About Kiptopeke Concrete Fleet
Just offshore from Kiptopeke State Park is a line of nine ships that are not going anywhere. They are made from concrete, date to World War II, and were deliberately sunk side by side in Chesapeake Bay to create a breakwater.
The vessels were part of a wartime program created when steel was scarce. Concrete was far easier to obtain, so two dozen large ships were constructed with reinforced concrete hulls. The nine that eventually reached Kiptopeke served as transport and training vessels in the South Pacific.
After the war, the Virginia Ferry Corporation acquired the ships and sank them in 1948 to shelter the ferry terminal from waves. The ferry service disappeared after the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel opened in 1964, but the concrete fleet remained. The vessels now protect the park’s shoreline and also function as habitat for fish and birds.
Visitors can see the ships from shore and from the fishing pier. Paddlers may approach for a closer look, but Virginia State Parks warns them to remain at least fifty feet away and never pass between the deteriorating hulls. They were once working ships, then intentionally became underwater infrastructure, and now look like a ghost fleet that permanently ran aground in exactly the same formation.