Podcast: Concrete Ghosts of Galveston Bay

Even in failure, these ships embody the American instinct to build, test, and try again. Proof that progress often floats on unfinished ideas. Born from wartime necessity and built with innovation, the Selma and the Durham are reminders that American ingenuity doesn't rust; it's set in concrete.

When you look out across Galveston Bay today, you'll see ships of every size gliding across the water, massive cruise ships and tankers heading to and from port, fishing boats hauling in their catch, and ferries carrying passengers across the channel. Despite their differences, every vessel everywhere shares one simple goal: to stay afloat. Thanks to modern engineering, sinking ships are rare in these waters, so shipwrecks and sunken ships might sound like stories from a pirate's logbook, but some of those wrecks still rest in Galveston Bay, half-submerged, and they're really good spots for fishing.

Today, we're gonna look into two shipwrecks right here in Galveston Bay. Well, depending on who you ask, one of them can be considered in the Gulf. Both stories tell us something about the history of innovation and the limits of ambition, and none tells us a story better than the two concrete giants, the SS Selma and the SS Durham.

Yes, you heard that right, concrete ships.

During World War I, when steel ran short, America poured its hopes into concrete. The United States Shipping Board and the Emergency Fleet Corporation needed new ships fast, and traditional materials were scarce. Their solution? build ships out of concrete. This fleet of concrete ships pushed the boundaries of what ships could be, carrying forward a century of maritime innovation. It sounds impossible, but it worked, at least on paper. With the right mix of cement, sand, aggregate, and steel reinforcement, concrete could and would float.

In 1918, the United States authorized a fleet of 24 ferro-concrete vessels, 12 of them large ocean-going tankers. They were meant to save the war effort, time, and materials. Instead, they became floating experiments, heavy, slow, and difficult to maneuver. These concrete ships were more novelty than revolution, but they did make history, especially here in Texas. The SS Selma was launched in Mobile, Alabama, on June 28th, 1919, the same day the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The Selma missed war service by just a few months. She was enormous: 431 feet long, 54 feet wide, and displacing more than 13,000 tons. She was the first 7,500-ton concrete tanker ever built. The Selma was the prototype for an upgraded class of ocean-going tankers,

and the Selma, as an experiment, cost nearly as much as a steel ship. Her hull alone cost $786,000, undermining the "cheap-alternative" argument for concrete ship building. She was also the largest ship ever launched sideways on the Gulf Coast, a risky decision by the shipyard that drew over 2,000 spectators in Mobile.

The Selma's hull is only about four inches thick. Relying on that internal rebar and aggregate density for strength. The Selma was designed to operate with a 43-man crew. She served as an oil tanker in the Gulf, but unfortunately, her career did not last long. In May of 1920, just under two years after she was launched. In Tampico, Mexico, she struck a jetty and tore a 60-foot gash in her hull, and this floating concrete oil tanker was cracked wide open. She was temporarily patched in Mexico and towed across the Gulf to Galveston for repairs. But honestly, no shipyard wanted the job. Concrete hulls were heavy, uncooperative, and expensive to fix.

When the Selma returned to Galveston while waiting for a dry-dock, the Selma slipped beneath Pier 10, beginning her long career as a semi-submerged landmark. So after another two years of failed repairs, the Selma was intentionally scuttled on March 9th, 1922, just off of the eastern shore of Pelican Island. The decision to intentionally scuttle the Selma was made after repairs proved to be too complicated and expensive, and no buyer was found to take over the vessel. She was placed just off the coast of Pelican Island, so she would not be in a navigational hazard, as this was outside the shipping lanes of the ports of Galveston, Texas City, and Houston. Before being scuttled, she was stripped of every piece of equipment perceived to be valuable, and today, over a century later, her broken hull still juts from the water, an unmistakable gray outline you could spot from Seawolf Park, and especially on your ride on the ferry. Over the years, she's essentially become an artificial reef. A favorite fishing spot for locals and truly a landmark of local legend.

In our research, we found a ton of unique facts about the Selma during Prohibition. Customs agents smashed 2,000 cases of bootleg liquor on her deck in 1926, pouring the confiscated rum into Galveston Bay. The Selma also holds one of the most unique Galveston stories I've ever heard. A man named C. Clems LeBlanc was a colorful local handyman and fisherman known around the island as "Frenchy." In 1946, he "bought" the Selma for about $100 from a man named Henry Dale Height. Frenchy moved aboard the wreck in Galveston Bay and turned it into a floating hermitage. He kept chickens, a goat, and a small vegetable garden, and he cooked on a pot-bellied stove, and he ferried supplies from shore by skiff. Newspapers describe him as completely content and immune to civilization's worries. No taxes, no rent, no boss. Frenchy, always game for attention, agreed to host the first National Convention of Happy Hermits. A tongue-in-cheek event dreamed up by visiting publicists from Fox Movietone News and Universal News. The premise was to celebrate the men who had escaped civilization. Reporters, photographers, and curious locals traveled out to the wreck for the conference. Participants held placards reading, "We want women members" and "civilization? We'll stay in the Galveston Channel." News crews filmed the antics and later screened them nationally as a human interest piece. After the fame faded, Frenchy stayed aboard for several years afterward, occasionally giving interviews or hosting visitors who paddled out to see the concrete hermit.

When his health began to fail in the early 1950s, he reluctantly left the ship and moved to shore, but Frenchy became a local legend, and Galvestonians still tell his story today.

The Galveston Daily News in July of 1962 wrote: "Clemsy "Frenchy" LeBlanc, the island's best-known hermit, made his home on the old concrete ship Selma, never bothered with taxes or rent and fed his chickens while the tides rolled beneath him." This story still circulates among Galveston historians as one of the island's great post-Prohibition curiosities, proof that the Selma became more than a wreck; it truly became the stage for one of Texas' most eccentric characters, Frenchy.

Contrary to popular belief, the Selma isn't the only concrete vessel resting off the coast of Galveston. The other is the SS Durham. This concrete tanker took shape in Port Aransas, Texas, and completed construction in 1920. The Durham faced the same challenges as her sister ships: a heavy hull, underpowered engines, and sluggish steering. The Durham's main objective was to haul crude oil between Port Aransas and Tampico, Mexico. The Durham never saw sustained service, unlike her more famous sister ship, the Selma. The Durham's record is fragmented.

The Durham was launched in July of 1920 at 298 feet long. Her design is different than the Selma's traditional tanker design. The Durham's build is known as a "whale back" design made of two large cylindrical tubes, joined like a Venn diagram with a flat deck and hull slabs. When the Durham was launched and set to sea, eyewitnesses said she "rolled like a barrel and wallowed like a log".

The Durham made one voyage to Tampico. The journey was described as miserable. The ship rolled so much that the "sailors had to tie themselves down in bed". One crewman, Mr. H. L. "Sleepy" Baldwell, wrote that the Durham's small 160-horsepower diesel engine was about one-third of what she needed. It took three times longer than a steel tanker to reach Tampico. Once there, she struggled against the current and had to wait for a tugboat to assist her. After the Durham's sluggish trip to Tampico and back, the Durham and her sister ship, the Darlington, which was being constructed in Port Aransas, were sold. While under tow to Beaumont, a storm broke the tow line. The Darlington ran aground near Matagorda. The Durham, the luckier of the two, survived the squall and was tied up on the Neches River.

By 1924, the Kansas City Southern Railroad sued to have her moved, calling her a "menace to navigation." But she stayed anyway for a few more years and even survived a barge collision in 1932 that barely dented her concrete hull. In 1935, the Durham was bought by Seaboard Oil Co. to be used as chemical storage. In 1936, the Durham was towed to Galveston and moored near Pelican Spit. She was bought by William D. McMillan Sr., who turned her into a tourist spot called the Sportsman's Pier, a short-lived fishing pier that hurricanes would later destroy. Probably heavily damaged during one of the six major storms to strike Galveston between 1940 and 1943, she was broken into at least two pieces. She ended her days above the water near the north jetty, which juts out into the Gulf from the western tip of the Bolivar peninsula.

After the storms, Durham vanished from public records, but not from Galveston Bay. Marine archaeologists believe that the Durham sits in pieces at the North Jetty, one of the largest pieces of the Durham that you can still see jutting out of the water today. The largest piece of the Durham, which sits just off the North Jetty is a favorite local fishing spot.

What we do know about the Durham, like the Selma, is that they were a bold attempt to turn scarcity into innovation in the World War I era, and proof that not every experiment floats for long. After World War I, at least for a couple of decades, the United States had plenty of steel again. The concrete-ship project quietly ended, and most of the fleet was scrapped or sunk intentionally or otherwise, but the Selma refused to disappear under the waves. In fact, over the past century, engineers studying her wreck have found that the submerged concrete has actually grown stronger, up to 57 percent stronger than when she was first poured. Proof that even failed experiments can outlast their critics.

Today, the Selma and the Durham are Galveston's concrete ghosts, reminders of a moment when America tried to make ships from stone and steel instead of steel alone. They didn't revolutionize shipbuilding, but they did leave a lasting mark, one you can still see today, breaking the waves. The next time you ride the Bolivar ferry or cast a line near Seawolf Park, or even take that offshore fishing trip, look out across the water. You might just see those jagged gray shapes on the horizon that aren't just wreckage. They're history made, tangible monuments of wartime ingenuity, maritime resilience, and the human urge to make the impossible float.