The Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary is a National Marine Sanctuary in the United States located in the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland. It is best known for the "Ghost Fleet", 118 historic shipwrecks in Mallows Bay in the sanctuary's northeast corner which is the largest shipwreck fleet in the Western Hemisphere. (video) They are among more than 200 shipwrecks in the sanctuary, some of which date as far back as the American Revolutionary War and others to the American Civil War.
In addition to shipwrecks, the sanctuary preserves historical sites related to Native Americans, some of them as much as 12,000 years old, as well as a lengthy span of United States history, including the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, steamboat and steamship activity during the Industrial Revolution, and what was once an important Potomac River fishing industry. It also protects sites dating as far back as the 17th century related to African-American history, as well as an ecologically and biologically important area of the Potomac River and its Maryland shoreline that supports many species of plants and animals.
Designated on September 3, 2019, the Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary was the 14th national marine sanctuary, the first in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and the first one designated since Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2000.
Description The Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary is located in an portion of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland. It lies off the Nanjemoy Peninsula, about south of Washington, D.C.
The sanctuary stretches from the Charles County shoreline on the eastern side of the river to the border between Maryland and Virginia on the western side. The sanctuary's eastern boundary starts at a point just north of Sandy Point in Charles County and follows the Maryland shoreline of the Potomac River south around Mallows Bay, Blue Banks, and Wades Bay, cutting across the mouths of creeks and streams until it reaches a point just south of Smith Point. From there, the sanctuary's southern boundary crosses the Potomac River to the west in a straight line until it reaches a point just north of the mouth of Aquia Creek in Stafford County, Virginia, near Brent Point. The western boundary of the sanctuary approximates the border between the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Maryland along the western side of the Potomac River, continuing to the north and cutting across the mouths of streams and creeks until it reaches a point north of Tank Creek. The sanctuary's northern boundary then runs east across the Potomac River in a straight line until it intersects with the Maryland shoreline just north of Sandy Point. The Maryland-Virginia border, which also serves as both the boundary between Charles County and Virginia's Stafford County and the western boundary of the sanctuary, is demarcated by the mean low tide mark on the Virginia shoreline, placing nearly the entire river in Maryland and the entire sanctuary in Maryland waters in Charles County.
Public access to the sanctuary is primarily through Mallows Bay Park, a Charles County park adjacent to the sanctuary which offers direct access to the river, including Mallows Bay. Access is also possible from the Maryland shoreline via Smallwood State Park. Because the sanctuary's western boundary runs along the Virginia shoreline, visitors to Widewater State Park in Stafford County, Virginia, have easy access to the western edge of the sanctuary's Potomac River waters.
Mallows Bay was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 24, 2015, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation lists the area as a "National Treasure". The sanctuary is a part of the Southern Maryland National Heritage Area, and it lies along the Chesapeake Trail.
Historical resources Shipwrecks
The Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary includes more than 200 historic shipwrecks, some of them dating as far back as the American Revolutionary War and others to the American Civil War However, it is best known for a group of 118 partially submerged shipwrecks nicknamed the "Ghost Fleet" located in Mallows Bay in the sanctuary's northeastern corner. These wooden-hulled steamships were among nearly 300 built at more than 40 shipyards in 17 U.S. states by the United States Shipping Board's Emergency Fleet Corporation between 1917 and 1919, intended for use in None of the ships saw action during the war, which ended before the last of them was completed.
The Western Marine and Salvage Corporation of Alexandria, Virginia, bought most of the ships and anchored them in the Potomac River near Mallows Bay, bringing a few of them at a time up the river to Alexandria for scrapping and to salvage their steam engines, boilers, propellers, and other metal parts for scrap metal. On occasion the ships anchored near Mallows Bay while awaiting scrapping burned, broke loose, or otherwise became hazards to navigation, so authorities ordered the company to secure them. The company responded by burning many of them to the waterline, then floating them into Mallows Bay and scuttling them there. Western Marine and Salvage went bankrupt during the Great Depression, and after that local communities took over the task of salvaging valuable materials from the wrecks. After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Bethlehem Steel began a third and final round of salvage that lasted for two years. When this was completed, 118 shipwrecks remained in shallow water in Mallows Bay, constituting the "Ghost Fleet", the largest shipwreck fleet in the Western Hemisphere.
Largely submerged during high tide, the shipwrecks emerge above the surface during low tide, and portions of some of them always are visible above the water's surface. Vegetation has grown on many of the shipwrecks in Mallows Bay, giving them the distinctive appearance of long, skinny islands.
Notable shipwrecks include (), a former ferry abandoned at Mallows Bay in 1973 and the sanctuary's only steel-hulled wreck, and Afrania (), Aowa (), Bayou Teche (), Benzonia (), Boone (), Dertona (), Mono (), Moosabee (), Namecki (), and Yawah (), all of which were Emergency Fleet Corporation ships, and most or all of which have been in Mallows Bay since at least 1929.
Floods and storms occasionally move the shipwrecks, some of which lie in different places from their scuttling positions in the 1920s. In 2003, the storm surge from Hurricane Isabel lifted Benzonias wreck off the bottom of Mallows Bay and deposited it on top of the wreck of SS Caribou, making Benzonias wreck the most easily visible one in the Ghost Fleet as well as an important habitat for birds. Benzonias wreck caught fire in 2013 and was extinguished by a vessel from the Prince William County, Virginia, fire department. In 2016 it burned again, with the fire smoldering for a over a week and substantially damaging the wreck, destroying much of its stern.
Native American history and culture
The stretch of the Potomac River in the Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary is part of the traditional homelands of the Native American Piscataway people of the Piscataway Conoy Tribe in Maryland and the Patawomeck people of the Patawomeck Indian Tribe of Virginia, to both of whom the area is of important cultural, historical, and spiritual significance. Historical artifacts dating as far back as 12,000 years have been discovered within the sanctuary. The Piscataway have identified Mallows Bay and Liverpool Point on the coast of Charles County as of particular cultural importance, and it is very likely that Nussamek, one of the villages the explorer John Smith visited during the summer of 1608, was in that area, although no submerged archaeological sites have been identified in the sanctuary's waters.
African-American history
The Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary includes sites important to African-American history. African Americans arrived on the sanctuary's shores as slaves centuries ago and have lived in the area ever since, fighting in the American Civil War and building some of the steamships now lying in Mallows Bay.
Flora and fauna
The Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary lies in an ecotone, a transition zone in the Potomac River where tides fluctuate between each day, mixing fresh water flowing into the sanctuary from farther up the river with salt water drawn northwards by the tides from the Chesapeake Bay. The water in the sanctuary is mostly fresh, and typically has a salinity level ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 parts per thousand. Fish found in the river's waters in the sanctuary include channel catfish, blue catfish, largemouth bass, river herring, striped bass, American shad, and Atlantic sturgeon.
Shallow waters near the sanctuary's shoreline contain large beds of submerged aquatic plants which grow each year from late spring through early fall. These weed beds include approximately ten different species of plant — including coontail of the genus Ceratophyllum, water stargrass (Heteranthera dubia), wild celery, and several species of naiad of the genus Najas — and are important spawning, nursery, and feeding grounds for juvenile fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and other animals.
Over time, the shipwrecks of the "Ghost Fleet' have transformed into distinctive, skinny, vegetation-covered artificial islands which provide island, intertidal, and underwater habitats that support a diversity of coastal and marine life, including an abundance of fish, American beavers, and birds such as ospreys, great blue herons, and bald eagles. Sediment and seeds deposited inside the hulls of the wrecks have turned some of them into islands often referred to as "flowerpot" wrecks, while others have fused to the shore and form artificial peninsulas which stabilize the shoreline and have a lush covering of plant life. Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana), paw paws of the genus Asimina, persimmon trees, marsh tickseed (Bidens trichosperma), and pickerel weed of the genus Pontederia grow on the wrecks, providing a home for various animal species including ospreys, who visit the sanctuary each spring and summer and build their nests on the wrecks. At least one beaver lodge has been noted on a wreck. Vegetation on the wreck of SS Afrania includes swamp dogwood yellow iris drooping star of Bethlehem false indigo and a tall American elm
A great variety of freshwater aquatic plants grows in the tidal marshes at the mouths of streams that flow into the Potomac River along the sanctuary's Maryland shoreline, where they absorb nutrients from runoff water, provide feeding grounds for many animal species, and prevent erosion of the shore. Broad-leaved emergent plants dominate these habitats, including green arrow arum (Peltandra virginica), pickerel weed, and spatterdock (Nuphar advena) at lower elevations and jewelweed of the genus Impatiens and wild rice at higher ones. Swamp rose-mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), which may have inspired the name of Mallows Bay, and later a part of the name of the sanctuary as a whole, also grows in the tidal marshes.
American beavers are active along the shoreline and just inland from it in Mallows Bay Park just outside the sanctuary, where their multi-year cyclic pattern of constructing lodges and dams on streams flowing into the sanctuary create and maintain wetlands that prevent flooding and erosion in and around the sanctuary. In beaver ponds in these wetlands, floating plants such as duckweed of the subfamily Lemnoideae, pondweed, spatterdock, and white water lily (Nymphaea odorata) grow in open water and cattails of the genus Typha, pickerel weed, rice cutgrass (Leersia oryzoides), and sedges of the family Cyperaceae border the ponds.