Dive Club Meeting - The Bridge to France: The Life of One of the Mallows Bay Ghost Fleet Vessels

Name: Dive Club Meeting - The Bridge to France: The Life of One of the Mallows Bay Ghost Fleet Vessels
Start: 2025-10-28T18:30:00-04:00
End: 2025-10-28T21:30:00-04:00
Location: Rum Runner Dive Shop

Schedule

Tue Oct 28 2025 at 06:30 pm to 09:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Rum Runner Dive Shop | Winterville, NC

The United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation built a thousand wooden steamships to “build a bridge to France.” While many of these vessels failed to sail the seas, one in the bay, Aowa, defied the odds and sailed. This presentation tells the story of Aowa and its life from conception with the wooden shipbuilding program to its final abandonment in Mallows Bay. It further discusses the research project underway on Aowa to understand the stability and preservation of the shipwreck.
Bio:
Allyson Ropp is a maritime archaeologist, a NOAA Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar, and a Ph.D. candidate in East Carolina University’s Integrated Coastal Sciences Program. She holds a BA in History and Classics from UNC–Asheville and an MA in Maritime Studies from East Carolina University. Her current research focuses on the relationships between factors influencing wooden shipwreck degradation, specifically microbial communities, water chemistry, historical uses, and archaeological depositional activities. She has worked on submerged archaeological sites around the world, including the South Pacific, Florida, and the Great Lakes.
6:30pm Dinner ($10.00)
7:00pm Presentation
click link to sign up:
https://rumrunnerdiveshop.dive360.biz/calendar/events/Dive-Club-Meeting_7