- Bill Milner was jet skiing on the Neches River in Texas when he came across a ship wreck.
- The wreckage turned out to belong to a large, wooden ship built during World War 1.
- The Texas Historical Commission said more than two dozen of these sunken ships are in Texas rivers.
A man jet skiing on the Neches River in eastern Texas earlier this month stumbled across debris just below the surface that turned out to be the remnants of a historic wooden ship — potentially five of them — from World War 1.
"I wasn't sure what I was really seeing but I could tell it was a very large vessel," Bill Milner told the local outlet KVUE of when he came across the wreckage. Milner sent photos of his find to the local Ice House Museum, which then contacted the Texas Historical Commission.
The Texas Historical Commission was able to confirm the ruins belonged to large, wooden-hull ships built during World War 1 for the US Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation that were later abandoned in the Neches and Sabine Rivers in eastern Texas.
"The amazing story of these shipwrecks began in WWI, when German submarines were making more than a little headway sinking US merchant ships in the Atlantic," the Ice House Museum said in a statement on Facebook. "There was a grave concern that the loss of these merchant ships would seriously impede their ability to get materials for the war, as well as food and other commodities needed by the American people."
So the US Shipping Board established the Emergency Fleet Corporation in 1917 to build 19th-century-style wooden ships with steam-driven engines which could be produced at older shipyards. Most modern shipyards were already at capacity building 20th century steel ships with internal combustion engines, the museum said. There were also metal shortages during the war, hence the use of timber.
But when the war ended in 1918, the outdated wooden ships, which were around 280 feet long, became virtually obsolete overnight, and the US government struggled to sell them.
"The reason that you find these in the Neches is because when the war ended, the ships sort of lost their purpose," Amy Borgens, the state marine archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission, told the Texas Standard public radio show. "And it was really difficult for the government to find buyers for wooden-hulled ships at that time. And so these vessels, many of which were constructed at a cost of $250,000 each, some of these were sold for just $1,000, just for the salvage of wood and iron."
The vessels, which were built in Beaumont, Texas, were eventually abandoned in the rivers, where the government would "let salvagers get what they could from the iron and timber," the Ice House Museum said.
Today there are around 20 of the ships at the bottom of the Neches, and another 15 in the Sabine, many of which have been previously known to the Texas Historical Commission, Borgens told the Texas Standard.
The Texas Historical Commission said in a statement on Facebook that "the summer heatwave and low rainfall" revealed the hidden shipwreck. The area of Texas where the ship was found is under extreme drought, according to the US Drought Monitor.
Susan Kilcrease from the Ice House Museum told Insider they believe the remnants Milner found and took photos of actually belonged to five ships. The museum said a newspaper article from 1924 reported that six ships had caught fire in the Neches River north of Beaumont and burned down to the waterline. Kilcrease said they believe the recent discovery may be those ships.
Borgens told the Texas Standard the best way to preserve the ships is to leave them be, emphasizing that the public should not try to access the shipwreck sites.