The S.S. Alantus



     Back to my childhood days of Cape May, one of the points of interest was the concrete sinking ship the S.S Alantus.
The SS Atlantus was one of 12 cement ships built between 1918 and 1921. The most “famous” of the concrete vessels, the Liberty Ship Building Company in Brunswick, Georgia built this ship in 1918 just after World War I had ended; however it did make a few voyages across the Atlantic bring war tired doughboys home. Proving to be costly for other voyages, the fleet was decommissioned and sold off or recycled for other uses, but the Atlantus was spared.

      Colonel Jessup Rosenfeld bought one of these concrete beasts from the Navy in hopes to have a reliable ferry from Cape May, NJ to Cape Henolpen, DE. In 1926 while trying to obtain the various needs for this ferry the Alantus broke free of it’s moorings in Cape May due to a fierce storm that came up the coast. Drifting just 150 years from the dock, the Alantus ran aground and became stuck in the sand and the “Cape May Diamonds”.

      By 1935, the ship had broken; by the 1960s, the superstructure was gone, and in 1987, the two halves drifted farther away and are now resting sideways. The ship is believed to help stimulate the formation of “Cape May Diamonds” – little lumps of quartz that can be found along the pristine beaches of Cape May. Sadly the ship will probably be totally underwater by 2018, unless it is stabilized, exhumed, and replaced.
Perhaps when wars are over they could sink a derelict warship out there?

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