But 1890 also marked the beginning of the yard’s rebirth. Congress appropriated $152,000 for new machine tools and modernization of Charlestown’s crumbling facilities. It wasn’t enough to remake the yard, but it was a start. It was also the year that Commander Alfred Thayer Mahan, president of the Naval War College and one-time aide to the Charlestown Navy Yard commandant, published _The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783_. This important book helped to stimulate the world-wide buildup of naval forces prior to World War I. His thesis (greatly simplified) was as follows: A combination of geography, population size, and “national character” makes a great seafaring nation. Essential to the continued well-being of such a nation is a government that actively promotes a vigorous maritime commerce. “Sea power”—command of the sea lanes—protects this commerce. Only large concentrated fleets of capital ships able to engage and destroy the enemy’s navy can create and maintain sea power. Mahan’s influence, both as author and adviser to the Secretary of the Navy, was pivotal. His writings strengthened the hand of imperialists and reformers who had called for new strategic thinking. The United States, they reasoned, was a growing industrial power with increasing overseas interests, and some—among them Mahan disciple and future Assistant Secretary of the Navy and President Theodore Roosevelt—believed the nation should have a navy befitting its role, one able to open markets, protect those economic interests, and project U.S. power. In a burst of enthusiasm recalling that for the ship-of-the-line at the end of the War of 1812, Congress in 1890 authorized the country’s first full-sized battleships. They represented enormous commitments of resources, time, and money. Called “coastline” battleships to placate still powerful coast defense advocates, they were nevertheless another step in the United States’ emergence by the turn of the century as a world power with a widening sphere of influence. The Navy kept its faith in battleships until their vulnerability to air power and the superiority of aircraft carriers as attack weapons were demonstrated in World War II. Although a succession of battleships, cruisers, submarines, and other vessels were now being laid down, Charlestown didn’t immediately reap the benefits. The majority of the warships launched between 1883 and 1905 were built by contract in private yards, and Charlestown built none of them. For most of the 1890s, the yard continued to be primarily a manufacturing facility. The New Navy’s hulls did account for much of the yard’s repair work. Steel hulls didn’t rot, but they more easily fouled with barnacles and seaweed than a coppered wooden hull and were less resistant to corrosion than iron. Maintaining them became the Charlestown yard’s bread and butter.