I’m sure many of you have driven over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge near DC on I-95. Did you know, however, that at base of the Virginia side was the location of the Virginia Shipbuilding Corporation? Created during WWI, the Emergency Fleet Corporation, developed to oversee a vast merchant fleet expansion, was put under the control of businessman Charles A. Schwab. The corporation would increase American merchant tonnage from a production of only 250,000 tons per year to a fleet that measured over 9 million tons.
At the Alexandria yard they built the Design 1015 vessel. With 402 feet of waterline and a 53 foot beam, the steel hulled ships were generally called the “Moore & Scott type.

A ship coming off the ways.

After the war most of the ships ended up as a ghost fleet in Mallows Bay, Maryland, just across the Potomac from MCAS Quantico.

At the base of the bridge you can see an outline of the type (part of the U.S. National Park site at Jones Point, Alexandria, VA.
