17 Photographs of Ghostly Ship Graveyards Around the World

Have you every heard of a ship graveyard? A ship graveyard (or ship cemetery) describes an area where several shipwrecks have accumulated or where abandoned ships are left to rust away. Sometimes the abandoned ships are no longer seaworthy, but at other times the waters they plow dry up. That’s what happened with the Aral Sea captured in several shots here—once one of the world’s largest lakes, the sea has nearly vanished in the decades since the rivers which fed it were diverted. These ship graveyards exist in every continent excluding only Antarctica.

In these photographs, you can see the death of the boats, the rust and decay. With modern environmental regulations, ship graveyards are becoming less common since the hulks leech dangerous chemicals; ships today are more likely to be recycled for their metal. Yet these eerie resting places strike us as sublime.