This is an extraordinary story. When the USA entered the World War I in 1917, it had warships by lacked transport vessels – so President Woodrow Wilson ordered the building of 1,000 300-ft long steamships to be built in just 18 months. Because the job had to be done in a hurry and to keep costs down, the ships were built in wood rather than expensive steel – but even then by the time the Germans surrendered in November 1918 only 76 of the 130 completed vessels had been used to carry cargo as intended.
The moment the peace was declared, the vessels became redundant – but production continued for a period. In the end some 264 were completed, and many ended up in Mallows bay. Read the whole sorry tale here.