Concrete Fleet ships

Nine concrete hulls lie in the Chesapeake Bay off Kiptopeke State Park on Virginia's Eastern Shore, and in June 2026 Virginia Living called them one of Virginia State Parks' most recognisable landmarks. They began as a wartime experiment. According to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), the US Maritime Commission ordered concrete ships in 1942 because steel was scarce and concrete was cheap and readily available. McCloskey and Co. won the contract, construction began in July 1943 in Tampa, Florida, and two dozen ships were built. DCR says two of them, the S.S. David O. Saylor and the S.S. Vitruvius, were sunk off Normandy as part of an artificial harbour, where their hulls remain underwater.

The nine now at Kiptopeke served as transport and training vessels in the South Pacific, DCR says. After the war they were scuttled in 1948 to protect the Little Creek-Cape Charles ferry terminal. DCR adds that Kiptopeke was once expected to grow to the scale of Cape Charles, but when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was completed in 1964 the vehicle ferry was no longer needed, ridership fell quickly and the terminal closed, with the ferries moving to Delaware.