Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Ship Graveyard

Friday, 15th July 2005 by Alex

Update: Turns out that this is actually just an image glitch, thanks to everyone who helped clear that up. Still cool though ;-)

Check out this fantastic image of half-sunk ships in Greece. Spooky!

Sunken Ships

Props to Mike for this little beauty :-)

23 Responses to 'Ship Graveyard'

  1. 1. Jeff O'Halloran says:

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    This is the infamous Ship Breakers site in Alang, India. Those trails you see are from ships that have been purposely run aground. You can also see several ships on the beach that are being disassembled.

    There are some very impressive on-land photographs on this site to give you a feeling of size and conditions.

    http://www.nfb.ca/trouverunfilm/fichefilm.php?id=51361&lg=en&v=h#

    or

    http://www.onf.ca/trouverunfilm/fichefilm.php?id=51361&lg=en

  2. 2. The Govinator says:

    Are the half sunk or is it just a bad picture. Look to the northeast looks like there are ghost ships all over the place, but i think it is just a mismatch of pictures
    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

  3. 3. Will says:

    I tend to agree with The Govinator. Placemark: This link / Google Earth on land, shows that there is a picture mismatch or issue going on.

    Although I’m sure some of those ships have taken on water, I’m not ready to believe how many of them are actually sunk, or partially sunk, because of this.

    Regardless, its still a lot of cool old ships :)

  4. 4. pooms says:

    I think you’re right. There is a vertical seam going through there that you can follow upwards through the land and see where roads are doubled, and eventually the shoreline further north is also ghosted. I think it’s the way they’ve mosaicked two images.

  5. 5. gIMpSTa says:

    I agree that these are not sunken ships.

    Look at the ships in the thumbnail. If you open it open in google earth and zoom in more you start to get the impresison that we are seeing ghosted images of the two ships in the middle, and not sunk ships.

  6. 6. Mousky says:

    If look to the southeast, you will find a naval ship patrolling the area:

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

  7. 7. Dave says:

    I was looking for the famed shipbreaking area of Alang, India. Anyone able to find it? Is there a site that gives GPS coords of any city in the world so we can find it?

  8. 8. gIMpSTa says:

    http://www.gmsinc.net/gms/locations\_alang\_india.php

    Did a quick conversion of lat/long and doens’t look like there is high res anywhere near by.

  9. 9. linger says:

    I agree, definitly photo mismatches. Take a lok here

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    There seems to be several overlaps of the same boat at the end of the dock, and a couple of the boat above it.

  10. 10. punky says:

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    best example yet, you can see a ghost of all the ships.

    When google tries to combine the photos it uses antialiasing, which blends the ships with water makign them look half sunk.

    Cool effect, but prolly not shipwrecks.

    Maybe the best reason yet is the high amount of ship traffic in the area. There is no way they’d leave sunken ships in this area to get in the way of shipping. If i ship sunk they’d remove it right away.

  11. 11. lukerpig says:

    Gimpsta, I did a search of the area your link pointed to (21 29.5′ N, 72 21.3′E) but It wouldn’t let me zoom in enough…

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    My favorite update on this site, btw, is that image of the sunken ship posted a while back.

  12. 12. lukerpig says:

    My first comment on GoogleSightseeing and I already phailed. Gimpy already said the area wasn’t high res enough, but I thought he was requsting someone plug the coordinates into the maps. My bad.

  13. 13. XF says:

    Maybe I found the shipbraking area…
    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    It’s no high-res, but seems like there are some big boats, some of which are half on the water and half on the shore.

  14. 14. DarrenW says:

    heres the Chittagong ship beaking area in Bangladesh again not hi res but you can see plenty of beached ships

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

  15. 15. XF says:

    Alex, I’m not so sure this is an image glitch. Look at this ship going east a little:
    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
    The blue ship is definately sunk!

  16. 16. joe says:

    some of the ships really are sunken. you can tell because one end of it is lighter (closer to the surface) and the other is darker (much lower into the water).

  17. 17. Gabe says:

    XF, Alex,

    The blue ship is tethered to the land, looks like to me. There are two (really big apparently) cable lines running from the shore to the stern of the ship.

  18. 18. Twombly says:

    XF - interesting find, as some of the ghost images are of different ships! (i.e. not simply duplications of the same ships, as many of the others seem to be)

  19. Google Sightseeing Admin
    19. Alex says:

    The ghost ships do seem to be different ships in several places, but if the effect is not down to image blending, then how does one explain this section where [the land appears to be sinking][1]?

    [1]: Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

  20. 20. XF says:

    Sorry… forgot to update the link… this is the sunk ship I was referring to:
    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    This not half-blending or something. It is all blue-ish and it is among other ships which are fully visible.

  21. 21. Gabe says:

    Why don’t we ask that person doing a donut in front of the blue boat?

  22. 22. Keith T. says:

    The sinking land is clearly an image blending issue. (gamma-jacked shot)

    As for the apprently sunk ship, it doesn’t appear to be sunk at all, just really dark: (enhanced shot)

  23. 23. Compfox says:

    What about manipulated pictures ?
    I`ve read an article about an english museum militarysubmarine, which was overlayed wit the picture of a frighter. Of cause not by google…

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