For three decades, the Mobile and Tensaw Rivers were home to hundreds of World War II-era cargo vessels as part of the National Reserve Fleet.In the aftermath of that war, many of the large Liberty and Victory-class Ships were towed into places like Mobile and moored, awaiting any foreseeable hostilities that would require moving a large amount of equipment and troops overseas.Skeleton work crews were assigned to combat deterioration of the vessels, which had to remain seaworthy.
The First Reserve Fleet ships arrived in Mobile 64 years ago this week, on August 20, 1945.Over the next three decades, nearly 800 massive cargo ships plied the waters of the Mobile and Tensaw Rivers as part of the program.Locals began calling it the "Ghost Fleet."It must have been an arresting site form the Cochrane Bridge to see the giant vessels that had been tempered by war resting in the quiet waters of the river.
Some 350 ships were moored in Mobile at the height of the Reserve Fleet program during the early 1950s.Many were refitted and put to use during the Korean War.More than 100 vessels from Mobile's Reserve Fleet reentered active service at some point after 1946.But combating decay on the old ships proved too costly in the end. By the late 1950s, the Ghost Fleet in Mobile began to shrink.Workers transitioned from refitting the vessels to dismantling them for scrap metal.By 1969, there were fewer than 1,000 ships in the National Reserve Fleet.
The size of the Ghost Fleet continued to decrease into the early 1970s.In 1973, Congress voted to give the remaining 15 vessels in Mobile to the conservation departments in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, for use as artificial reefs. In June 1976, two former Reserve Fleet employees watched as a tugboat pulled the last of Mobile's Ghost Fleet away to be sunk off the coast of Florida.All that remains of the fleet are the wooden moorings in the water and the photographs and memories of a time when giant vessels sat awaiting a conflict that, thankfully, never came.
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