Ship Disposal – Boston MA

Description

“One of the largest artificial reef areas in the United States if not the world lies in an area east of Boston Massachusetts referred to as the lightship dumping grounds. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s the US government embarked on a program to help provide employment for the masses of people left unemployed after the stock market crash of October 1929…
One of the projects instituted [by the WPA] was to rid Boston harbor of all the derelict ships that had accumulated in the various backwaters of the harbor over the past 30 to 40 years. This project took place between 1930 and 1942. In all a total of 64 ships were removed from the harbor and scuttled in the Atlantic Ocean east of Boston Light in and area known as the Lightship Dumping Grounds. During the depression the concept of artificial reefs was completely unheard of still half a century away. After the project was finished an amazing array of ships lay at the bottom of the ocean. The ships scuttled in the dumping ground represented most of the various types of ships in existence during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Included in the various types of ships were; wooden coal schooners, wooden hulled cargo and passenger steamships, wooden hulled tugs, various types of barges, a great lakes freighter, an iron hulled cargo ship, four iron hulled steam trawlers, five lighters both powered and unpowered, two dredges and a steel hulled US Navy Eagle Boat which was a WWI version of a destroyer escort. The first ship to be officially scuttled in the program was the SS Coyote a 267’ wooden hulled cargo ship built during the First World War, she was sent to the bottom in January of 1932. Several ships were scuttled prior to the Coyote before the program was officially started. The last ship sunk was the freighter Restless in October of 1942.”

Since 1988, the Boston Dumping Ground Exploration Project has explored and researched the sunken ships at this site.