In the 1960s the yard stayed busy with outfittings, missile and ASW conversions, and Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) overhauls that added five to seven years of service to aging warships. Charlestown’s FRAM program specialized in World War II-era destroyers. Ranging from brief dockings to major operations of a year or more costing millions, these projects involved such sophisticated work as installing or upgrading sonar (_see pages 76-77_), radar, communications, and computer equipment; major alterations such as replacing engines and entire superstructures; and the more prosaic tasks the yard had been performing for over a century: cleaning and painting hulls, renovating propellers and rudders, and rebricking or replacing boilers.
Nevertheless, by 1972 work was falling off at Charlestown, and signs did not bode well for the yard’s future. For years the Navy had invested little there for maintenance or modernization, making it harder to stay efficient. The marine railway and ropewalk had been shut down in 1971. Elsewhere, superfluous or inefficient military bases were being closed to save money. (The New York Navy Yard was closed in 1966.) A massive infusion of funds was needed to upgrade the old Charlestown yard—too small in any case for proper expansion of its facilities.
The Navy in general was retrenching for economic reasons. The destroyer fleet, especially—the lifeblood of the yard in the 20th century—had steadily dwindled since 1960. The fewer destroyers there were to service, the harder it was to justify the Charlestown yard’s existence. The failure of the Navy to carry through modernization plans, including one whereby the majority of the yard’s industrial activity would be transferred to an enhanced South Boston facility, helped to hasten the inevitable. Many associated with the yard also suspected that Massachusetts, as the only state going Democratic in the 1972 presidential election, would pay a penalty for failing to back the winner.
On April 16, 1973, the yard commander, Captain R. L. Arthur, announced that the Charlestown yard, along with the yard at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, was to close. Over the next year it ceased all fleet servicing and manufacturing operations, and on July 1, 1974, nearly 175 years of service to the nation ended with a formal disestablishment ceremony. Only one naval activity remained at Charlestown: the protection and maintenance of the old warship long associated with the yard, U.S.S. _Constitution_.