One quiet summer night some nine years ago, I swear I could hear them groan. Their watchkeepers will claim they're alive, for those deeply guttural sounds find their way to you, making your hair stand on end, despite your best efforts to somehow push aside the enveloping darkness. The tingling sensation of being watched washes over you and brings a chill to the spine enough to shake all but the most fearless, or at least those who pretend to bravado.
It is an indecipherable yet somehow lamentable collection of groans, grinding noises, scrapings of metal on metal. In a sense, they are the muted sounds of dying hulls, even lost souls—the loyal crews and fearless captains who stayed with their ships and now wander those decks, waiting for their final peace, their rest for the ages. Anyone who has ever visited the river and been in close with the ships will know it's true: the noises can be disquieting.
If ships could indeed talk, then these tired warriors of bygone days could surely spin some yarns. The USS Cole (DDG-67) had been attacked just six months before this story begins, as I sit on the deck of my comparatively tiny 25-footer on Virginia's James River, staring up at the remaining 300 or so of them. At the time, they were the last of more than approximately 800 ships that comprised this and other anchorages of the so-called Ready Reserve Fleet—ships swaying at anchor all across the country, their fate sealed by time, wind, weather, and economics. This particular group is still home to the aptly named James River Ghost Fleet and has been for almost 80 years.
Since it began, this story has changed with time and conditions, a story whose urgency has now fallen from the public interest, overtaken by the harsh reality of global economics and hard currency. Now, in 2009, only a small handful, some 32 or so ships (the total changes almost daily), remain. The picture of the Ghost Fleet drawn here emerges from the perspective of a conservationist, a believer in the wise use of resources, natural or otherwise. In 2005, I began a two-year effort to ensure that these ships get the future they deserve by advocating the principle of using the tired war veterans as the raw material for a new, living reef. We could have provided a fitting conclusion to their existence, the last episode in their circle-of-life saga, an honorable finale for these ships and their crews who sometimes gave their very lives for us.
A Fleet by Any Other Name
They've been called the Mothball Fleet, the Idle Fleet, the Dead Fleet, the Ghost Fleet, and who knows what other names, none of which needs further explanation. In the unemotional parlance of government, they're part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet, a nationwide agglomeration of individual ships, numbering in the hundreds, each now relegated either to the scrap heap or some future refit. No one really knows for sure. These were hard-core working vessels once, the focus of people, events, and memories, all gathered together for convenience and left to rot.
Some still occupy the waters off Ft. Eustis, Virginia, as they did then. Their numbers grew and shrank with the ebb and flow of the tides. The fleet has marked the passage of two World Wars, peace, obsolescence, and progress, always fettered to a bureaucracy quite undecided over its disposition. Like every automobile owner, our government has struggled with the same decision: to pour good money into an old junker, or simply buy new and cut losses. So it went with millions of contaminated tons of steel, gently floating on the James, a catastrophe waiting for the bureaucracy to catch up and pay heed.
Everyone from the James River Association—a local citizens' group devoted to the protection of the river—to the Virginia governor and the U.S. Congress has had his say on the disposition of these ships and had issued warnings of the consequences of non-action. As usual, no one listened, waiting for the crisis to strike.
In an interview with a local newspaper, then-Fleet Superintendent Michael J. Bagley warned of serious consequences should a major storm hit, despite the $3 million recently invested in a new mooring system. The James River Association had been on record as having called them "ticking time bombs," a dire warning of the impact of a major oil spill. These ships, part of a virtual nautical parking lot created in 1925, had suffered spills before. They had largely been spared a serious incident only because Virginia has dodged major hurricanes.
For the SS Mormac Wave, a 400-foot cargo carrier that left the fleet in 2005, the degree of degeneration was frightening. It was even difficult to breathe once inside the old compartments and crew's quarters; corrosion, bird droppings, oil, chemicals, and a host of unmentionables assaulted the senses. The cleanup for a ship like this would be formidable. The neighboring South Atlantic was not in much better shape. Some of the stuff on the deck—black, thick, and noxious—made it difficult even to walk.
The U.S. Navy in the past had found one positive use for ships in this condition: training exercises. Such use logically pointed toward the ultimate exercise: live-fire training. Such training could have worked in conjunction with sinking the ships for reefing, but the hurdles to overcome were daunting. The study of such possibilities and the environmental considerations they raise are the prime reason that the Navy's Sink-Ex and Reef Ex programs were created. Even a watery grave is not so easy to come by.
At the time, the ships lay in a maritime no-mans-land, discarded by the Navy and maintained by a slew of local, state, and Federal agencies whose level of cooperation and communication was, well, uninspiring. For the most part, the Ghost Fleet had escaped the public eye, save for a few local fishermen who prize the floating fish-magnet qualities of the barnacle-laden hulls as a source of reliable quantities of striped bass, croaker, and other migratory species.
The fact that so many experts had warned of the potential for a serious environmental incident had not been sufficient to motivate anyone to see the economic benefits associated with sinking the ships. True to form, we still haven't acted on the potential for the creation of a huge artificial reef right off the coast of Virginia. As it did then, and now with the remaining ships, government allowed market conditions (unknown as yet when this effort began) to overtake the necessity for creative solutions. Market forces won the day.
The Dilemma Then and Now
The world of environmental awareness had been a long time in coming. In fact, the basis for this story would not even have existed just 50 years ago, when a ship (and most everything else that we needed to discard) was simply towed to a suitable site and sunk without so much as a second thought given to what the impact of such dumping might be. Thankfully, that's not the case today.
The selection of the James River as a suitable home for the Ghost Fleet had everything to do with its proximity to the Norfolk Naval Station, Ft. Eustis, and various other support facilities concentrated around the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. Very little, if any, consideration had been given to the natural flow or characteristics of the river. The selected anchorage was easily accessible, and the idea of a Ghost Fleet met no local resistance. Having Newport News Shipbuilding next door didn't hurt either, considering that the original purpose of this storage was to keep the ships handy for restoration and reuse.
It turned out that water temperature, seasonal changes, and the salinity of the river conspired to make relatively short work of any remaining hull integrity. Hull content, a witches' brew of chemical agents, was in the forefront of public concern and begged for resolution. Asbestos, leaded paint, diesel fuel, oil, and some say even PCBs (to name a few) that were routinely used to build and power these ships are now considered carcinogenic. Our awareness of these materials, their eventual destination (the bottom of the river), and what that might do are what motivated us to act—one way or the other.
Come Aboard!
Looking for solutions then, the Maritime Administration (MARAD) hosted a tour of the fleet in spring 2002, open to the public and ignored by most of it. The handful of individuals who showed up represented companies with a vested interest in salvage, component reuse, and scrap, all eagerly awaiting resolution of the thorny issues of who pays for what in the nasty business of orchestrating an environmentally sound cleanup, but doing it for profit. Liability for damage was writ large on the minds of businessmen.
Our hosts that day were a couple of friendly folks from the MARAD field office at Ft. Eustis who probably saw us as a pleasant break from the daily routine of making sure the ships stayed put, preferably sprang no new leaks, and created no new headaches. The annual budget for this maintenance staff, which some saw as pouring money down a whirlpool, amounted to some $2.5 million per year and is one of the reasons that a ships-to-reef program captured the attention of at least some in officialdom and the media. Back then, it didn't cost as much to sink them as it did to scrap them. Economics and the environment have always had a strained relationship.
That morning, under the watchful eyes of the staff, our little group was led to a launch anchored about a half-mile or so off the beach. We were headed toward our landing platform, which in reality was nothing more than a small doorway cut through the ship's side, with a floating wooden platform-ladder that we would use to clamber aboard. This was to be our point of debarkation, with the looming hulk of a ship towering above us, utterly dwarfing our little barge tender.
We gingerly disembarked, the rushing river just inches below our feet, while queuing up to follow the leader, making our way through the deserted stairwell on our way to the deck. You could feel the range of emotion, a giddy sense of expectation tempered by a desire not to get too far away from your neighbor. We had only just started, and tension had already started to creep into our hearts and minds. We didn't know what to expect, but we knew this would be a different experience from what most of us had ever been through.
The deck above appeared suddenly as a bright blast of sunlight, but complete with an overwhelming silence. I don't think anyone was prepared for that first look at a dying hull and what it really meant to the senses. The aura of death—death in the sense that a vessel once proud, sparkling, and yes, brought to life by Sailors navigating her to foreign shores—was palpable. I could feel it in the dryness in my throat, in the sweat that soaked my palms. So pervasive was the silence on board that we stood mute, disbelieving what we saw.
For a moment, no one spoke, so when the first words of "welcome to the Ghost Fleet" fairly jumped from the lips of our MARAD guide, it was as if the ice had cracked and we were suddenly jerked back out of some kind of Twilight Zone state. I'm sure our host, who had spent years on these decks, must have had to chuckle at these neophytes, who, standing a little too close to each other, visibly relaxed, as if his cheerfulness served to dispel some primeval, malevolent force. The scene on that first deck, of rust, chipped paint, of age, of neglect, and of history, was almost overpowering. To me, an avid boater and water lover, this scene was a sad one indeed.
As we stood there on the deck, no one moved, dumbstruck as we were by the long-range view of hulls lashed together in an impossible tangle of rigging, vent shafts, access ports, machinery of unknown origin or purpose, all heaped and bolted in a madness of complexity and disintegration. I don't think photos can do this justice, but out came the cameras and here is what we saw at first glance.
Into the Bowels of Darkness
When our guide indicated his willingness to show us anything and everything, it was difficult to decide where to start. One diesel engine corporate rep had no such hesitation, requesting that he be shown the new motors that awaited either reuse or the scrap heap, whichever arrived first. We followed along, lemming like, careful of the multitude of opportunities for injury. Never was I so glad to be wearing a hardhat.
Sidestepping loose cables, bolts, and sharp-edged, rusted metal objects, we came to a rather inconspicuous hatch cut into the sides of what was the lower level of the ship's bridge, providing access to the engine room. The blue sky overhead disappeared and turned gray and somber as we made our way down a narrow external passageway. Stagnant, stale, foul-smelling air and shabby bulkheads (their original paint long since having succumbed to weather) assaulted the senses. Olive drab, battleship gray, and some white and faded shades of blue reminded us that these were working ships, not cruise liners. As the light began to dim, the intimidation of our surroundings began to settle in.
We entered a dusky, intermediary kind of world, caught somewhere between the reality of sunlight and the eerie pitch black below. You could feel the anxiety mount as the conversation among our merry little band became a little higher pitched and then began to fade to silence. We were about to encounter the bowels of darkness.
Another unassuming hatch swallowed the leader, while we followed close behind. We had tightened up the line without having been told to do so, to the extent that we were now within an easy arm's length of each other. A few involuntarily reached out to the shoulders of the strangers in front of them.
Anyone who has been inside a large, commercial vessel (cruise ships aside) knows what metal ships' ladders are like: they're steep, narrow, and confining, with treads that barely give you enough depth to cover the length of your foot. Here, no one has to tell you to watch your step.
Following the order to turn on our flashlights, we descended down one, then two, then three, then four, flights of ladders, deeper and deeper into the black abyss. The silence had intensified in proportion to the fading light, while everyone concentrated on footing, for no one relished the thought of falling over the rail. We reached the bottom landing and no one moved. Our descent into this cavernous open bay, whose limits we could not fathom and whose boundaries we could not see, was broken only by our feeble flashlights.
A gritty fear was in the air, a deep unease heightened by being in unfamiliar circumstances, with strangers, in an alien environment, in the semi darkness, with smallish flashlights being the only respite from the menace just out of sight. It was the consummate fear of the unknown dark.
For maximum effect, our guide suggested we turn off the lights to "see" how dark it really was. Off they went. It wasn't longer than five, maybe ten seconds in all, before near panic seethed up our spines. Spelunkers know the meaning of absolute darkness and now we, from the sunshine world, knew it, too. The bowels of a ghost ship are no place to get lost. I'm convinced that if one of us had been separated from the group for any time at all, something bad would have happened, either physically or psychologically, for panic was at our doorsteps. It was not a moment too soon before nervous laughter broke the silence and the beams reappeared.
Lights flashed everywhere and pierced the void, showing us pieces of the heart of the ship, pieces that were out of scale for human beings accustomed to the day-to-day world above. These engines came from some other place, a place of giants, and we could not help but feel puny in comparison. So it was here, with an overwhelming sense of being out of place, that we dared a little space between us, space that had shrunk to being virtually back-to-back. Our voices had subsided to whispers of awe and with the enveloping stillness came an eerie echo of a groan, reverberating through the caverns of hard metal surfaces, magnified by the dark and wending its way through our minds' eye.
The sense of being watched had been inescapable, even though we knew we were alone. Impatient with the cause of our discomfort, the English company representative was beginning to make himself heard among the gathered. Calls for "Are we done here yet?" and "OK, I'm ready" were obvious cover for "I want to leave now, before I hear something I don't want to hear or see something better left unseen" were stammered a little plaintively. To our relief, we turned and left.
Our ascent to the daylight began not a moment too soon and proceeded with an urgency all its own. I could swear I felt a weight lifted as we breathed the salty freshness of the river air. I don't think any one of us will ever forget having been there, for we had had the opportunity to see the ghosts up close.
The Long Road to Nowhere
The concept of creating a USS Cole Memorial Reef, using the ghost ships and gracing them and the reef with the name of that noble vessel, had occupied my free time from when I first saw the fleet, to a now forgotten date some two years later. The rationale was simple and, I thought, perhaps even honorable. This would have been a chance to do something, to commemorate the past sacrifices of war and a terrorist bombing—an event that took life—by honoring all who died and suffered with a permanent monument, an underwater source of new beginnings.
It had been done before, even using ships from this fleet. The Spiegel Grove (LSD-32), a 510-foot-long dock landing ship, wound up in the hands of the State of Florida and a host of private organizations for just such a purpose. The ship, named after the Ohio estate of former President Rutherford B. Hayes, had been launched in 1955 and had spent most of her military career along the eastern seaboard, part of a larger group of vessels doing military exercises.
The Spiegel Grove, part of the Atlantic Fleet in 1974, was decommissioned in 1989 and now rests on the bottom in coastal Florida, playing host to a whole new world of marine life. It took years eight years of planning and about $1.4 million to do it. But that was before the current world of rising commodity prices. I don't think we will be seeing many more ships go down as reefs.
I began back then to cobble together a number of government agencies, from the feds to the locals, with the intent of securing buy-in to the idea of creating a massive reef. Finding common ground is not easy, so it wasn't a big surprise to me that my credibility would be the first thing questioned. If I couldn't claim ties to some larger organization, a church, a charity, a conservation group, some known entity, who did I think I was, anyway?
Although I belonged to local conservation groups, this was clearly going to be my baby. So, when all else failed, I decided to fake it and make up my own organization. I became the self-appointed "Project Coordinator for the USS Cole Memorial Reef Project." It worked, or at least I thought so back then.
The problem is always money. Spending $350,000 to an estimated $1 million or more per ship to forestall the disasters predicted around that time, but which may not have happened in a year or a lifetime, is a hard sell. That's the reason the fleet was in dire need: the impending problems were left for the future. Nowadays, that sort of approach has a familiar ring to it. As I called everyone I could think of with even a hint of a vested interest in these ships, I was met with blank stares, finger pointing, burden shifting, and a lot of other traits recognizable to anyone who reads the Dilbert comic strip.
For anyone curious, no fewer than 14 federal, state, and local agencies claim interest in or have a responsibility for the James River Fleet. I had opened a Pandora's Box for myself when I tried to find common ground between these groups, each with a stake, their own stake, in the future of the fleet. My credibility started with trying to answer the first question always asked: "Who did you say you are?" A series of fine articles appeared in a local newspaper, the Virginian Pilot, trying to engage public support. It was not enough.
After holding an impromptu hearing of all the parties, I finally found an ally in the distinguished now-former U.S. Senator John Warner (R-VA). It had taken almost two years and thousands of emails, letters, briefing notes, papers, and letters to the editor. In the end, the U.S. Congress wound up appropriating a serious pile of money, some $31 million, for cleanup under a defense appropriations bill. Sadly, that wasn't enough, either.
So it was that I found myself seated in the back row of a formal Senate hearing on 7 July 2003, at Ft. Eustis, home of the MARAD group that hosted the fleet. I was a small fry among maritime attorneys, legislative assistants, various senatorial glitterati, and the media, who were, besides me, the only ones wearing shorts in a sea of dark suits.
It was there, at the end of the meeting, that I was given seconds to summarize two years of effort. People on the panel were all but packing their bags to leave when I spoke, but speak I did, with all the passion I could muster.
This proved to me that the issue of reefing versus scrapping was not dead, but that the people in charge had already made up their minds. The fact that my USS Cole Reef Project had "been heard of" by some in the room told me I had not failed, but that I, along with the reef, had simply lost control, control that in all actuality I never had. When the serious money movers took over, it confirmed what I had been told by various individuals along the way: that my effectiveness, no matter how heartfelt, had limits. They had, to a person, given their best advice: "Pete," they said, "take it as far as you can—then let go. You will have done all you can." They were right.
The Outcome
The concept of a USS Cole Memorial Reef got caught between political expediency, massive bureaucracies, and self-interested user groups. But in reality, the delay only allowed the most potent of forces to take over: profit motive. By its own admission, MARAD had admitted that local conversion to reef use would be less than half the cost of scrapping. The fact that millions in defense appropriation dollars could be spared fazed no one. This was a serious amount of money for anyone—anyone, that is, except the Department of Defense.
Doing the right thing didn't turn out to be the deciding factor. The fiasco that followed all the good intentions made news internationally. Way up the food chain, unnamed politicians decided that the concept of localized reefing, Navy gunnery practice, and saving money for the taxpayer was outweighed by the notion of providing work for unemployed British shipyard workers. As the world watched, we towed a few of these relics all the way to England, only to find them quarantined by a "friendly" government. It was a worldwide scandal and an embarrassment. The ships languished there for what seemed like forever, before a British court finally cleared the environmental hurdles to begin dismantling operations.
Today, five years after I started my adventure, the world has literally undergone a sea change. The ships are being scrapped, towed to different states, and their material will find its way to human use. The cost of raw metal, not a great issue when I first started my campaign, has over-ridden any other consideration. Liability concerns, once a deal-breaker, is now within the realm of acceptable risk. Global metal price increases have served to mitigate the government's contribution, if not outright eliminated it. The economic benefits from scrapping have driven any thought of reef, habitat, and conservation right out the window. The more we change, the more we stay the same, it seems.
Who lost in all this? We all did, save a few connected contractors. All the work that had gone into doing the right thing, organizing groups of supporters and ensuring that the marine environment is actually enhanced in an area almost devoid of natural features, was for naught.
The USS Cole Memorial Reef Project went the way of other noble ideas, overrun by economics and political expediency, though not necessarily in that order. My hard-fought project died on the vine once political pressure and decision-making went beyond the reach of any of the well-intentioned people who sat at our one and only conference.
That, my friends, is nothing new.