Join Allyson Ropp, a maritime archaeologist and a Ph.D. candidate at East Carolina University, to learn about one of the 100 abandoned World War I vessels in Mallows Bay. Mallows Bay, within the Mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary, hosts one of the largest ghost fleets in the Western Hemisphere, which holds stories to the United States’ shipping efforts during World War I.

The United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation built a thousand wooden steamships to “build a bridge to France.” While many of these vessels failed to sail the seas, one in the bay, Aowa, defied the odds and sailed. This presentation tells the story of Aowa and its life from conception with the wooden shipbuilding program to its final abandonment in Mallows Bay. It further discusses the research project underway on Aowa to understand the stability and preservation of the shipwreck.