The James River Reserve Fleet was established in 1919, the first of what became the National Defense Reserve Fleet system. The other large reserve anchorages in the twentieth century were Suisun Bay inland from San Francisco Bay and Beaumont in Texas. At the start of World War II, all 300 ships at anchor in the James River were called into service. The current iteration of the fleet was opened in 1946 to absorb the enormous surplus of ships that the United States built during the war. By the 1950s, more than 800 vessels were moored here, most of them Liberty and Victory ships - the mass-produced cargo carriers that hauled American supplies across both oceans. Some were reactivated for the Korean War. Some came back out for Vietnam and the Reagan-era 600-ship Navy program. The James River fleet was, for half a century, the strategic reserve made visible: a forest of masts in a tidal river, a hedge against the next emergency.

In the 1950s, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Commodity Credit Corporation found a use for all that idle hold space. Liberty ships at the James River anchorage were filled with surplus grain. Hold by hold, hatches sealed, the ships became floating granaries for a country whose farms produced more wheat than the market could absorb. The program ran for years. Maintenance crews trained on the same ships used by helicopter approach and hover teams, by search-and-seizure parties, and by hostage rescue units. Part of the fleet evolved into the Ready Reserve Force, a newer program of vessels that can sortie quickly to support military operations or disaster response. The point of the reserve has always been latency: ships that look idle but could be at sea, fully crewed and loaded, within four months at most.

The roster of ships that have passed through the James River anchorage reads like an industrial-age catalog of American naval history. USS Guadalcanal (LPH-7), an amphibious assault ship that recovered Gemini and Apollo astronauts from the Atlantic, was sunk as a target off the Virginia Capes in May 1995. SS Charles H. Cugle, renamed SS Sturgis, was a Liberty ship converted to host an experimental floating nuclear power plant; she provided power at the Panama Canal before being scrapped in 2015. USNS Vandenberg was sunk as an artificial reef off Key West in May 2009. NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo ship, sat at James River for about twelve years before being moved to Baltimore. USS Donner leaked 1,000 gallons of fuel in 2000. USS Simon Lake, a submarine tender, was stored from 2015 to 2019 before being scrapped. USS Albemarle was one of two Curtiss-class seaplane tenders that took part in Operation Flat Top. USS Gage is the last surviving Haskell-class attack transport. The list goes on.

Not every ship at the James River became scrap. SS John W. Brown, a Liberty ship laid up here for years, was towed to Baltimore in the 1980s, restored by a volunteer crew, and now operates as a museum ship and one of only two fully operational Liberty ships in the United States. She still sails Chesapeake Bay on Living History Cruises with her triple-expansion steam engine running. SS Red Oak Victory, a Boulder Victory-class cargo ship, became a museum vessel in Richmond, California, on the very docks where she was built. SS American Victory is preserved in Tampa. SS Arthur M. Huddell - another James River Liberty ship - was given to Greece, where she's now a museum vessel honoring the role of Greek merchant mariners in World War II. Art Beltrone, a military historian, found troop art aboard USS General Nelson M. Walker, a troopship that carried soldiers through World War II, Korea, and Vietnam; the art is now on display.

The Maritime Administration manages what remains. Nine ships sit at anchor in the James now, where there were once 800. Some are awaiting scrap. Some are kept for training. Some are designated as artificial-reef candidates. Each year a few more leave, towed out under cloudy skies to a shipbreaker's beach or a wreck site. From a low-flying aircraft you can still count the hulls - clustered together near Fort Eustis, riding low at slack tide, anchor chains taut. Up close, paint flakes from steel that was rolled in the 1940s. Down in the holds, in the dark, the bulkheads remember a war that ended before most of the country's living population was born. The Ghost Fleet is shrinking. The river keeps its watch.