When someone thinks of the word “shipwreck” they immediately picture wreckage beneath a lake or ocean. However, there are shipwrecks above water, usually from being caught in a sandbar or beached for other reasons.
Take a look at these shipwrecks that have become a part of their surrounding landscapes.
1. Bessie A. White, Fire Island National Seashore, New York
The Bessie A. White was a Canadian coal schooner that ran aground after experiencing heavy fog around 1920. It appears and disappears every few years from the shore on Fire Island National Seashore. The last time it appeared was in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy. The wreckage is buried in the island’s dunes. A majority of the ship was salvaged but the skeleton of the hull sits on the beach today.
2. Captayannis, Firth of Clyde, Scotland
The Captayannis was a Greek sugar-carrying vessel. She is known to many locals simply as the “sugar boat”. In 1974, a severe storm caused the vessel to drag her anchor while she was waiting at the Tail of the Bank to deliver sugar. The ship then collided with a large BP tanker, putting a hole in the vessel.
Acting quickly, the captain opted to beach the ship in the shallow waters over the sandbank near Ardmore Point. The ship still sits where it was beached and gets many visitors yearly. The wreckage has become a home to the marine life and birds in the area.
3. Eduard Bohlen, Conception Bay, Namibia
The Eduard Bohlen wreck lies buried in desert sand near Namibia’s Skeleton Coast. The cargo ship belonged to Germany when it was afloat on the coast in 1909, but it ran aground on a sandbar when it encountered a patch of thick fog. The shifting sands of the coast soon took over the ship, almost covering it completely. The ship now sits almost a quarter mile inland and in a remote area in the desert.
4. MV Panagiotis, Zakynthos, Greece
The Panagiotis wreck lies in the white sands of an exposed cove on the coast of Zakynthos in the Ionaian Islands. The most commonly accepted story regarding the wreck of the Panagiotis maintains that she spent the later part of her life as a smuggling ship. However, the locals in the area believe that it was put there by the Greek Ministry of Tourism. Either way, the wreckage brings thousands of visitors each year.
5. SS Sapona, Bimini, Bahamas
SS Sapona was a concrete-hulled cargo steamer. The ship was built during World War I but was stranded near Bimini during a hurricane in 1926. The ship today bears some graffiti but is still visited by many tourists. It has also gained fame as a popular diving and snorkeling spot. The ship was shown in Ken Weider’s 1977 horror film Shock Waves.
6. HMQS Gayundah, Redcliff, Australia
HMQS Gayundah was a flat-iron gunboat. This particular ship was in the hands of many different captains for a number of projects. The first job it had was when it was operated by the Royal Australian Navy from the years of 1884 to 1921. In 1921, she was sold to a civilian company, Brisbane Gravel Pty Ltd. and used as a gravel barge.
On 2 June 1958, it was beached on the Redcliffe Peninsula just north of Brisbane so it could serve as a breakwater structure in defense of weather. It was put there to protect the shore against longshore drift.
7. The Peter Iredale, Fort Stevens, Oregon
In 1906, Sailing from Salina Cruz, Mexico, the Peter Iredale was bound for Portland, Oregon with a crew of 27. The ship ran into some trouble when the high seas and winds caused it to run aground just off of the Oregon coast. The remains of the Peter Iredale can be found on a stretch of sand in Fort Stevens State Park.
8. Evangelia, Costinesti, Romania
This wreckage has been beached since the late 1960s. It was a business ship that had been constructed by Harland Wolff in Belfast yard, the same shipyard that made the Titanic. The ship was stranded by its crew in the Black Sea in October 1968, having gotten too close to the coast and stuck in the rocks.
Source: The Vintage News
