The Charlestown yard had in 1858 initiated its first machinist apprenticeship, acknowledging the inevitable transformation of the yard’s work. Steam had somewhat prepared the way for the yard’s artisans to work with iron: those already trained as boilermakers could adapt their skills to ironcladding. But increasingly the trades related to steam machinery and ironcladding were formalized with titles and apprenticeships. Through the 1850s and ’60s, machinists, iron moulders, and boilermakers accounted for an increasingly large part of the workforce: from a total of 26 (3 percent) in 1854 to 371 (19 percent) in 1866. But even though such trades were necessary in the yard by the mid-1860s, they were still in the minority and were paid less, considered less exacting and more easily mastered than the old wooden ship trades. Samuel Cochran, a longtime employee at Charlestown, recalled later in life that when he arrived at the yard as a young man during the Civil War “the majority of the men employed were ship carpenters and joiners and most of the tools they used were cross cut saws and axes.” His own job was to turn the grindstone on which they were sharpened. Cochran went on to paint a vivid picture of the yard during the war years when some 3,000 workers held jobs there: the ordnance workers who had the dangerous job of retrieving powder from the magazine, donning canvas slippers to reduce the chance of sparks; the clandestine barrels of liquor in cellars, complete with drinking straws; the yard “politicians” who owed their jobs to patronage; sawyers in their six-foot-deep sawpits; the sailors (“Jackies”) on the receiving ships finding new ways to get extra grog on board. A minor labor grievance in 1861 illustrates how the exigencies of war changed the working atmosphere at the yard and reduced the workers’ leverage. As it had in 1852, the government decided that yard employees should work sunrise to sunset from September to March, thus bringing their hours in line with those of private yard workers. Again the workers protested, although they continued to work, stating in their petition that they had no desire to hinder the government’s campaign to “crush out a foul rebellion.” This time the Navy made no concessions. Two strikes in 1862 over the same issue were half-hearted and futile; the longer hours remained in effect.