The ocean floor is littered with the skeletons of thousands of ships. In fact, some areas have had so many shipwrecks that they're famous for them. One such area is known as “The Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
The area off North Carolina is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, named for the many shipwrecks that came to an untimely end here.
"Graveyard of the Atlantic" refers to the Atlantic Ocean waters along the North Carolina coast, which have been the scene of an unusually large number of shipwrecks.
Along the Outer Banks, navigational challenges posed by the Diamond Shoals area off Cape Hatteras, caused the loss of thousands of ships and an unknown number of human lives. More than 5,000 ships have sunk in these waters since record-keeping began in 1526.
Alang Ship Breaking Yard
The world's largest graveyard with respect to ship breaking in the Indian sub-continent, Alang in Gujarat, India, oversees ship dismantling for almost 50% of the world's vessels.
While the Cataraqui shipwreck is Australia's largest civilian maritime disaster, Australia's largest ever maritime disaster occurred during the Second World War on 19 November 1941, when HMAS Sydney was sunk in a battle with the German ship, Kormoran, killing all 645 Royal Australian Navy personnel onboard.
The U.S.S. Samuel B Roberts, also known as the “Sammy B,” was discovered in the Philippine Sea at a depth of 22,916 feet last week by a team of explorers. The wreck is the deepest ever found, per the Associated Press.
According to an analysis by Unesco, there are over three million resting undiscovered in the world's oceans. These elusive relics are unlikely to be evenly distributed.
Based on available data on the most recently reported shipwrecks around the world, the Atlantic Ocean is home to the most shipwrecks in the world.
“every year, on average, more than two dozen large ships sink, or otherwise go missing, taking their crews along with them.” In a prescient comment, she says, “imagine the headlines if even a single 747 slipped off the map with all its passengers and was never heard from again”.
Bermuda is often considered the shipwreck capital of the world. With more than 300 shipwrecks dotting its waters, the North Atlantic island boasts more wrecks per square mile than anywhere else on the planet.
The largest burial ground is the Wadi al-Salam Cemetery in the city of Najaf, Iraq. This vast graveyard covers an area of 9.17 km2 (3.54 sq mi) and is thought to contain millions of sets of human remains. The Wadi al-Salam has been in continuous use since the seventh century.
Constantly shifting shoals and severe weather were not the only reasons these ships went down. Through centuries, ships have been beached by pirates and sunk by German U-boats. Even greedy island residents known as “wreckers” would lure captains into grounding their vessels to loot the cargo.
The word cemetery (from Greek κοιμητήριον 'sleeping place') implies that the land is specifically designated as a burial ground and originally applied to the Roman catacombs. The term graveyard is often used interchangeably with cemetery, but a graveyard primarily refers to a burial ground within a churchyard.
The Graveyard is a gloomy, spikey island in the Second Sea for players between levels 950-1000. It is home to surprisingly large range of NPCs and easter eggs, despite it being such a small island.
The Port Adelaide graveyards are made up of five abandonment sites (ships' graveyards), including Garden Island, Jervois Basin, Mutton Cove, Broad Creek and the Angas Inlet. The Garden Island ships' graveyard is the largest site, with 25 known vessels to have been abandoned between 1909 and 1945.
The Wilhelm Gustloff (1945): The deadliest shipwreck in history. On January 30, 1945, some 9,000 people perished aboard this German ocean liner after it was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine and sank in the frigid waters of the Baltic Sea.
The Largest Liner Shipwreck on the OceaN Floor
Seemingly well preserved, the HMHS Brittanic wreck has the distinction of the largest passenger vessel on the ocean floor, now that the Costa Concordia has been re-floated for scrapping.
The most powerful convergence of seas
What makes the Drake Passage so infamously rough is the fact that currents at this latitude meet no resistance from any landmass, anywhere on the planet.
Although you might think the rules surrounding 'finders keepers' apply to a sunken treasure ship, this is unfortunately not true. Under salvage law, you must at least try to return the treasures to their rightful owner. As a result, upon discovery, you'd need to notify the government which controlled those waters.
Around 20 million tonnes of gold can be found there! According to estimates by the US National Oceanic Service, the gold from the depths of the oceans is so diluted that there is only one gram of this precious yellow metal for every 100 million metric tons of water.
The sinking of Titanic is today one of the most well-known maritime disasters in the world. This is thanks in part to James Cameron's Oscar-winning 1997 film of the same name, but also because the event was – and remains to this day – one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings in history.
1. Flor de la Mar. The Holy Grail of shipwrecks said to be the 'richest vessel ever lost at sea', is a large 16th-century Portuguese ship. One of the finest vessels of its time, it was put to use across the Indian Ocean.
The ship was loaded with an estimated $17 billion worth of gold, silver and jewels when it sank in 1708, and its wreck was only discovered in 2015. The navy used a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) to examine the wreck; its precise location is being kept a secret to deter treasure hunters.