Kayaking the Concrete Shipwreck "ATLANTUS"

this is a big old block of concrete man it's big it's heavy it's solid it's dense now what happens if we put it in water let's go find out [Applause] [Music] it sinks however when properly formed and reinforced concrete can be used to make a pretty cheap ship but that's the key word cheap because really that's the only advantage a concrete ship could have because it certainly won't be fast or especially strong although the concept of concrete barges was around since the 1850s it wasn't until the first world war that self-propelled ships of concrete were pioneered in 1918 the final year of the first world war President Woodrow Wilson enabled the emergency fleet Corporation to begin construction on 24 concrete ships that were going to be used as transports for cargo and troops they didn't need to be fast or strong or anything like that the government simply needed a lot of them as quickly as possible however the war ended only a few months later and none of these ships were finished yet twelve of them were under construction and they were completed eventually post-war one of these ships the 260 foot SS Atlantis the second of these twelve ships to be completed is the focus of our adventure today the Atlantis served for two years as a cargo ship and crossed the Atlantic a few times at least two of those voyages was as a troop ship ferrying American servicemen home from Europe as the Great War ended she was retired after only those two years of service she simply was not economically efficient even though I got to launch my kayak in North Sea the thing is New Jersey's been handing out a ton of social distancing fines for people out kayaking or boating I don't see how kayaking violates social distancing but anyway I don't want a thousand dollars fine we're gonna have a little bit more of an adventure I'm gonna get a better workout hopefully we're still going to be able to get some great shots of the wreck the neat thing is I've never really seen footage from a kayak able to get up close to the wreck I've seen kayakers out there so I know people do it but I've never seen footage posted anywhere so what I'm really hoping to do today is get out to it and take some of my own I'm gonna see how close I can get up to it I know the currents around the wreck are actually a little rough and they do churn a bit and I've been out there once before and it tried taking me right out to sea so I'm gonna be very cautious and I'm still gonna try to get something good we're on the Delaware Bay launching from North Cape May we're going to paddle south along the beach around the jetties and across the Cape May canal on our left will be Higbee's Beach continuing on will arrive at Sunset Beach and there there is the wreck 150 feet offshore it's a two and a half mile kayaking trip each way as I got to the canal I had to wait for a few minutes as the Cape May Lewis ferry was departing there's an interesting tie in between the Cape May ferry and the SS Atlantis in 1964 the Cape May Lewes ferry was established but people have been trying to connect New Jersey and Delaware by ferry for almost two hundred years in the 1920s Colonel Jesse Rosenfeld intended to establish the ferry at Sunset Beach he'd use state-of-the-art steam ships as the ferries themselves but he purchased the SS Atlantis to be towed into place and sunk as part of a pier the plan was to then sink two more of these concrete ships in a Wye shape to act as a dock for his ferries the Atlantis at moored offshore for a couple of weeks waiting to be towed into place but shortly after the project began a storm hit Cape May the Atlantis broke loose and she grounded 150 feet offshore no matter how hard they tried they couldn't free her she blocked the intended ferry route and the project was scrapped her sister ship went down a few years ago she was sunk for an artificial reef it's a shame I used to sail on her all the time beautiful they billed her as a miniature cruise liner not this one this one's a fairy but the one that went down was a miniature cruise liner there we go no more boats coming in for a while don't want to get run down by a boat here we go we got a ride this week whoo all right where my dolphin friends at so at about the halfway point I've landed here at take B's beach I wanted to catch my breath but this place actually has some interesting history too before the railroad was built to Cape May the most common way of getting down here was a steamboat from Philadelphia the most famous of those steamboats was called the Republic in fact these the land right here you can still see a little bit of the pier behind me pigmies Beach was also a nudist beach in the 1960s rumor has it that whenever the ferry departed it would always lean in the direction of the beach because most of her passengers would go to that side to peep at the bathers it's also rumored that near Higbee's Beach is where Captain Kidd buried some of his treasure before returning to New York City and eventually being tried and executed for piracy but that's another adventure video that said I really have to get back to see the tide is coming in and high tide is not nice around here at the time of this video in 2020 the Atlantis has rested here for 94 years almost to the day she's weathered hurricanes blizzards and ninety four seasons of the bay freezing unfreezing and refreezing again Wow very little of her is left above the surface today and the water is too murky for any useful underwater footage unbelievable so that is the side of her hull right there this ship has a really basic outline one of the most simplistic super structures you could imagine a forward well deck which is pretty elongated and then a simplistic prow a very simple after well deck and then your standard clipper style stirrup superstructure is nothing more than a square deck house a wheelhouse up at the front and then a single funnel shortly after her grounding the wreck broken to two segments right about down the middle and then shortly after that a third section broke right there a very narrow sliver this middle section crumbled around the 1960s give or take the aft half rolled over onto its side so this side of the hull was pointed up and we got the keel now exposed this is her deck officer huh and that's her keel the forward section slowly settled nose down so that the bow was pointed downward the after part eventually collapsed and broke off now all we have is this sort of shape so now we have the stern section up on an angle the water like that and the bow section relatively upright but pointed downward and that is all that remains today there was the forward section of a starboard superstructure attached here but in 2014 that collapsed I wonder if that opening right there in this bulkhead was actually there structurally it's possible that this was some sort of a passageway in a watertight door for all we know would they even bother making this ship watertight on the inside you spring a leak in a concrete ship you're kind of effed how many decks tall is that hull is that two decks oh yeah that's two decks see right there halfway up the frame that's the support for the next deck or that's the deck itself I had thought given she's a cargo freighter the whole hull might have just been this tall one story it probably is in certain compartments like right there the next compartment Isis this beam is probably part of a division yeah it is part of a division for a compartment that after compartment is probably just one tall hole and this midsection is probably two floors and then I bet the forward section was probably one floor as well holy cow the current is scary talk about magnificent that's her hull that's a starboard side not much of the concrete left much of the concrete has fallen off and the rebar inside is exposed and jagged concrete ships were affordable because they were cheaper to make than steel ships but as you can see there's a significant amount of reinforcing steel inside this concrete there would have to be for a ship to withstand transatlantic voyages this exposed rebar makes paddling around the wreck quite dangerous for inexperienced kayakers [Music] I'm inside the ship I'm inside the SS Atlantis it's low tide just about within a half hour of low tide right now so you're not gonna see much more of her ever again [Music] how many exposed shipwrecks can you see the keel of her double bottom very little remains of the superstructure up there your concrete decks are still there in fragments fragments of her do occasionally wash up on shore including these pieces here in my collection but aside from me having personally found these items on the beach there's nothing to really indicate where they came from they look like just generic blocks of concrete do you hear that that's the ship saturating with water this block actually is a chunk of the SS Atlantis that's so bizarre all right it's coming out you hear it sizzling it's so porous I had intended to only use that shot for it sinks and then cut it but you know what that was actually pretty cool she's massive she looks tiny when you're on the shore if she is the world's famous concrete ship SS Atlantis just want to touch her real quick unreal I've seen the ship my whole life to be able to touch her before she disappears that's something special that's the inside of a double bottom I'm hitting something at the bottom of the kayak so there's something right there what's pretty amazing is whenever the water swells in you can feel the air get forced out through that hole you can actually see the algae moving with the breeze being generated by it and you can see the water surging out here as well that's pretty amazing so when a ship is going down a lot of people don't realize this but it gives a very windy inside and that's because the water is forcing the air out and we see that right there perfectly demonstrated coming around her one more time and I'll call it a day she's not the only concrete ship that's out there most of the twelve of the emergency fleet were sunk as breakwaters including the famous Palo Alto in California there's over a hundred other concrete barges throughout the world and most of those were sunk as breakwaters or piers as well the Atlantis started as an eyesore but over time became an icon for the residents and visitors of Cape May only a year after the grounding her wreck was used by the Coast Guard to practice land sea rescues using life-saving buoys and the 1940s someone climbed aboard her and slapped a billboard for boat insurance on her starboard bow it won't be much longer until the Atlantis has completely disappeared beneath the surface and I've long wanted to get out of the wreck and document her like I did in this video anyway I'm cold I'm hungry I'm gonna get out of here before New Jersey decides that this is worth charging me money for [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Part-Time Explorer

Views: 224,726

Keywords: concrete, emergency, fleet, wwi, great war, world war one, ww1, shipwreck, adventure, urban exploration, urbex, ship, wreck, freighter, cement, vessel, boat, cape may, new jersey, atlantus, atlantis, sunset beach, sunset, kayak, boating, kayaking, outdoors, exploration, explorer, transport, ferry, lewes, cape, may, nj, lynskey, documentary, wildwood, ruins, ruin, titanic, inside, sinking, sink, flooding, underwater, concrete ship

Id: 4JSdb4Cf6Cc

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020