Just off the coast of Sunset Beach in Cape May, N.J. lies an empty concrete shell. These are not the remains of a pier or other building lost to the seas, but of a ship that once traversed the Atlantic Ocean in a time of war. The final resting place of the S.S. Atlantis is both a curiosity and important part of U.S. history. In her life, she was a transport ship in the World War I Emergency Fleet. Now she intrigues tourists, often raising the question “how did a concrete ship manage to float?”
Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison spend their nights shut in at the Engineering Centers Building answering this question year after year. These students are members of the UW-Madison Concrete Canoe Team (UW-CCT) and are tasked each year with designing and building a canoe out of concrete.