A Bit of Seafaring History

I had this map (below) as a kid and was transfixed by it when I poured over it. I’m sure I got it at a gift store in the Outer Banks of North Carolina one summer holiday. For those who don’t know, the Outer Banks are a long, very low-lying chain of barrier islands, with uncharted, shifting sandbanks offshore and occasionally fearsome weather (there’s a storm in maritime lore known as a “Cape Hatteras snorter” - what meteorologists might nowadays terms a “ weather bomb” (which has a specific meaning) - a sudden gale off Cape Hatteras there that kicks up big seas in the shallows offshore). The unpredictable, shifting shallows and sometimes violent weather led to the demise of many ships and men.

I loved to look at that map, as my city block, Washington, DC-confined imagination wandered far…from the wrecked, pilfered gold-laden galleons of the early Spanish conquistadores, through 18th and 19th c. European and American square riggers (think Captain Ahab of Moby Dick’s ship), right on down to 20th c. WWII Nazi U-boats (Unterseeboots: submarines - sunk right off our coast! The Nazis!) Many, many ships - and men (mostly) - in their own watery graveyard at the bottom of the sea. Chilling stuff. (I clearly remember when my stepfather, Ken, told me he swam out to one of the wrecks! You could swim out a half mile or more, say, and suddenly find yourself able to stand in, say, 4 feet of water.)

Little did I know there was also a Graveyard of the Pacific (or that I’d sail through it, and cross the Columbia Bar itself. Thank you, excellent modern day charting, sophisticated weather forecasting, and Sputnik’s incredible collision avoidance technologies: radar, and AIS!).

Read on, me hearties, and spare a thought for those poor souls permanently at rest in Davey Jones’s Locker, wherever it may be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_of_the_Pacific

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Jones%27s_locker