James River's Ghost Fleet

I came across an article in the September 17th Virginia-Pilot by Scott Harper about ships being taken out of the James River Reserve Fleet (part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet) and being towed to Brownsville, Texas, where they are being broken up and salvaged.

The story was primarily about why other US ports were not getting the jobs which primarily was the low wages and non-benefits of the workers there. The average one earns maybe $17,000 a year.

In the past four years, 31 of the ghost ships have been dismantles, 23 across the border in Mexico. In 2008, eleven ships were taken here.

This ghost fleet is made up of ships not needed by the US Navy and some date as far back as World War II. One of these was the USS Gage, an attack transport ship, which I will write about later.

Let's Save Some of the Ships. --Cooter