189 Ghosts Ships b

Note:  Be sure to read the comments in part a, esp the very long and personal one by Bill W. 

Of those vessels, now there are none  This plaque remains just off 9W, right across the river from Indian Point.

Two of the vessels huddled there for awhile (probably longer than their actual period of service) included sister vessels  USS Wakefield (AP-21) aka SS Manhattan and USS Mount Vernon (AP-22) aka SS  Washington.  Both were older sisters (by two decades)  of United States Lines’ SS United States.

Here’s an aerial view of the ghosts, quite visible in my estimation at the time the foto was taken.

Many thanks to Harold Tartell and Joseph Herbert for these enlightening fotos.  And thanks for the comments some of you have sent in;  I’m eager to hear more and see more fotos, possibly of these vessels being moved downriver to the American scrapyards.  Read this article from Sea Classics on the impetus to build and then maintain these vessels.

189 Ghost Ships

In Random Tugs 60 I mentioned a wish to locate fotos of the ghost fleet that once occupied the freight train shore of the curve in the Hudson between Stony Point and Jones Point.

Many thanks to Joseph and Harold for the following fotos.  Joseph had previously sent this.  Harold sent this . . . among many others.   First, Joe’s pics show what 189 anchored vessels looked like from the air as well as

closer and

still closer.

And now, they exist only in memory.  Here’s the link Harold sent along to what is also called the “mothball fleet,”  once rafted up where Buchanan 12 now pushes stone.

Joe Herbert and Harold Tartell . . . many thanks.

Dave Williams  suggested I look up info on how ghost vessel APA-97 went from being USS Dauphin to SS Exochorda to SS Stevens, as in Stevens Institute of Technology, which I now share with you.  This also leads me to CVE-1 Long Island, another vessel that served as a dormitory.  I’d love to hear from someone who lived in either SS Stevens or  Long Island . . .  or otherwise have knowledge of life aboard.