Remembering the Target Ship

I woke up this morning thinking about the Target Ship in Cape Cod Bay. (Mostly I was thinking about the storyline of the novel I sketched out years ago about the Target Ship in Cape Cod Bay.) The "Target Ship" is actually the USS James Longstreet, a liberty ship commissioned and used for World War II supply. It toured a bit in the Pacific before being shipwrecked in New Jersey. At that point she might have been scrapped, but a new life awaited her: beached on a sandbar in Cape Cod Bay, and being the target of bombing mission practice flown from the Naval Air Force's Cape Cod base.


When I used to vacation there with my family as a child, we would see this ship. It sat on the horizon just off of Skaket Beach in Orleans, the tranquil bay-side beach. By that time in the early 1990s the bombing practice had ceased, and the ship was left to its own fate in the waters. I remember it somewhat like the picture above, or more towards decay. The middle - apparently the sweet spot of the target - had already collapsed to the water, and the bow and the stern stood like two close-following boats.


I remember the fascination on hearing the story from my father. Ships and shipwrecks had always perked my interest - perhaps because of my engagement with the Target Ship - so to have one close up before me both awed me and creeped me out. An old rusting boat is kind of creepy, and to even look at pictures today, and even yet YouTube videos of underwater dives there, freaks me out a bit! But I still keep looking. If only because this ship was like an old friend, a constant upon the water of my childhood. In the mid-90s the stern eventually collapsed, and one day I arrived to the dunes to discover that my beloved ship was gone forever beneath the waters.


As I write this it seems obvious where the storyline for the novel came from. A young man seeks out to discover his grandfather's history with the USS James Longstreet. His grandfather served on the ship, and "followed it" to Cape Cod, where he bought the beachfront house this young man summered in as a kid. This young man, now a professional ship model maker, attempts to "build" the history of wartime and family, at the same time running into his own father issues and an old summertime love who helps him on his journey.


I'll write it someday. For now the memories and the inspiration are all tucked away, like the Target Ship below the surface of the waters, unseen and hidden, but still there.


Photography by Noel Beyle, THE foremost authority on the Target Ship.