the game was time.”