Re: Monday answer
The answer is Mallows Bay, on the Maryland side of the Potomac in Charles County. The boat launch area is indeed at Quantico Marine Base. Today, unless you are in the service, the launch point is more difficult to use owing to security measures. The ships were part of a major boondoggle foisted by Congress on the public to provide a fleet of wooden cargo vessels to support the troops serving in WWI.
Originally there were to be 1000 ships of a standard design and the parts finished to specifications using precut lists, getting numbered and available to various shipyards by 1918. By 1919 the war was over and of the 731 ships under contract only 264 were placed into operation. For these ships the maintenance was high. They traveled at only ten knots, coal was by then an old propulsion technology, and whatever ships there were were called back and tied up on the James River. Each ship cost average $800,000 and cost when called back and anchored off of Alexandria, VA were costing the taxpayer $50,000 a month for them to just be kept afloat. By 1922, 233 of these ships anchored around Washington on the Potomac were sold for $750,000 to be scrapped and anchored off of Widewater, VA.
From there it went from bad to worse. Ships caught on fire. Two sank outright and impeded navigation. The waterman were upset that fishing was disturbed (There was fishing in the Potomac then--1922). The company struggled financially. By 1924 the ships were moved to where they are today in Mallows Bay. By 1929, 169 were there. Then the Depression hit... The scrapper went belly up. What ensued was a free for all for scrappers from all over the area to pilfer the anchored ships. Here�s where the legend/legacy takes place. Floating brothels anchored in the area, some were dedicated for the Marines, but some others were for the watermen, and the scrappers. It was an open zone. The area remains so, even up to the year 2000 the legacy of the area remains. It is not as obvious as back then, but personal �service� persists throughout the area. Then�as to the ships, as time progressed, little happened changing anything .
By 1963 a scandal with Potomac Electric Power broke into the news as they tried to pick up the land at Mallows Bay for a song for a generating plant without going through public disclosure. That eventually went all through the Maryland and Federal bureaucracy as a no no and people were chastised. What was left of the wooden fleet lapsed into obscurity. By the 1990�s Mallows Bay was under protection based on help from the Audubon Society, Department of Interior, and even the EPA who reported that to remove the ships would cause more pollution than to leave them as is.
There they sit today --mostly invisible except at low tide. Fittings below the surface will rip the bottom out of most anything exploring the site except a kayak. If you hole a hull there visiting you might as well leave it there forever. As Maryland states, �Thus sleeps the largest shipwreck fleet in the Western Hemisphere�and possibly the world.
Pictures are available on Mallows Bay Ships sites on any browser. Google earth has a satellite view if you zoom in.