The Concrete Ship

When we were kids going down to the Jersey Shore every summer one of the things we always did was drive down to Cape May and see the Concrete Ship that had sunk on the coast. We were always expecting something to happen. The ship was going to sink completely or we would get to see it fall apart. Over the years the ship had been slowly sinking into the mud. We sometimes wondered if it was still going to be there when we drove up. In 1962 the concrete ship did break apart and suddenly there were two pieces off the beach. The ship finally completely sunk sometime around 2008. For many decades this wreck had been a tourist attraction in Cape May.

As someone who spent several years sailing around the world on ships I've found it to be an amazing story that during World War I people actually thought they could make sea worthy ships make out of cement and then built twelve of them by 1918. It's a fascinating story but back in those days in the late 50's and early 60's we were just highly entertained to look at those strange hulks with the rust streaming down their concrete sides. The ship we went to see was the SS Atlantus. I probably hadn't seen it since the late 1960's. For some reason this ship has come up in a couple of recent conversations so I thought I'd make a note of it here. I'll have to ask my siblings what they remember of that concrete ship and maybe some friends from the old neighborhood too.