On our journey to Alexandria and Washington, D.C., we stayed at an anchorage on the Mattawoman Creek off the Potomac River and just northeast of Quantico. In October, a local marina on the Creek hosts the biggest bass fishing tournament on the east coast. You would never know based on the few number of boats we saw in this area. We passed an interesting sight on the way which was a graveyard of wooden boats. During World War I, the U.S. quickly built and deployed a fleet of flimsily constructed wooden steamers in response to German submarines destroying much of our shipping. However, this new fleet was the victim of bureaucratic snafus of a major proportion and only a fraction(about 200) of the 1000 planned ships were ever completed with very few done in time to use for the war effort. After the war, they were sold for scrap, stripped and burned to the waterline. Those and other abandoned boats are now located in nearby Mallows Bay and are being reclaimed by nature you can see just a few remnants of their hulks when cruising by.
As we proceeded up the Potomac we passed this day marker and beautiful Mount Vernon on the banks of the river. We knew that we were almost in Alexandria!
We’ll be spending the next few days exploring our old haunts in Alexandria and D.C. and visiting some close friends there.
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