SS Sapona
Shipwreck near Bimini, Bahamas
SS Sapona was a concrete-hulled cargo steamer originally created as part of the World War I Emergency Fleet. As with the other twelve concrete ships that finished construction for the Shipping Board, she was finished too late for wartime service. She briefly hauled cargo for a time before being moved to Miami to serve as storage. She was later moved to Bimini, where her wreck continues to serve as an artificial reef and as a popular dive site.
History
Under the auspices of the United States Shipping Board, the Sapona was built by the Liberty Shipbuilding Company in Wilmington, North Carolina, and outfitted by the Jacksonville Ship Outfitting Company. After the armistice brought an end to the shipbuilding program, any ship that wasn't far along in construction was canceled, leaving the ship as one of only twelve concrete ships that would continue construction. She was launched October 11, 1919, under the name Old North State, and was renamed Sapona by the end of the year. The Sapona received her documents on January 8, 1920, and was delivered on January 14, 1920, at a final cost of $1,127,705.81 ($21.2 million in 2025).
She was operated as a cargo ship for a time by the Clyde Steamship Company and the Standard Steamship Company, primarily in the New England coal trade. On September 2, 1920, she was sent to be laid up at Claremont, Virginia.
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This entry incorporates text from “SS Sapona” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.