Lots of World War I Wooden Ships

From the Oct. 21, 2013 shipbuilding site "Wooden Ships and Barges." While doing research on the Fulton Shipyard for my World War II blog, I came across this interesting sidenote for World War I. //// Toward the end of World War I, U.S. contracts were placed for over 1,000 wooden ships, tugs and barges, but many of the contracts were cancelled after the war ended. Only 589 were completed. //// Many of the ones finished were converted to barges and many others scrapped on the ways are burned. Many of the completed ones were sold for scrap but many were just abandoned to rot. //// Mallows Bay, on the Maryland bank of the Potomac River just downstream from Quantico, Virginia, has countless of these ships slowly rotting away. //// --Cooter