Allo­ways Creek ship grave­yard holds hid­den WWI his­tory

Allo­ways Creek ship grave­yard is a line of 18 World War I wooden steam­ships.

Loc­ated in Salem County, south­west­ern New Jer­sey, and flow­ing into the Delaware River, Allo­ways Creek meanders for 23.2 miles.

The mouth of Lower Allo­ways Creek is the site of barely vis­ible ships built by the Emer­gency Fleet Cor­por­a­tion when Ger­many had sunk many of our coun­try’s sup­ply ships. After the war, the ships were not of much use. Con­sequently, they were stripped of all metal fit­tings, filled with rocks and dirt, and sunk in a form­a­tion to act as a break­wa­ter. This rural area is also full of rarely heard Amer­ican and Revolu­tion­ary his­tory.

These ships have remained in place for over a cen­tury now, though can hardly be seen from either the Delaware River or the pro­tec­ted marshes except at extremely low tides. They have sunk a bit over the years, and few people know of their exist­ence. They lie north of the Salem Nuc­lear Power Plant, where naut­ical reg­u­la­tions keep ships and pleas­ure boats far off­shore.

Water man­age­ment areas have strange names such as Mad Horse Creek and Abbott’s Meadow. The area is still mainly marsh land with large black flies filling the air and fond of human flesh dur­ing warm months. There are also other iden­ti­fied and uniden­ti­fied wrecks along the Delaware Bay and River shoreline.

Emer­gency Fleet Cor­por­a­tion

To increase the num­ber of mer­chant mar­ine ships, the U.S. Ship­ping Board, or War Ship­ping Board, was formed.

From this gov­ern­ment depart­ment, the Emer­gency Fleet Cor­por­a­tion was formed only 10 days after the U.S. declared war on Ger­many. Allied mer­chant mar­ine fleets had been almost des­troyed by the Ger­mans, so the EFC over­saw increas­ing the num­ber of ships built, quickly fin­ish­ing those under con­struc­tion, and main­tain­ing and repair­ing those in need.

Admiral Capps was the gen­eral man­ager of EFC. Given a list of U.S. require­ments, he set about to have the 431 ships in the pro­cess of being built, fin­ished as soon as pos­sible. Pro­duc­tion was to be stand­ard­ized. Ships that had been seized were to be rebuilt for U.S. use. The EFC coordin­ated ship own­er­ship and ves­sel oper­at­ors.

Great Lakes ship­ping was almost com­pletely moved to the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mex­ico. Ship build­ing capa­city was enlarged, while coordin­a­tion with the U.S. Navy was a top pri­or­ity. There were prob­lems here as the Navy had many ships ordered before the war that were not what the EFC were ordered to con­struct.

EFC’s largest new shipyards were along the East Coast: Bris­tol, Conn.; Hog Island, Delaware River, Phil­adelphia; Newark Sub­mar­ine Boat Cor­por­a­tion; and Wilm­ing­ton, N.C. Ship­build­ing Com­pany. Most of the ship­build­ing used steel hulls.

The build­ing of wooden ships was con­tro­ver­sial, with many not­able sources declar­ing they were old-fash­ioned, out of style, and would eas­ily sink or burn to the water­line.

Edward Hur­ley, chair­man of the U.S. Ship­ping Board, defen­ded the wooden ship pro­gram in speeches and in his 1927 book “The Bridge to France,” where he wrote:

“I am con­vinced that we were amply jus­ti­fied in build­ing the wooden ships, although no one wished to assume the respons­ib­il­ity of then because of the cri­ti­cism and ridicule which they had received.”

⇒  Read the entire article on the Asbury Park Press website here:

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