The Ghost Fleet of Mallows Bay

on the maryland side of the potomac river in charles county maryland the shallow bay lies between sandy and liverpool point partially obscured by muck and largely submerged the unassuming bay hides an interesting secret the largest shipwrecked fleet in the western hemisphere this graveyard of over 200 ships is called the ghost fleet of mallows bay and as of 2019 is the mallows bay potomac river national marine sanctuary a federally protected marine environment that is jointly administered by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration the state of maryland and charles county maryland the ghost fleet and how it came to be represents a hundred years of history the the hectic needs of the great war and environmental rebirth it is a place where history and nature come together that you can still visit and it deserves to be remembered in september of 1916 the us congress enacted the united states shipping board to control american shipping more than six months before the country would declare war on germany while the task of the board would later be to increase the number of ships active in the war effort initially its goal was to correct an older problem the decades leading up to the great war saw the us merchant marine erode against european countries only 10 percent of the value of trade was carried on u.s ships and the country was heavily dependent upon foreign shipping earlier laws meant to support american shipping had done little or even had negative impacts but the outbreak of world war one meant that foreign shipping turned to war matters leaving the u.s without vital trade everything changed when the u.s declared war on germany on april 6 1917. the chairman of the shipping board wrote that the whole purpose and policy of the shipping board and the fleet corporation suffered a radical change overnight conceived as an instrumentality of peace the board became an instrumentality of war unlike other military agencies the army and the navy it began with nothing no ships no officers no crews the demand for the ships was enormous in the first two weeks after declaration of war 122 ships were sunk shipyards abroad couldn't keep up with the demand to meet the sudden and unprecedented demand ten days after the declaration the shipping board established the emergency fleet corporation almost immediately problems arose the head of the shipping board william denman had no control over the efc except to sign contracts while the general manager general george washington goethels who had been the chief engineer that oversaw the construction of the panama canal had all other powers the function of the whole project required that they work in tandem but there was a significant point of disagreement between the two denman with the help of an amateur yachtsman had come up with a plan to build wooden steamers counting on the abundance of lumber and hearing that steel capacity would be unable to keep up with the demand they convinced president wilson of the plan and claimed that gothel's agreed to assist them though he had not been contacted when the white house announced the participation he grudgingly agreed largely because his refusal would have been a public relations disaster however golfos quickly came to the conclusion that the wooden ship program was impractical and pointless the plane called for a thousand wooden steamers but the designs were too small and slow to be effective and they could not efficiently be mass produced golfers instead encouraged the mass production of steel vessels using standardized parts that could be manufactured across the country this disagreement bubbled into a public debacle the denman goethal's disagreement coupled with the flawed management system meant that neither was able to actually institute the program denman had no control over the efc's operation but gothels could not sign contracts to build the ships three months after the creation of the commission the president was forced to accept the embarrassing and public resignations of both men finally the general manager position was abolished entirely and a new post of director general was created and given to charles schwab a steel magnet who gave total attention to the efc early controversy aside the emergency fleet commission took action quickly all steel ships of over 2 500 deadweight tons under construction in the u.s were requisitioned by the government the government planned to direct all shipbuilding towards its own interest rather than commercial or even allied customers many of the over 400 ships the efc requisition had been ordered for war service by the uk and despite complaints from both the shipyards and international interests the plan was moved forward the uk would have to be satisfied that the ships would be used for the war effort any enemy ships already interned were seized and u.s ships were commandeered with their operators become part of the emergency fleet including ships involved in the shipping on the great lakes the commission had begun expanding capacity as it was clear that the existing yards would be inadequate foreign yards in china and japan were contracted to build ships while american companies were contracted to build new yards called agency yards that would build prefabricated ships four government finance yards would ultimately be responsible for 25 percent of the new steel fabricated ships 189 companies across 26 states would contribute to the effort while the program moved fast it took time and significant funds for the new yards to reach full production most notorious was the work at hog island hog island originally purchased from the lenapi people in 1680 supposedly takes its name from the pig which roam freely on the island in its early days in 1917 the efc contracted a company to build ships and a new shipyard on the island at its height it was the largest shipyard in the world with 50 slipways used to launch ships into the water it would build over 100 ships that became known as hog islanders designs 1022 and 1024 used as cargo and troop transport ships experiment at hog island was unique in that it was the first shipyard built to mass produce ships based on prefabricated parts the hog islander ship designs focused on mass production and utility leading to ships that were widely considered ugly with an unconventional squat appearance meant to be symmetrical from the sides in the hopes of confusing the enemy by making it difficult to tell which direction the ship was moving while the concept and experiment were modern in practice building the yard and ship simply took too long the first ship the ss quiz conch was christened by president wilson's wife edith but not until august 5th 1918 none of the ships built at hog island would see service in world war one although many of them would be used in world war ii at least half of them sank during the second world war allegations of fraud flew and some charges were even filed the ramp up in production also created an immediate glut of ships after the armistice causing economic issues perhaps the most notable or notorious controversy was with the wooden chip program the goal of the wooden ship program was to build a thousand steamships in just 18 months one official brag that the us would build ships faster than germany could produce torpedoes ultimately 189 companies would work to build ships and compete for the fastest time the aberdeen was completed only 17 and a half days after construction began the power of wartime production was most clear on the 4th of july 1918 when 95 ships were launched in a single day so much wood was used that shipping board propaganda at the time used the term the bridge to france representing not just the metaphorical bridge of these ships carrying supplies across the ocean but that so much wood was used that it was enough to literally build a bridge two feet wide and an inch thick between the united states and france but the ships suffered from the speed at which they were built from delays and getting timber to the shipyards and labor issues at the shipyards themselves by the end of the war nearly a hundred wooden ships have been built but none of them reached europe before the armistice and some couldn't even carry cargo at the time the armistice didn't guarantee an end to the conflict and while negotiation continued the u.s built more ships 296 wooden steamships were ultimately built but after the war the efc tasked with selling the ships it had built to bolster the us merchant fleet couldn't find any buyers the global economy slowed down in the years following the war and what they did sell was the steel ships which were in large supply and much more useful than the outdated wooden ships there was no demand for hundreds of new ships sixteen were eventually sold to foreign governments for almost nothing one went to hollywood where it was blown up for a movie scene in the 1927 book the bridge to france chairman of the shipping board edward hurley defended the building of wooden ships titling one chapter wood ships were necessary where it claimed that they were always meant to supplement the primary steel fleet the situation was desperate hurley says and quoted uk prime minister david lloyd george who had also ordered wooden chips built one trip of a number of wood ships might result in our winning the war whatever their usefulness may have been if the war had continued in any practical sense the ships contributed little to the first world war after the war the fleet of some 200 wooden ships was stored in the james river where the government was spending 50 000 a month just to keep watch over them in 1922 233 of the ships that had cost millions to make were sold to the western marine and salvage company for a mere 750 thousand dollars they were kept at wide water virginia initially but the ships often came loose and caused problems for the locals prompting the company to move them to the potomac in 1924 near nanjimoy maryland at mello's bay the company decided to begin burning ships to the waterline in the bay making it easier to reach the scrap salvage and eliminating the risk of the ships floating free the largest of the many ship burnings there occurred on november 7th 1925 when 31 ships were latched together with steel cables and burned it's possibly the largest ship burning in history two men dashed across the ships with torches to set them alight and the fleet burned for hours by the time of the great depression the salvage company went bankrupt leaving over a hundred burned holes in the bay during the great depression something of a local industry formed around the ships with locals going out in canoes to blow up break or otherwise damage the ships seeking metal scrap they could sell the ships took on the name potomac arks during world war ii bethlehem steel came to the wrecks again to salvage steel for the war effort giving the ship some chance to complete their original mission to assist the war effort in the years that followed other ships have been added to the graveyard the most striking ship at mallow's bay today is ss akamak also one of the newest additions the wreck stands nearly 20 feet above the water the akamak was a steelhold ferry that used to ferry cars across the chesapeake was left at the bay in 1973. it's a litter mentality susan langley state archaeologist said in 2019 a number of other more recent ships including a houseboat lie in the bay several times the boats were nearly cleared from the bay in 1968 congress actually ordered the vessels destroyed only changing course when hearings reveal that the whole enterprise was made by private interests trying to get the government to remove the hulks for their own profit in the 70s a plan to build a nuclear power plant nearby would have cleared it in the 90s there was a proposed gravel mine but in the decades that the fleet has sat in the bay it is attracted more than offers of development local wildlife and plants have taken over fish live in the nooks and crannies of the submerged ships and beavers paddle between them several ships have become islands teeming with plants and even trees ospreys eagles and herons build their nests on the exposed ships like the benzonia the site is also home to a revolutionary war era longboat numerous barges and 18th century schooners it's also a significant site to local native american tribes in 1969 the santa barbara oil spill brought attention to the plight of marine habitats leading to the passage in 1972 of the marine protection research and sanctuaries act the national marine sanctuaries program is the division of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration which now administers and protects 14 national marine sanctuaries the historic nature of the ghost fleet at malo's bay led to it being listed as an archaeological and historic district on the national register of historic places in 2015 and in 2019 the site became the most recent national marine sanctuary the first site so designated in 19 years other marine sanctuaries are at thunder bay the olympic coast and the florida keys mallows bay potomac river national marine sanctuary is jointly administered by noaa the state of maryland and charles county maryland for the purposes of both resource protection and recreational access the ghost fleet of malo's bay can be explored today aboard kayaks with proper precaution as long as you are willing to paddle carefully through the wreckage of history while the ships of the emergency fleet commission ultimately failed to make a difference in the great war they did demonstrate the enormous potential of the still nascent industrial capacity of the isolationist united states and their construction was part of the rapid industrialization that would transform the united states into the industrial powerhouse of the 20th century in addition to being on the national register of historic places the site is listed as a national treasure by the national trust for historic preservation the ghost fleet of mallows bay is a reminder of one of the most unique shipbuilding programs in history and the wooden holes now litter obey that they have come to define the site shows history as a part of nature you can learn more about noaa's more than 200 year history at www.noaa.gov heritage i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guide short snippets of forgotten history and if you did enjoy feed the algorithm by making a comment or clicking that like button if you have suggestions for future episodes please send those to our suggestions email box check out our webpage at thehistoryguy.net and of course we're on facebook instagram and twitter you can book a special message from the history guy on cameo and check out our merchandise teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes of forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 174,639

Rating: 4.975316 out of 5

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, NOAA, ghost fleet, world war I, the great war, wwi, mallows bay, us history

Id: rzoxCD-dolY

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021