World’s Largest Ship Graveyard
Monday, 16th February 2009 by Ian Brown
As a follow-up to our recent story about the largest ship graveyard in the Western hemisphere, today we're visiting Mauritania, where we find the world's largest ship graveyard!
The port of Nouadhibou is the final resting place of over 300 ships. Unlike the en masse arrival of ships at Mallows Bay, here the number of craft has built up over time, as corrupt officials accepted bribes from boat owners to allow them to dump their vessels in the area1.
The ships are everywhere! Some are rusting on the beaches, some are overturned just metres from local fishing boats, and even more are anchored in deeper waters, either alone or tied together in rafts of up to 9 ships.
There are so many abandoned ships that you have to wonder how the local fishing fleet and commercial vessels navigate safely when leaving the port.2
In an effort to clean up the local environment, several solutions have been put forward for consideration. Of these suggestions, towing the ships to other locations would seem to be just a matter of moving the problem, and blowing them up surely can't be the best way to improve things!
There's a set of pictures that has circulated amongst many blogs, but Artificial Owl has a different set, while Geographical.co.uk has some good images and information.
Thanks to Christoph.
-
Often for the purpose of making fake insurance claims. ↩︎
-
On the other hand, surfers actually like the wrecks as they make for rather interesting scenery. ↩︎
About the author
Ian Brown lives in Ottawa, Canada, and spends his spare time perusing maps to find new routes to ride on his orange bicycle.
“In an effort to clean up the local environment, several solutions have been put forward for consideration.”
Can i suggest the first thing to do would be to consider getting rid of these corrupt officials of which you speak?
Can’t they be sunk to form artificial reefs?
They would have to try to remove all the toxic materials first and I guess they don’t have money for that either. Looks like US Navy spent 20 mils on cleaning up USS Oriskany before it was sunk.
“Can’t they be sunk to form artificial reefs?”
The ships? Or the corrupt officials?
How can you say that. I think corrosion can be very dangerous and we should not let stupid ideas as done by the U.S. Navy. It destroys environment. Anyone should take responsability and push governements to take care of these things. They have to take boats out of the water and dismantle them. Period. 90% of the crap can be recycled. Thank you.
Take a look around the Alang beach in India:
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=h&hl=en&ll=21.379107,72.177536&z=17
This is where ships end their lives as they slowly crawls ashore and disintegrates…..
/Jan
When sunken to proper depths, the low amount of oxygen in the water does not provide for much corrosion. I do agree that recycling is the best way to deal with old ships!