The ghost fleet, mothball fleet, reserve fleet—whatever you want to call the long-obsolete U.S. Navy ships that have been rusting in California's Suisun Bay for decades, they might finally be gone this decade. The federal government's Maritime Administration says it will spend $38 million to remove about half of the crumbling convoy from the waters near San Francisco by 2012, and dispose of the rest by 2017.
After World War II, there were thousands of surplus ships, and, in 1946, the Maritime Administration began keeping the best of them in reserve. At one time, more than 350 ships were in the fleet, including cruisers, destroyers, supply ships, transports and tankers [San Fransisco Chronicle]
. The Navy dusted off some of them for use in the Korean and Vietnam wars. But the rest became relics, slowing decaying over the next six decades. And while the ghost fleet provides some nostalgia for ...
