The "There's No Way That's Going To Float!" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Sometime back in the 1980s, when our children were...actually children.  We enjoyed yearly summer visits to the Jersey Shore for swimming, building sand castles and walking the boardwalk.  The "We" was myself, my wife Carol and our children Derek, Brynn and Paul, known to most as Tad.  We stayed at a variety of homes in towns such as Ocean City, Sea Isle City and Cape May.  Each town had different features that our children, as well as ourselves, enjoyed.  One day, during a week-long visit to Ocean City, I loaded the family in the car and headed to Cape May to climb the light house and visit Sunset Beach to hunt for Cape May Diamonds.  Had a great time, and while we were there we also had the chance to see the remains of a concrete ship known as the S.S. Atlantus protruding from the ocean off the coast of Sunset Beach.  

The remains of the U.S.S. Atlantus at Sunset Beach

The S.S. Atlantus was one of twelve concrete ships that were built by the Liberty Ship Building Co. in Brunswich, Georgia during and after World War I.  The steamer Atlantus was launched on December 5, 1918 and was the second concrete ship constructed in the World War I emergency fleet.  The ship was just about completed when the war ended, so there was no hurry to finish the ship.  Finally, on May 26 of 1919, the S.S. Atlantus completed her sea trials and sailed to Wilmington, Delaware on her maiden voyage.  The Liberty Ship Building Company was headquartered in Wilmington.  The ship was built for service between New York and the West Indies.  Being the war had recently ended, the ship was used to transport American troops back home from Europe as well as transport coal in New England.  After two years the ship was retired to a salvage yard in Virginia.  So, how can a ship made of concrete not sink?  

The U.S.S. Palo, another concrete ship

Concrete is a mixture of sand and gravel bonded together with a cement to form a solid, heavy mass similar to stone.  Certainly not the same as wood or even steel which became the standard material for large vessels by the end of the 19th century.  The reason for using concrete was that steel was in short supply during the war.  Seems a Norwegian inventor had patented using concrete to make ships in 1912 instead of steel for a ship's hull.  He reasoned that a ship of concrete will float as long as the weight of the water it displaces is more than it's own weight.  It is just a matter of density.  Density of an object is the mass of an object divided by the volume.  In order for a ship to float, the ship must be less dense than the same amount of water.  

Post card showing the Atlantus sinking

When concrete is made in the shape of a ship, with much of the interior empty air, the ship's total volume includes the air.  Air is less dense than water.  And, since the total ship is a combination of air and concrete, the density for the entire ship becomes less that the water, allowing it to float.  Follow that?  Doesn't matter, since I don't think they make ships out of concrete today.  But, back in 1917 and 1918 the British made barges, tugs and fishing boats using concrete.  So, we Americans had to go one better and decided to make a fleet of ocean-going concrete freighters costing 50 million dollars.  

As it appeared a few years ago.

The more they used the freighters, the more they realized they were harder to manipulate as well as construct.  The one big advantage was they needed quite a bit less steel.  So, after the war, when steel was available once again, the concrete ships became obsolete.  One of the 12 was turned into a casino while another became a restaurant.  The most famous, the Atlantus, was brought back to Cape May to be used as part of a dock of a proposed ferry line from Cape May, New Jersey to Cape Henlopen, Delaware.  But the ship broke loose and was grounded off of Sunset Beach, Cape May.  It got stuck in the sand and became too expensive to move, so....yep, it's still there.  And, everytime Carol and I travel to Cape May, we drive out to Sunset Beach to see how much lower it has sunk.  That, plus we like to hunt for Cape May Diamonds.  Even got my brother, Steve, interested so much in the diamonds that he bought a tumbler to help make them clear.  He hasn't become rich...yet!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.