Concrete Boats in a Wooden Age

There are two things we all learn as
kids. Boats float and concrete sinks.
Well, this is a boat made of concrete,
and it was part of a secret fleet that’s
been hiding in plain sight for 100
years. The idea of a concrete boat
defies intuition. The concept, however,
is almost as old as modern concrete
itself. In 1848, a Frenchman named Jean
Louie Lamot, a horiculturist, built
several rowboats from a material he
called furs. He patented his invention,
describing it as a metal net of wire and
rods formed into a shape and then filled
with hydraulic cement. One of his small
boats was exhibited at the Paris World’s
Fair in 1855.
Another, lost in a lake, was
rediscovered over a century later during
a drought, intact and structurally
sound. Lambot’s invention was an answer
to a question nobody was asking. The
world’s shipyards were masters of
timber. The age of steel was dawning,
promising ships of a size and strength
previously unimaginable. Wooden ships
were limited in length to about 300 ft
because of the inherent strength of the
material and the difficulties in
fastening large timbers together. Steel
promised to shatter these limitations.
The idea of a stone boat seemed like a
quaint novelty. For decades, the concept
laid dormant. A global catastrophe would
dredge it back to the surface. By 1917,

The U-Boat Crisis and Scarcity of Steel

the First World War was in its third
year. The Allied war effort faced a
crisis on the high seas. German yubot
were sinking merchant ships faster than
they could be built. The demand for new
vessels was desperate. The key material
for their construction steel was
critically scarce and reserved for the
machinery of the front lines. Ship
builders needed an alternative. They
needed a material that was abundant,
cheap, and could be worked by a labor
force without the specialized skills of
riveters and steel workers. In this
climate of desperation, engineers began
to look again at Lambot’s impossible
idea. Naval architects, engineers, and
sailors viewed the concept as a
dangerous fantasy, a ship doomed to
disaster the first time it encountered
rough weather. The man who challenged
this consensus was a Norwegian civil
engineer named Nicolay Fune. He had
already built concrete lighters in the
Philippines and saw the potential for
larger seagoing vessels. At his shipyard
in Moss, Norway, he refined a method of
construction that used readily available
materials and eliminated the need for
highly skilled steel workers. In 1916,

Nicolay Fougner’s First Seagoing Ship

Funier submitted plans for a seagoing
concrete ship to the Norwegian
Department of Shipping. The official
response was hesitant. Since no
established ship owner was willing to
take the financial risk, Funir’s own
firm decided to build the first vessel
at its own expense. The government
granted reluctant permission,
stipulating that the ship once built
could only operate in smooth water for a
short probationary period. The vessel
was named the Nomson Fjord. She was a
modest ship, just 84 ft long with a
cargo capacity of about 200 tons. After
some initial mishaps with the launching
car, the ship was finally lifted into
the water by a massive floating crane on
August 2nd, 1917.
A few days later, she went on her
official trial. On board were the
director of shipping and his chief
engineer. A southerntherly gale was
blowing in the Christiania fjord,
setting up a heavy sea. The trial lasted
4 hours and was a complete success. The
pilot expressed his satisfaction with
the ship’s easy movements, slight
vibration, and steady steering into a
headwind. The Namzen fjord had proven
the concept was not a fantasy. Soon
after, Funier’s shipyard launched the
1,00 ton Ascalad. It was this ship that
would provide the most dramatic proof of
concrete’s surprising resilience. In

The Grounding and Survival of the Askeladden

January 1919, while sailing from Hav,
the Ascalad encountered a strong wind
and a heavy sea. At 9:15 in the evening,
she struck a sandbank in the estuary of
the river S in France. The ship was
driven violently ashore. The shocks were
so severe that the crew could not keep
their footing on the bridge. Heavy seas
swept the deck, carrying away a
lifeboat. Fearing the vessel would break
up on the next high tide, the entire
crew abandoned ship. The ship was left
for dead. In his report to the owners,
the captain stated that the ship was
still bumping violently at high tide,
adding the remark, “Strange to say the
ship is quite tight.” A few days later,
an inspection showed the hull to be
sound. 10 days after the grounding, a
thorough inspection in London confirmed
the finding. The ship was returned to
service without any repairs to the hull.
Across the Atlantic, the United States
government had been watching Norway’s
experiments with intense interest. While
the government deliberated, a private
company took the initiative. In San

The Faith and the American Response

Francisco, the San Francisco ship
building company, led by its president,
W. Lesley Common, began construction on
a vessel that would silence much of the
skepticism. The ship was named the
Faith. The Faith was at the time of her
completion the largest concrete ship in
the world. She was 320 ft long with a
cargo capacity of around 4,500 tons. Her
construction was notable for its
workforce. The vessel was built by about
45 house carpenters. Launched in March
1918, the Faith soon embarked on her
maiden voyage. During the voyage, she
ran into a stiff gale with 65 mph winds.
Observers reported that the Faith rode
splendidly. Her skipper, Captain R. E.
Connell, reported that she acted just
like any other vessel and had not taken
an inch of water into her hold. During a
later journey, a slight leakage of fuel
oil was discovered from one of the
concrete tanks. The crew easily repaired
the leak by steaming the tank and
coating the inside with spar varnish. A
simple fix that showed the materials
repairability. The success of the faith
and the ongoing Norwegian experiments
convinced the US government to act. On

President Wilson Funds a Concrete Fleet

April 12th, 1918, President Woodro
Wilson approved a $50 million emergency
fund for the construction of concrete
ships. The plans were considered so
valuable that they became a target of
espionage. A draftsman for the Emergency
Fleet Corporation was later arrested for
attempting to sell a nearly complete set
of blueprints to a German agent. The
plan was ambitious. Five new government
shipyards were constructed specifically
for building concrete vessels in Oakland
and San Diego, California, Mobile,
Alabama, Jacksonville, Florida, and
Wilmington, North Carolina. In theory,
these five yards had the capability to
produce a combined tonnage of almost 2.5
million tons of shipping within 18
months. In June 1918, the shipping board
contracted for 40 large concrete
vessels. The program’s chief engineer,
RJ Wig, stated the goal bluntly. The
present emergency calls for ships, and
their life is not of great importance at
the present time. The first government
sponsored concrete ship, the Atlantis,
was launched in Brunswick, Georgia, on
November 21st, 1918. The armistice
ending the first world war had been

The Program Ends with the Armistice

signed just 10 days earlier. The
desperate need that had spawned the
concrete ship program vanished
overnight. The complete program was
slashed. The end of the war created a
massive surplus of all types of
shipping. In a peacetime economy, the
heavier concrete ships could not compete
with steel vessels. The government
retired them because they were no longer
economically necessary. Their short,
strange history was already fading from
memory. This is where their story ends
and their legend begins. The wreck of

The SS Atlantis at Cape May

the SS Atlantis lies half submerged just
200 yd off the beach at Cape May Point,
New Jersey. In 1926, a corporation
acquired her hull to sink her as a
platform for a ferry landing. Before she
could be positioned, a storm blew in,
driving the massive hull ground. The
efforts to reflat her failed and the
Atlantis was abandoned to the sea.
Today, broken in half by a century of
storms, she is a declared historical
site. Further south, half sunk in the
sand flats near Galveston, Texas, rest

The Selma and Her Abandoned Hull

the SS Selma. In early 1921, the tanker
ran into the rock jetties at Tampico,
ripping a large hole in her bottom. She
was towed to Galveastston where ship
builders decided it would be impractical
to repair the damage. The solution was
to dredge a channel specifically to tow
her into the sand flats and sink her. In
1956, after the hull had been exposed to
saltwater for 34 years, tests were
conducted on specimens taken from the
wreck. The condition of the reinforcing
rods was excellent. The general
condition of the concrete itself was
also found to be excellent. Perhaps the

Rum Runners and the Sapona

most colorful fate belongs to the SS
Sapona. After the war, she was sold to a
biminy saloon keeper and used as a
floating warehouse for rum runners
during Prohibition. In 1926, a hurricane
ran her ground in the shallow waters of
the Bahamas. During World War II, her
stationary Hulk served a new purpose. US
training aircraft used her for bombing
practice. Today, she remains where the
hurricane left her. A skeletal wreck
popular with divers. Her concrete hole
still largely intact. The great concrete
fleece of the First World War were not
failures of engineering. They were a
technology born of necessity, a
desperate gamble that paid off, only to
be cast aside when the crisis passed.
The silent hulking remains of the ghost
fleet that lie scattered on our
coastlines are not monuments to a failed
experiment. They are proof that when the
need is great enough, even the most
impossible ideas can be made real. They
stand as enduring evidence that
concrete, the very symbol of immovable
weight, can be taught to float. The idea

Concrete Ships in World War II

of the concrete ship did not die with
the armistice of 1918. When the world
was once again plunged into war two
decades later, the desperate need for
shipping tonnage led to a brief revival
of the technology. During the Second
World War, the United States constructed
24 self-propelled concrete steam ships
and 60 barges. Two of these vessels made
a significant contribution to the war
effort when they were intentionally sunk
off the coast of France to serve as
landing platforms in preparation for the
invasion at Normandy Beach. Britain also
contributed a few coasters, hundreds of
barges, and a floating dock that is
still in operation in Norway today.
After the second war, the technology
evolved. The heavy conventional
reinforced concrete of the World War era
gave way to the lighter, stronger, and
more sophisticated techniques of
pre-stressed concrete. In the
Philippines, a fleet of 192,000 ton
capacity pre-stressed concrete barges
designed by Alfred Yei have been in
continuous ocean service since 1964.
Carrying both dry cargo and petroleum
products, they have shown excellent
performance surviving groundings and
collisions with readily repable damage.

From Pre-Stressed Barges to Floating Terminals

The modern descendant of Lambot’s
rowboat is a marvel of engineering. The
ARC LPG terminal constructed in 1975
is a massive 68,000 ton displacement
pre-stressed concrete vessel. It is not
a ship in the traditional sense, but a
floating platform 461 ft long, outfitted
as a liqufied petroleum gas processing
and storage facility. After its
construction in Tacoma, Washington, it
was towed 8,700 m across the Pacific
Ocean to its permanent mooring in the
Java Sea, Indonesia. From a French
garden to the open ocean, the story of
the concrete ship is one of persistent
innovation against a wall of skepticism.
The great concrete fleets of the First
World War were not failures of
engineering. They were victims of peace.
They were built for a world that ceased
to exist the moment the guns fell
silent. They were a technology born of
economic necessity, a desperate gamble
that paid off, only to be cast aside
when the crisis passed.