THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996               TAG: 9601170024
SECTION: REAL LIFE                PAGE: K2   EDITION: FINAL 
COLUMN: OBSCURE TOUR
LOCAL LANDMARKS THE TOUR BOOKS NEVER MENTION
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   39 lines

STOP 13: THE SUNKEN GHOST FLEET CONCRETE SHIPS WERE PLANTED AS A BREAKWATER

THIS SEAFARING region's strangest collection of ships is moored on the Eastern Shore at Kiptopeke, not far from where the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel joins the narrow finger of land.

There, nine large cargo ships made of concrete are sunk just off the bayside beach, in water so shallow that the ships' hulls rise yards above the tides.

The World War II-era vessels were planted there in 1949 to form a breakwater around the old Kiptopeke ferry terminal, where ferries from Little Creek docked for 15 years before the bridge-tunnel opened in 1964.

These days the terminal - a large dock topped with a two-story building - is part of a state park. The grounds around it are filled with campers and sunbathers.

But the concrete ships, as they're tagged by the locals, look pretty much as they did in the terminal's busy ferry days, when as many as 90 ships made the trip to or from Norfolk.

Now used more as shade for fishermen than as an aid to navigation, the arc of ghost ships is off-limits to human visitation.

The decks, however, are crowded with osprey and other seabirds. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot

The World War II-era vessels from an arc around the old ferry

terminal at Kiptopeke.

by CNB