GRAVEYARDS OF THE SEA

Hawera Star, Volume L, 7 February 1931, Page 9

GRAVEYARDS OF THE SEA

r pilE recent salvage operations to recover gold worth millions in the s.s Egypt, sunk off France in a famous / graveyard of the sea, revives interest JL. in other waters. ~ Ponte de Raz, off which the Egypt was sunk after a collision, is one of the most dangerous headlands of France, because all ships coming south out if the English Channel bound for Bor. deaux, the Mediterranean, Africa or South America, must clear its toothed arfd hungry rocks. It is to France what the Goodwin Sands and The Lizard are to England, and what Nauset Beach, on Cape Cod, Nantasket Beach south of Boston, Nantucket Island and Diamond Bhoafi, off Cape Hatteras are to the United States, and King Island is to Australia. Nantucket is credited with snaring 500 ships from the time of its settlement down to 1876. Lighthouses, buoys, lightships, better weather report service, radio direction finding, have made the death corners of the sea less dangerous, but they still exact their toll. Goodwin Sands, a trap lying just beyond the mouth of the Thames, has long held the title of “ship swallow er,” innumerable vessels having been buried in its wastes. Small King Is land, off the Australian coast, counts to date 40 ships brought to an untimely end on its shores.

Capo Horn, at tlie southern, tip of South America, and Cape of Good Hope, at the end of Africa, have villainous reputations among sailors. In the same class fall the rock-cluttered straits off the south end of Japan, where typhoons out of the Philippines sweep whole fleets to destruction. Each of the world's worst waters has its own peculiarities. Cape Cod and Nantucket are most dangerous in a north-easter, when the howling wind tries to drive ships, Europe express lane steamers, coastwise steamers and New England fishing schooners on to the

Scenes of Grim Tragedy

sandy shores that, run at right angles to the direction of the gale.

Cape Hatteras, jutting far out into the Atlantic, extends its shoal water still farther out. North-easters blowing contrary to tho flow of the Gulf Stream, build up over these shoals the highest, steepest waves to be found along the coast. Jamming their noses into toppling walls of water, vessels begin to founder and drift helpless on to Diamond Shoal.

Goodwin Sands, eight miles long, four j miles wide, sprawls like a spider await, j ing its prey off the coast from Deal, ( England. Awash at high tide, large areas of the Goodwin iSands at low tide | offer a hard, dry surface. Ships going 1 to or from London, to North England ports, Belgium, Holland and Germany, | have to pass close to the Sands, which i arc studded with the bones of victims. | Steamships of to-day have much less l trouble with Cape Horn than the old- \ time sailing ships that beat against the prevailing westerly gales of the roaring forties. With rigging iced, with no sun to take bearings from, many a skipper lost his ship in the battle to make westing. One vessel which tried for more than 50 days to round Cape Horn finally gave it up and went to Asia the other way around the world. Not the least of the dangers eliminated from graveyards of the sea are those which were created not by Nature, but by human beach scavengers. Nags Head, on the North Carolina beaches, perpetuates the memory of the ■ professional wreckers, who would hobble a horse with a lantern hung on its neck. Captains of sailing vessels, picking tlieir way carefully through dangerous waters, would sight tho bobbing light that looked like those of another ship. Approach to the beacon soon brought the vessel to grief and the . crew to death, perhaps, while the . wreckers raced to the beach to snatch | up the cargo that tho sea rolled out of . the broken vessel.