Ship Graveyards – Abandoned and Rotting Away

June 17, 2009 · Filed Under Current, Lore of the Sea 

There are many hazardous shoals that have earned the nickname “the graveyard of ships” from the Lizard to Cape Hatteras to Sable Island.   There is another sort of “graveyard” in  many major harbor where ships and work boats are abandoned by their owners on a convenient mud flat to rot or rust away. 

When ships and work boats were made of wood, they rotted away when they were worn out and abandoned.  Even that could take some time. The big coastal schooners abandoned at Wicassett Maine in the 1930s lingered until they were finally broken up in 1998.  The steel and iron ships and boats abandoned on mud flats near major harbors can take even longer to go away.

 

The “graveyard of ships” in the Kill van Kull off Staten Island in New York Harbor is a wonderful assemblage of rusting and rotting tugs, barges and small ships. For an excellent gallery click here – Wrecks.

 

 

Another notable graveyard is on Eagle Island just across from Cape Fear in Wilmington, North Carolina. 

Across the Cape Fear from Wilmington sit more than 30 wrecks – and valuable land
From barges to steam ships, more than 30 wrecks and remnants of dockyards line the Eagles Island shoreline between the Battleship North Carolina and the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge.

Notwithstanding that the “ship graveyard” was added to Wilmington’s National Register of Historic Places in the mid-1980s, the area is now threatened by condo development.

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One Response to “Ship Graveyards – Abandoned and Rotting Away”

  1. Maritime Monday 167 on June 27th, 2009 4:31 am

    [...] The Old Salt blog has “Ship Graveyards – Abandoned and Rotting Away“. [...]

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