Hudson River Reserve Fleet

It was first located off Tarrytown, New York, on the Hudson River, one of eight anchorages in the United States to provide a sizable reserve of merchant ships to support any military need arising.

[1] The Hudson River Reserve Fleet was established in the wake of World War II to provide an anchorage and place of maintenance for a part of the enormous numbers of combat vessels and transports surplussed by the return of peace.

This saved the U.S. government some five million dollars on commercial storage estimates.The ships were kept in condition on a year-round basis by a crew of 86 men under the supervision of Charles R. Gindroz of Pearl River, fleet superintendent and one-time chief engineer on the SS George Washington.

The reserve fleet ships, valued at over $255 million, had their machinery turned over periodically and their internal surfaces sprayed with a coat of preservative oil on a regular basis.

Other reserve fleets were anchored at Astoria, Oregon; Olympia, Washington; Suisun Bay, California; Mobile, Alabama; Beaumont, Texas; Wilmington, North Carolina; and James River, Virginia.