Flashlight & A Biscuit, No. 24
Welcome to Flashlight & A Biscuit, my Southern sports/culture/food offshoot of my work at Yahoo Sports. Thanks for reading, and if you’re new around here, why not subscribe? It’s free and all.
For the SEC season, I’m doing a tale about one of every week’s matchups — and this week has one of the great debates in SEC history — but I know a significant percentage of my readers aren’t much interested in the sporting life. That’s ok! How about a midweek story for y’all?
Out on the wide expanse of the James River in southeast Virginia, if you cross the right bridge, pull off the right parkway, and look in the right direction, you can see them: the last remaining hulks of what was once known as the James River Reserve Fleet … or, more poetically, the Ghost Fleet.
The Ghost Fleet is almost all that remains of America’s mid-20th-century rush to war, the last remaining ships in a military buildup unprecedented in human history. The buildup began in the days after World War I, and grew to 300 ships before World War II, all of which were pressed into service.
After that, as production grew and the wars rolled on, the fleet more than doubled in size. Ships were called to duty, aiding in everything from wars to hurricanes. At its peak in 1950, the fleet comprised 800 ships in various states of deterioration.
Now? Now it’s down to about eight. Some of the ships were saved for historic preservation, a few were pressed back into service, many more were scrapped or used for target practice. You can see what’s left of the fleet right here on Google Maps.
You can approach the fleet from the water, but you’ll only get so close; I’ve tried it a couple times, and both times the Coast Guard made sure we knew they were watching us. Fortunately, here’s some drone footage of what the fleet looks like up close:
These weren’t the most famous ships in American history, your Yorktowns or your Enterprises. Mostly, they were the workhorse ships, doing the unglamorous but necessary work of war and peacekeeping. They traveled the world, providing aid and assistance to vessels in the U.S. fleet all over the planet, and then they ended up here to wait out the rest of their days.
The USS Guadalcanal, which once pulled astronauts out of the ocean, was once part of the Ghost Fleet. So was the Sturgis, a World War II-era vessel retrofitted with a nuclear reactor in the Atomic Age. The General Nelson M. Walker ferried troops in wars ranging from World War II to Vietnam. And then there’s the NS Savannah, a National Historic Landmark, the first nuclear-powered cargo ship, which spent decades in the Ghost Fleet but “escaped” and is now moored in Philadelphia awaiting decommission.
Not everyone shares the same romantic view of these old ships that military historians and their former sailors do. They’re a navigation hazard, they’re expensive to maintain, and there’s the ever-present threat of environmental damage that comes from having ships built nearly a century ago slowly decomposing into the water.
Still, I’m always fascinated by the relics of history that stand (or, in this case, float) long after their time has passed, and there’s something haunting and solemn about these enormous ships, floating silently in the water. See artifacts like these while you can, friends.
(Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation, Abandoned Country)
This has been issue #24 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. And if you dug this, share it with your friends. Social media truth: Facebook shows it to about 5 percent of my friends (seriously), and on Twitter, it’s visible in any given timeline for about 15 seconds. So word-of-mouth is how we’re gonna grow this bad boy. Invite others to the party, everybody’s welcome.
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