Concrete Ships Hiding in Plain Sight: The Forgotten Breakwaters of America’s Harbors
By Jordan Hanssen, best4boats.
There’s a good chance a concrete ship is lurking in your local harbor — and you’ve never noticed. Built during both World Wars when steel was scarce, concrete vessels served as tankers, barges, and cargo carriers before finding a remarkably durable second life as breakwaters in ports and marinas across the country. A delightful new piece from Best4Boats traces one writer’s discovery of these overlooked maritime relics in Puget Sound and the obsessive historians who are documenting every one of them worldwide.
As Jordan Hanssen writes for Best4Boats:
While they are no longer in vogue, concrete ships were once very popular. Concrete floats for the same reason as steel and iron — displacement, and while heavy, it can be used to create a ship’s hull. Concrete boat building was popular in both World War 1 and 2, when the need for ships and limited resources meant that this novel building material was widely used. Concrete ships, if designed correctly, were fully functional and handled well.
Unlike steel or wood that rusts or rots away, the old hulls of concrete boats are uniquely suited to a very long breakwater duty. Many are easy to spot if you know where to look.
Hanssen’s investigation began with a ship-shaped grey mass spotted on Google Maps at the end of a sandspit in Puget Sound. That led him to the Captain Barker, one of five concrete water ships built for the U.S. Army Transport Corps in 1919, and eventually to the remarkable story of her sister ship Captain Bootes — the sole survivor of a disastrous maiden voyage that claimed three other vessels. He also discovered a WWII-era concrete oil barge serving as a marina breakwater in Tacoma and another concrete vessel that’s been hiding in plain sight as the patio at Seattle’s Ivar’s Salmon House for decades.
For anyone who spends time around harbors, marinas, and waterfronts, it’s a reminder that maritime history doesn’t always sit in a museum — sometimes it’s the breakwater you’ve been tying up next to for years.
