Ghost Fleet of Mallows Bay

Today a group of us kayaked from Quantico across the Potomac to Mallows Bay where the hulks of wooden steamships commissioned to help allies in WWI lie. They weren't completed in time so never set sail, and the government ordered that once the metal had been salvaged they were to be burnt. They lie now mostly underwater with only the tops of the hulls & thousands of large bolts poking above the water line. Only accessible by kayak, they now provide a reef for wildlife.
Doubleclick on image below to enlarge.

We crossed the Potomac in good conditions but winds blew us downriver slightly so the crossing was about 3 miles. Everyone had slinky touring kayaks which cut through the waves but my little Perception bobbed up and down like a rubber duck. Undaunted I paddled furiously to keep up. The photo below shows the distant shore that we were heading to.


Once we reached the other side, we rested on the beach and surveyed the scene. Some of us paddled slowly round the wrecks taking in the enormity of this ship graveyard.


We then paddled down to this ferry, Accomac, also abandoned in the bay.

We moored up and climbed aboard.

The bundle of twigs in the background is an osprey nest with the skull of a very large fish inside.

This is looking from the ferry over to some of the graveyard.

We then paddled down to this bay which I think was dried out so the ships could be brought in and stripped of any metal. There were other ship skeletons lying here too.

Paddling back to Quantico was choppier on the return and our total mileage was 8.5 miles, most of it open water. It had been a wonderful adventure and the bay was now silent again. Thus sleeps the largest shipwreck fleet in the western hemisphere, and possibly the world.