India, Oct. 30 -- What happens to a giant Navy ship when its job is done? Most of them end up as scrap metal. The USS Algol got a different ending. According to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife's A Guide to Fishing and Diving New Jersey Reefs, the state's reef program has used vessels ranging from 32-foot Coast Guard crew boats to the 460-foot Algol. The Navy ship was purpose-sunk off Shark River in New Jersey in 1991, and it became the largest ship in the state's reef program at that time.

The Algol was an attack cargo ship, a kind of Navy ship designed to carry troops and supplies for landings from the sea. It was launched in 1943 as the James Barnes, but soon renamed Algol, after a star in the constellation of Perseus. It ...