Most Amazing Abandoned Ships In The World

There are two ways you can travel across the sea. You can either take a plane, or you can take a boat. Planes might get you there faster, but if you want to enjoy the scenic route, you jump aboard a ship. A well-made ship can stay afloat for 30 years or more, and when they're retired, they usually go to a breaker's yard to be taken apart with dignity and respect. Not all ships make it that far, though. Some of them end up being abandoned, each one of them with a story to tell. Why start with a single shipwreck when we could start with a beach full of them? If you travel to the Hawaiian island of Lanai, you'll find a series of shipwrecks dotted along Shipwreck Beach, a six-mile-long shore that plays host to the remains of 12 different forgotten vessels. The trail starts with YOGN42, an old U.S. Navy ferro-cement fuel barge, and ends with YO21, another U.S. vessel that was once a Navy yard oiler. Some of the incidents that have stranded ships here can be blamed on the area's powerful currents and strong winds, but that isn't the case for all of them. Back in the 19th century, the beach became a dumping ground for people who didn't want to pay the costs associated with scrapping an unwanted ship. Most of them rot away, but as YO21 and YOGN42 were made from concrete as opposed to timber, they're still mostly in one piece. While some people consider them to be an eyesore, others find them fascinating. That's why Shipwreck Beach has become a popular place to visit for passing tourists. Head toward the Leeward Antilles in the Caribbean and you'll find Klein Karakau, a slightly creepy abandoned island completely devoid of life. That hasn't always been the case, though, as is evidenced by the presence of an empty lighthouse. The lighthouse isn't alone on the island. It has two shipwrecks to keep it company. One of them is the shattered wreck of the Maria Bianca Guidesman. The vessel was once a proud oil tanker but ran aground on Klein Karakau during the 1960s with so much force that the ship sheared clean in two. Obviously, that made the idea of salvaging the vessel completely out of the question, and so the battered shell of the ship has been slowly falling to pieces in the sun for almost 60 years. The second vessel is harder to identify, but it's possible that it would tell a shameful story if it could talk. The Dutch West India Company's slave trade route passed through this area, and the island was used to quarantine sick slaves in a shabby hospital, the ruins of which can still be seen on the island today. This second ship might well have been a slave ship, which would explain why nobody's ever owned up to leaving it there. For such a small piece of land, Ireland has a lot of shipwrecks on its coastline and its riverbanks. One of the most notable is in Ballina Quay, County Mayo. That's where you'll find the abandoned SS Crete Boom, trapped forever on the River Moy. The vessel is over a century old and owes its strange choice of construction material to the fact that traditional shipbuilding materials were hard to get hold of during the First World War. The Crete Boom was built in 1917, and was put into service shipping iron ore from Spain to England. After the war was over, the Crete Boom was bought by a London-based company and started transporting coal to and from mainland Europe. It didn't come to Ireland until 1937, by which point it was in poor shape and was scheduled to be scuttled and become part of a barrier at the mouth of the river. But it struck rocks on the final leg of its journey and began taking on water. All that could be done for the stricken vessel was to tow it to midstream. And that's where she's been ever since. It's a little ironic for a ship with a name like World Discoverer to get stuck in one part of the world for 20 years, but that's the fate that's befallen this vessel. She had a long and happy life before she met with this misfortune, though. The World Discoverer was built in 1974 in Germany and sold to a Danish company as a cruise liner, and then sold again to another cruise company, this time one based in Singapore. They kept her for 16 years, during which time she traveled the whole world and delighted many passengers. By 1990, she was showing her age, but she was given a full refurbishment and started sailing again in good as new condition, this time under the national flag of Liberia. It's possible she might even have survived until today under normal circumstances, but it wasn't to be. She hit a reef close to the Solomon Islands in April 2000, and the damage was severe. All of the passengers were rescued, but her heroic captain Oliver Crois chose to remain on board and pilot her to Roderick Bay. That allowed all of the valuables on the ship to be salvaged. But no more could be done for the 26-year-old ship. As strange as the idea of a concrete ship might sound, Great Britain wasn't the only country that built them in the past. You can find the remains of another one in the lower reaches of the Volga, close to Astrakhan in Russia, not far from the Caspian Sea. Not much is known about this strange-looking wreck. It's a hybrid creation partially made from concrete and partially made from steel. Based on its size and its internal layout, it would be reasonable to guess that it might have been a tanker back when it was in serviceable condition. As the vessel is totally unguarded, it's possible for people to climb aboard and explore it, which is how we got these pictures. As you can see, the lower decks are taking on water and in places the concrete has crumbled and exposed the steel mesh that holds the vessel together. It's clear that the ship has been left alone for a long time, and it's sadly past the point where it would be able to be fixed. Who knows what kind of goods might have been carried inside it back when it had a crew and an owner? We've all heard the famous song Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, but did you know that there's a real Yellow Submarine stranded in the waters of Coney Island Creek in New York City, USA? The forgotten vessel, which can still just about be identified as yellow despite a thick coating of orange rust, is the Questor 1. The 45-foot-long submarine was built in Brooklyn in 1967 by one man working alone. Jerry Bianco made his ship from salvaged metal and intended to use it to salvage valuables from the wreck of the SS Andrea Doria, an Italian passenger liner that sank close to Nantucket Sound 11 years earlier. He never even got the chance to try. The crane that was lowering the submarine into the water slipped, and Questor 1 fell sideways into a mud bank and got stuck. Bianco attempted to refill the ballast and refloat the Questor, but he couldn't free it, and eventually he was forced to abandon his creation. The ship stayed in the mud until 1981 when it broke free and drifted away. You can still see the top of it on a clear day when the tide is low. If you're interested in shipwrecks and you also have a passion for snorkeling, you might want to consider visiting Australia's Tangalooma Island Resort and combining your two passions. There, you'll find the Tangalooma wrecks. Fifteen ships were deliberately sunk by the Queensland government over the course of 20 years from 1963 to create an anchorage spot for other boats, and they've all become home to a vast array of marine life. More than 100 different species of fish have been recorded around the wrecks, and sometimes a few dolphins stop by to say hello. After so many years in the water, some of the ships have deteriorated more than others, but the silhouette of the Mayboro, built in 1885, is still easy to identify as you look upon the site from the safety of the shore. The bream, the moorwong, the kookaburra, and the pelican are also among the members of this scuttled club. Don't worry if you're not a strong swimmer. You could hire a sea scooter to take a speedy tour of the wrecks if you'd prefer. Our next shipwreck also attracts a lot of visitors and tourists, but for a more somber reason. It's the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. The Arizona was famously sunk during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the incident that sparked full-scale American involvement in the Second World War. The memorial was built 20 years after the attack and allows around 2 million visitors each year to get close to the wreck without disturbing it. The structure of the memorial straddles the hull of the lost battleship but doesn't actually touch it, which minimizes the damage that the visitors do to the site. Since 1989, what's left of the Arizona has been registered as a National Historic Landmark. If you'd like to visit the memorial and pay your respects, you might be advised to do so sooner rather than later. A large crack was noted on the exterior of the Arizona in May 2018, and although it was repaired, it quickly cracked again. Visitors were suspended for a full year after that, and although they've recently been permitted again, nobody knows how much longer the ship will last. It might still be possible to rescue the TSS Duke of Lancaster, but time is running out fast. The British railway steamer operated throughout Europe between 1956 and 1979 and was supposed to begin a new life as an entertainment vessel after that, but a series of legal disputes have left it beached on the River Dee in Wales for more than 40 years. The Duke of Lancaster used to operate as a ferry service, but the route she worked on was withdrawn in November 1978. A Welsh company bought her and attempted to reopen to fill her with arcades and funfair attractions, renaming her the Fun Ship, but the local council in Llanowreck Moor weren't happy with the idea. The owners battled with the authorities until 2004 but eventually conceded defeat, and so the ship appeared to be doomed. As rusty as the exterior appears, internally she's said to be in good condition. A new plan to turn the ship into an art gallery was announced in 2012 and saw some of Europe's best graffiti artists invited to come and decorate the hall. But in 2017 the ship was painted jet black without any explanation. There's been no further news since. Heading back to the United States of America, you'll find the Swanee Belle looking conspicuous on dry land in east-central Pennsylvania. Despite the riverboat's antiquated appearance, she's not actually as old as she looks. The ship was built by the La Crosse Riverboat Company in but she was based on the much older paddlewheel Belle of Swanee that used to run on the Swanee River in Florida many years earlier. Initially, she carried up to 150 passengers at a time between the Hudson River and East River Bay in New York, but only stayed there for a year or so before moving on to Mobile, Alabama and then to Johns Pass in Florida. Eventually and inevitably, she started operating on the Swanee River in January 1988, just like the vessel she was based on used to. She didn't last long though. In November of that year, she was ripped from her moorings by a storm and drifted for more than 60 miles, breaking a hydraulic line before running aground at Hernando Beach. The incident damaged her badly and so she was decommissioned in 1991. Ten years later, the wreck was bought and moved to Pennsylvania by a businessman who intended to turn her into a restaurant, but the company went bankrupt and the Swanee Belle was left to abandonment. Our next location is known by two different names, the Staten Island Graveyard and the Tugboat Graveyard. Both names give you a strong clue about what you can expect to find at the New York City site. This is the place that many of the hundreds of ships that used to serve the piers of New York's coast were taken to be scrapped over the years, but the scrapping service no longer operates. It didn't even have the good grace to clean up its mess before it stopped trading. At last count, there were more than two dozen ships still floating on the waterway, most of which are in a desperate state of disrepair. Tugboats are moored for all eternity right next to dredgers, rubbing together as the waters rise and fall and slowly being weathered away. Some of them have sunk so far into filth that only a few rotting timbers remain. Anything that might have scrap value or salvage potential was either sold or stolen a long time ago. Now the sad remnants of these old boats have no owner and no future. The site is an eyesore, and it's a wonder that the city hasn't done anything about it since 1990. It's a lot easier to identify the wreck of the USS Inaugural in St. Louis, Missouri than it is to identify anything at the tugboat graveyard, but it's still a rusty abandoned spectacle of a ship. In her prime, she was an admirable class minesweeper that saw action during the Second World War when she sailed to Okinawa, but she was decommissioned long before she ended up in this state. When she first arrived in St. Louis, she became a floating war museum. But she was torn from her Mississippi River moorings by the Great Flood of 1993 and carried downstream. She didn't make it far. She ended up sunken on her side half a mile away. For most of the next 20 years, it was impossible to gain access to her. But an unusually dry spell in 2012 lowered the level of the river and exposed the shell of the Inaugural for all to see. What was there wasn't pretty. It was immediately obvious that she didn't have any future use other than as a canvas for the area's graffiti artists. And so she was eventually sold for scrap. That's a sad end for a ship with such a distinguished history. Subscribe to the channel, turn on the notification bell, and enjoy watching new videos on my channel. 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