Sable Island located 110 miles southeast of Halifax, near the mainland, in the South Atlantic Ocean. At this point, the warm waters of the Gulf Stream meet the cold Labrador Current.
In its shape, Sable Island really resembles a saber or tentacles, who sees what. It stretched from east to west for 24 miles. Experienced sailors called this mysterious and mysterious place " the tomb of the atlantic».

Puzzles Saber Islands have long been of interest to scientists. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was found that the western part of the island was subject to a strong permanent current. Multi-ton waves, driven by strong winds, break on the coast of this island without rest. But the eastern part of the coast, like an antipode, is always quiet and calm. New sand drifts are constantly growing there, which, logically, have nowhere to come from, but they keep coming and coming…

The most interesting thing is that the size of the island almost does not change over the years. On the one hand, the island is washed away by waves, on the other hand, it grows due to sand deposits! And over the years, this island, like a tired snake, slowly moves eastward. The researchers managed to find out that over the past 200 years, Saber Island has quietly and quietly passed more than ten nautical miles of the world's oceans! The island is moving at a speed 200 meters per year!


But this was not the only thing that surprised scientists so much. As a rule, any island is the top of a mountain. The mountain itself rests on one of the giant tectonic plates that form our planet. It would seem that Sable Island should drift at a speed no greater than the speed of the tectonic plate. The average speed of movement of the tectonic plate is a few millimeters per year. Saber Island's movement is much faster.


In addition to its high-speed movement, Saber Island is also famous as a kind of quagmire. The fact is that one part of the island is covered with quicksand. Sailors claim that these sands are practically indistinguishable from sea water, acquiring the color of a wave, they mislead sailors. The treacherous sands of this island absorb incoming ships. It is known for certain that the Saber Islands sailing to the shore big ships(100-120 meters long, with a displacement of five thousand tons) were completely immersed in the sands for two to three months.
Throughout the year, there is a terrible bad weather over Saber Island. Just one month (July) here are more or less good weather. During this period, the island is favorable for mooring ships and boats. True, there are not so many who want to visit this island, there are too many shoals and sharp reefs in the area. Surprisingly, these dangers are also able to hide, acquiring the color of sea water.

Now Sable Island belongs to Canada. It is inhabited, 15-25 people live here. These are workers and specialists from the Canadian Department of Transport who monitor the island's hydrometeorological center, radio station and lighthouses. Their duties include the rescue of shipwrecked people within the island.

The oceans are rich in mysterious mysterious and dangerous places for people. These are little-studied plots of land in boundless waters, and killer waves, and the Devil's belt, and insidious whirlpools, and underground volcanoes, and huge tsunamis. It is simply impossible to enumerate all the diverse insidiousness of the mighty waters. Not the last place in this sad series is occupied by Sable Island. It is located in the North Atlantic, not far from Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia is a peninsula containing the Canadian province of the same name. The above-named island is only 180 km from it. This piece of land is located northeast of Halifax, the capital of the administrative entity. It has the shape of an elongated crescent and very small sizes. Its length is only 40 kilometers, and the width reaches one and a half kilometers at its widest point.

The relief of the island - sandy hills and long dunes, alternating with small patches of land with grassy vegetation. The highest hill on the island reaches a height of 34 meters and is called Riggin Hill. There are no rivers or streams. There are several lakes. The largest and deepest of them is Wallace Lake. Its depth reaches 4 meters. The water in it is brackish, as the reservoir is very close to the ocean. High waves, during storms, easily overcome a narrow stretch of land and sea salt dilutes fresh water.

There are no trees or shrubs on Sable Island. The ball here is ruled by sand. It is he who is responsible for the fact that this curved narrow piece of land is constantly moving and gradually moving away from the Canadian coast. The speed of its movement is 230 meters per year. Over the past 200 years, the island has sailed almost 40 km from the mainland.

Of course, such "swimming" cannot be taken literally. The thing is that the western sandy part of the island is constantly washed away by sea waters. The sand is transported to the eastern part, which for this reason builds up all the time. As a result, it seems that the island is moving, moving further and further into the open ocean.

But Sable Island is remarkable not only for its “movement”. For several hundred years it has been called the "devourer of ships." Where did such a gloomy phrase come from?

The thing here is that this piece of land is very difficult to see from the deck of a sailing ship. The sand on the island has an amazing property to take on the color of a sea wave and merge with the ocean. This optical effect at all times led to the fact that ships plowing the ocean near the Canadian coast, very often, with their entire mass, wedged into the coastline of the treacherous sandy land. Heavy ships ran aground and received holes. The sailors who were on them either drowned or got out to the island.

The further fate of the surviving people developed in different ways. But the fate of the damaged ships was unambiguous. The coastal sand began, in the truest sense of the word, to suck in the wrecked ocean ships. And it happened very quickly. In less than a month, the ship was completely hidden in the sandy soil. Only the masts remained on the surface, which disappeared over the next couple of weeks.

This was observed 400, and 300, and 200 years ago. At first, the island devoured small wooden ships, then huge sailboats, and finally the turn came to ships with steel hulls. Dimensions ocean liners played no role. Everything was sucked into the sand, like into a bottomless swamp.

Caught in a fatal embrace, the ship at first sank into the quicksand slowly. The island, as it were, was tasting a new object and was in no hurry to swallow it. But every day the process of immersion accelerated. Within a couple of weeks, the huge ship was half hidden in the sand. Another 10 days, and the rest of the hull went into sandy soil. A month and a half later, there were no traces of the liner.

Nowadays, the sand is sometimes washed away and part of a hull is exposed. It can turn out to be a sailing ship of the 17th century, and a well-tailored ship of the 20th century. A little time passes, and the sand is washed again and hides the traces of their crimes.

It is still unknown who discovered Sable Island. Many researchers claim that the Vikings landed on it for the first time 1000 years ago. These eternal sea travelers plied the seas and oceans in all directions. They visited North America long before Columbus and naturally honored the mysterious island with their attention.

There are some serious arguments against this assertion. There is an opinion that this piece of land became an island only 500 years ago. Prior to that, it was part of the continental landmass. Then, for unknown reasons, a piece of land broke away from the mainland and began to move away into the ocean.

At first he had a very big sizes. The length of this formation was 370 km, and the width was 300 km. These figures are taken from nautical charts of the 16th century. That is, at that time they already knew about the island. It's not really clear what he was. It is not known what kind of relief it had and what kind of soil.

Some researchers believe that Jean de Lery discovered Sable Island. The same French traveler who lived for a long time in South America among the Indians. So this is the beginning of the second half of the XVI century. Other historians point to the British whalers. Allegedly, at the end of the 16th century, they first set foot on the sandy soil of the mysterious island. In short, the question of the discoverer or discoverers remains open.

The bloodthirsty essence of the island was not immediately understood by people. Shipwrecks happened all over the ocean, there was no radio communication in ancient times. More than a dozen years passed before the sailors began to guess that a small piece of land was fraught with mortal danger.

However, shipwrecked near unsteady sandy shores very often got out on land and felt quite at ease on it. lakes with fresh water, some kind of vegetation, the remains of ship hulls - all this gave people the opportunity to somehow arrange their temporary life. Fur seals served as food. Their colonies settled on the island from time immemorial. True, after the end of the mating season, these eared seals swam into the sea and were absent for 6 months. This undoubtedly affected the condition of people if they got to the island when there were no living creatures on it.

At the end of the 18th century, horses appeared on a mysterious piece of land. They survived in harsh conditions and adapted to them quite well. How these artiodactyls got to the island is unknown. Most likely ended up on it in connection with a shipwreck. Currently, about 300 heads of wild horses live on Sable Island. As for people, they settled on sandy soil at the end of the 19th century. These were not settlers, but civil servants. Frequent shipwrecks forced the British, who at that time already owned the island after the French, to build a lighthouse on it. That is, the employees were the servants of this lighthouse, and were also considered a rescue team.

In the middle of the 20th century, 2 lighthouses and a radio beacon were installed on the treacherous land. In the 21st century, Sable Island became a nature reserve. Nowadays, it can only be accessed with a special permit. Here, fur seals and wild horses are protected by law.

This is Canadian soil. Employees live on it with their families. The total population does not exceed 30 people. The task of specialists is to maintain lighthouses, radio stations and the Hydrometeorological Center. Also, these people are rescuers, but over the past 65 years there have been no shipwrecks near the island.

Of all the buildings, there are two houses resting on a solid foundation. In addition to them, there are also trailer houses. There are no other buildings on the crescent-shaped patch of land, except for the hangar for rescue boats.

There is a kind of monument built from ship masts. It is all hung with boards with the names of the ships that died near the loose banks. This chronology has been conducted since 1800. Taking into account the previous centuries, we can safely say that hundreds of ships found their end near the insidious land.

There is a strong opinion that the values ​​that lie in the sands are worth several tens of millions of dollars. This is expensive dishes, and works of art, and gold. All these items were once transported by ships and found their end near the unsteady shores.

Given the special status of the island, no work is being done on the extraction of marine treasures on it. The inhabitants themselves are more busy growing gardens than looking for some treasures. Fishing is also an integral part of life. There are a lot of fish in coastal waters.

Despite the fact that a person has settled this sandy piece of land for a very long time, he is the greatest mystery World Ocean. Even 40 years ago, the island was predicted to disappear completely. He "moved" into the ocean and by all laws should have disappeared. But nothing of the sort happened. Sable Island not only did not disappear, but even slightly increased in size. This contradicts all established judgments about the world around us, but the fact is there. So the solution to this natural phenomenon is yet to come.

In the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean, about 180 km southeast of the coast of Canada, drifts the "nomadic" crescent-shaped island of Sable (Sable Island). This island is considered one of the most dangerous and mysterious islands in the world. Geographical coordinates Sable Islands: 43°55′57″ N 59°52′48″ W

Ever since this small island was discovered by Europeans, it has inspired genuine horror in the hearts of even the bravest sailors. As soon as it was not called: “island of shipwrecks”, “deadly saber”, “devourer of ships”, “island of ghosts” ...

Today, Sable Island is referred to as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. By the way, its official name in English means black, mourning color (sable).

This land, ringed by water, received its notoriety not by chance - shipwrecks really constantly occurred here. Now it is difficult to say for how many ships it has become the last harbor ...

The fact is that in the coastal waters of the Sable, navigation is greatly complicated due to two currents encountered here - the warm Gulf Stream and the cold Lambrador. Currents give rise to whirlpools, huge waves and the movement of a sandy island.

Sable Island is constantly moving in the waters of the ocean. The western end of the island, under the continuous action of the currents and powerful waves of the Atlantic, is gradually washed away and disappears, while the eastern end is being washed in and lengthened, and thus the island is continuously moving east, gradually moving away from the coast of Nova Scotia.

It is estimated that over the past two hundred years, Sable has "walked" the ocean for almost ten nautical miles. The current speed of its movement is also known - about 230 meters per year. Moreover, along with the position of the insidious island, which is poorly visible due to constant fogs and giant waves, its size is constantly changing.

If you look at the maps of the 16th century, we will see that its length was about 300 km, but now it has decreased to 42. It was assumed that the island would soon disappear completely, but over the past century, to the surprise of many inquisitive minds, it began to increase.

A storm on Sable is usually preceded by an unusually dazzling sunrise. It would seem that a wonderful morning should end in the same way. beautiful sunset. But God knows where the shroud of thunderclouds appeared from, covers the sun, the sky turns black, and now the wind is whistling thinly in the dunes. It grows stronger, howls, tears off the sand from the tops of the dunes and drives it across the island into the ocean... Because of this splitting sand, there is not a single tree on the island, not even bushes. Only in the valley between two ridges of dunes grow stunted grass and wild peas.

The main danger that lies in wait for ships at Sable is the quicksands of the shoals, a kind of "ocean quagmire". Sailors and fishermen seriously say that they tend to take on the color of ocean water. The quicksands of the insidious island literally devour the ships that have been captured by them. It is authentically known that steamships with a displacement of five thousand tons, a length of 100-120 meters, which ended up on the shallows of Sable Island, completely disappeared from sight within two to three months. These sands have become a natural talisman for sunken treasures and an eternal grave for someone's remains.

The last victim of the insatiable and mysterious island was the American steamship Manhassent in 1947. After this tragedy, 2 beacons and a radio station were installed on Sable - since then, the disasters have finally stopped.

Now about 20-25 people permanently live on Sable Island - they all serve the lighthouses, the radio station and the local hydrometeorological center, and are also trained to conduct rescue operations- in case of a shipwreck.

These people work in very difficult conditions, and not only due to heavy fogs and hurricane winds - many of them say that they sometimes see the ghosts of dead sailors. Not surprising, because they live literally on the bones.

One of the workers even had to be evacuated from the island, because every night he was begged for help by a ghost with the victim here in 1926, the wreck of the schooner "Sylvia Mosher" ...

• More than one sailor who has sailed the waters of the Atlantic Ocean can tell the story that before a storm near Sable there is often an extremely bright sunrise. But a few hours are enough, as the beautiful sunny weather turns into a real nightmare.
• The people who are part of the personnel serving the lighthouses and the meteorological station are constantly over the bones of the sailors who died on the island (we are talking about thousands of corpses). The very understanding of this requires a very stable psyche. The rangers have talked about ghosts more than once. Moreover, in the 1950s one of the lighthouse keepers had to be urgently returned to the continent. He claimed that he was haunted by the ghosts of the ship "Sylvia Mosher" and asked to save them ... Would you be able to live in such a place?
• Everyone who works for Sable has their own collection of relics from lost ships. Many have gold coins and rare antiques.
• Since 1920, only two people can boast that they were born in the "graveyard of the Atlantic."
• Sable Island horses featured on 2005 Canadian stamps and coins.

Photo - Sable Island

Video - the secret of Sable Island

Sable can without mistake be called the most amazing, most mysterious and most insidious island ever put on the map of the globe by people.

Perhaps the most surprising thing is that Sable is constantly moving. This is a nomadic island, constantly changing its size, configuration and coordinates. On maps of the 16th century, published in France, England and Italy, its length varies from 150 to 200 miles, and already in 1633 the Dutch geographer Johann Last, describing Sable in his atlas, reports:

"... the island has a circumference of about forty miles, the sea here is stormy and shallow, there are no harbors, the island has received a bad reputation as a place of constant shipwrecks."

Sable is located 110 miles southeast of Halifax, near the mainland, just in the area where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current. This led to the formation of a giant shoal of sand, pebbles and shells, which once stretched in the form of a crescent to Cape Cod. Geologists believe that Sable is nothing more than the top of this crescent protruding from under the water.

Stretching from east to west for 24 miles, Sable is not more than one mile wide. The surface of the island is occupied by two almost parallel sandy ridges that stretch along the island and, under the influence of the wind, form into dunes and hills, constantly changing their position and shape. In places, the surface of the island is covered with grassy vegetation. Most high point the islands are Rigging Hills 34 m high. Four miles from the western tip of the island is the semi-salty Wallace Lake with depths of 1.5 - 4 m. Ocean waves penetrate it, rolling over the dunes.

The western tip of the island, under the continuous action of the currents and waves of the Atlantic, is gradually eroded and disappears, while the eastern one, on the contrary, is washed out and enlarged. Every year, new sandbanks form at the eastern edge of the island, and the island, thus, continuously moves east, gradually moving away from the coast of Nova Scotia. It is estimated that over the past two hundred years, Sable has "walked" the ocean for almost ten nautical miles. Even the speed of its movement is known: 1/8 mile (about 230 m) per year.

In the last century, scientists assumed that since the island moves away from the coast, moving towards greater depth, then it should completely disappear from the surface of the ocean in a few years. But this did not happen. Quite the contrary: compared to the last century, Sable has grown in size. Recent measurements have shown that it is now two miles longer than it was 75 years ago.

Sable stands on the ocean shipping route across the North Atlantic - the busiest and busiest sea route in the world - and is a great danger to ships. Since the height of the Sable does not exceed 34 m above sea level, it is almost imperceptible from the sea. Only on fine days from the deck of a ship can one discern on the horizon a narrow sandy strip of this island.

Canadian fishermen claim that the coastal sands of the island, like chameleons, adapt their color to the color of the ocean. How often, in these waters, bewildered captains passed through the island, leading their ships to certain destruction!

Dangers await sailors, mainly at the eastern and western capes of the island. From East Point Cape, a drying sand bar stretches 3.5 miles to the northeast, over which breakers are observed during storms. From West Point, the same drying spit extends two miles to the northwest, and West Bar Shoal extends 19 miles west-northwest of it. In the region of the northern edge of this shoal, in stormy weather, there is a wave directed against the wind. The boundaries and topography of the West Bar are constantly changing.

Parallel to the northern coast of the island, at a distance of 4 cables from it, sandy ridges with shallow depths extend in places, over which breakers rage during a storm.

White foam of breakers constantly boils around the island, and only in summer, in July, when the fury of the ocean subsides, you can approach the island (only its northern side) by boat.

A storm on Sable is usually preceded by an unusually dazzling sunrise. But God knows where the haze of lead clouds came from, clouds the sun, the sky darkens almost to blackness, and now the wind whistled thinly in the dunes. It grows stronger, begins to howl and tear off sand from the tops of the dunes and drives it across the island into the ocean... Because of this cutting sand, there is not a single tree or even bushes on the island. Only in the valley between two ridges of dunes grows stunted grass and wild peas.

The tidal current at Sable goes north at a speed of 1-1.5 knots, and the ebb current, directed to the south, passes through the shallows of the eastern and western ends of the island at a speed of up to 2 knots. Moreover, these currents are deceptive: under the influence of the wind, their speed and direction change.

The main danger that awaits sailors at Sable is the quicksand of its shallows. This is a kind of "quagmire of the ocean", which can only be observed on Goodwin Sands and near Hatteras. The sands of the insidious island literally absorb the ships that have fallen into their arms.

It is authentically known that steamships with a displacement of 5000 tons and a length of 100 - 120 m that ended up on the shallows of Sable completely disappeared from sight within two to three months. The sailors dubbed this island the "ship eater".

Once, at the end of the last century, a well-known American scientist, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, witnessed how ships disappear in front of our eyes in the sands of Sable. He was shocked by the drama that took place near Sable on July 4, 1898, when the French steamer La Bourgogne sank as a result of a collision. The scientist believed that some of the people from the ship got to Sable, waiting for help there. Bell, using his own money, organized a rescue expedition, arrived on the island and carefully examined it. To his chagrin, there were no survivors from the disaster. While waiting for the steamer, Bell lived on the island for several weeks. The scientist turned out to be an eyewitness to the burial of the huge American four-masted barque Crofton Hall. In July 1898, Bell wrote: “The barque ran aground in April of this year. The magnificent vessel seemed unharmed, except for the fact that its hull was cracked in the middle. Today the sands have swallowed up the victim completely.”

The history of Sable is a continuous chronicle of human tragedies, it is a continuous chain of events connected exclusively with shipwrecks and all kinds of crimes. According to the documents preserved at the rescue station of the island, the lighthouse keeper Johnson mapped the places and dates of the death of ships since 1800. By counting the number of ships forever stuck in the sands of the island, you will get that every two years an average of three ships were wrecked here. And what happened before 1800? Historical documents in the form of numerous volumes of the Chronicles of Shipwrecks, various marine chronicles and other sources allow us to judge that even before the beginning of the 19th century. Sable was a gigantic graveyard of the North Atlantic, and perhaps no less than the Ship Eater Sir Goodwin.

Here, under many meters of sand, the sharp-breasted boats of the brave Vikings, the clumsy carracks and galleons of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, the gulets of the fishermen of Brittany, the strong pine ships of the Nantucket whalers, the English shmak, cutters from Goul, heavy three-masted ships

The West India Company, elegant American clippers... All this armada of ships that has sunk into oblivion is crushed by the heavy hulls of steamships.

Moving and constantly changing its shape, Sable has been constant since the days of the ancient Vikings in only one thing: in his irreconcilable hostility to the ships passing by him.

The reasons why the ships ended up off the coast of a dangerous island were different: some ships stumbled upon it, getting lost in the fog, others were carried to its shallows by the current, others did not notice it in the shroud of rain, and, finally, most of the ships found their last refuge here in storm time.

The strength of storms near Sable can be judged at least by this fact. In August 1926, two American schooners, the Sylvia Mosher and the Sadie Nickle, were lost on the same day near the island. The first capsized on the shallows, and her crew died. The second wave was thrown over the spit of the island from one side to the other, where it also capsized and was later washed away with sand. In general, 1926 turned out to be unhappy for the sailors and very “fruitful” for the “ship-eater”. In addition to two schooners, Sable's annual menu included two steamers: the Canadian Labrador and the English Harold Kasper.

The first was in the tenacious embrace of the island, lost in the fog. The second, following from England to New York with a cargo of coal, on February 11 was carried by a storm to the shallows of Sable and also got stuck in the sands.

After each storm, Sable changes the terrain of his coastline. About a hundred years ago, long storms washed out a channel in the north side of Sable: a large inner harbor was formed inside the island, which for many years served as a refuge for fishermen. But one day, another strong storm closed the entrance to the bay, and two American schooners remained forever in it, as if in a trap. Over time, this closed bay turned into an inland fresh-salt lake 7 miles long. It's called Wallace. Now it is used for landing seaplanes that deliver mail and food to the island.

Sometimes, after particularly strong and prolonged storms, the sandbanks and dunes of the island, having moved under the influence of ocean waves, reveal to the human eye the remains of ships that disappeared centuries ago. So, a quarter of a century ago, a solid Indian teak hull of an American clipper ship, which went missing a hundred years ago, “resurrected” from quicksand. Three months passed, and dunes 30 meters high grew over the hull of the resurrected ship...

Sable is one of the most "conscientious" and generous suppliers of unique exhibits to the non-existent museum of romantic relics of the past. After a strong wind, the current inhabitants of the island find rusty anchors, muskets, sabers, grappling hooks and many old coins in the dunes ... gold doubloons minted in 1760. Later they found a dense bundle of banknotes - English pounds sterling of the middle of the last century - in the amount of ten thousand. Nearby lay an old boot, from which bones spilled out.
Gold coins are not uncommon here. Nautical chronicles of the past indicate the names and date of the death of the ships, on board of which there was gold in the form of ingots and coins.

A calculation shows that the value of the valuables resting in the sands of Sable is almost 2 million pounds sterling at the modern rate. And this, if we take into account only the ships, about which information has been preserved, that at the time of death there was a valuable cargo on board.

The first settlers of Sable were shipwrecked: for them, this meager piece of land, having become the cause of misfortune, became a refuge. From the wreckage of ships scattered around the cemetery, the unfortunate made their homes. To their surprise, the first Robinsons saw cows in the valley of the island. These animals were left there by the Frenchman Leri in 1508, when he first visited Sable. Animals bred and became feral. Sailors in distress could also feed on fur seals, for whom the local sandbanks are still a favorite haulout. The semi-salty lake of the island abounded with fish, and seabirds nested on its shores.

The tragedy of the sailors who got on Sable was aggravated by the fact that they had nowhere to wait for help: the ships avoided approaching the terrible island, even when they saw the smoke of signal fires above it. What else could they expect? For someone else's tragedy? The fact that the next doomed ship will bring them essential items in its wreckage and, most importantly! - a few pounds of table salt? Yes, probably for that too.

Sometimes Sable turned out to be the patrimony of the pirates of the North Atlantic ... Probably, the "gentlemen of fortune" buried their treasures here, burned false fires on the dunes of the island in order to trap merchant ships. How many crimes were committed here and how many criminals Sable sheltered will remain forever a mystery. Until now, many superstitious residents of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia consider Sable a god-cursed place and the abode of evil spirits and ghosts. That's what they call it "The Ghost Island".

At the end of the XVI century. Sable suddenly became a penal island. In 1598, 48 criminals appeared on it. They were landed from the French ship of the Marquis de La Roche, who intended to establish a colony on Nova Scotia. After a strong and prolonged northwest storm in the ocean, the ship began to leak. Never having reached the goal, De La Roche turned back to the shores of Europe. Seeing the island, the marquis did not think of anything else but to land the "extra cargo" on Sable. So that the convicts would not die of hunger, he left them 50 sheep. The unfortunate people were remembered only seven years later. Apparently, remorse prompted the King of France to sign a pardon for them. In the summer of 1605, a ship sent to Sable brought eleven overgrown, dehumanized people dressed in sheepskins to Cherbourg. The rest, not bearing such grave hardships, perished. Surprisingly, five of those who returned to their homeland asked the king to allow them to return to Sable. The king not only agreed, but ordered to supply them with everything necessary. Thus a small French colony was formed. And when in 1635 one of the ships was returning from Connecticut to England and was wrecked on Sable, its crew was rescued and delivered to the American mainland by these French Robinsons.

Years passed. News of the too frequent shipwrecks near Sable Island began to reach Europe more and more often. The navigators demanded from their governments the construction of a lighthouse and a lifesaving station on the island. But neither France, which at that time owned Sable and lost two ships of the Anvil expedition here in 1746, nor England - the "mistress of the seas", nor Holland - no one wanted to mess with such a tiny territory ... and if not for the case, - who knows how long Sable would have remained, as they say, "in the dark."

At the beginning of 1800, the British authorities found valuable things among the fishermen of Nova Scotia: gold coins and trinkets, geographic Maps with the coat of arms of the Duke of York, books from his personal library and even his furniture. Simple-minded fishermen called these things "things from Sable." It turned out that they exchanged them for fish from the settlers of the "island of the Sands." This alarmed the British. In addition, the Francis ship did not come from Nova Scotia to London. After all, it carried the personal effects of the Duke of York!

The English Admiralty suggested that after the death of the Francis, the people on board got to Sable, but were killed by his Robinsons. And so a punitive expedition was sent to the island. However, it turned out that no one killed people from the dead ship. They all died, and the islanders could not help them in any way - there was not even a lifeboat on the island.

Less than a year after the sinking of the Francis, the English ship Princess Amelia sank in quicksand. Of the more than two hundred people of the team, officers and soldiers, no one escaped. Another English ship that came to the rescue also got stuck in the sands of the island, and everyone on it also died. Three ships lost on Sable and decided the matter: the British finally set up a lighthouse and created a rescue station on a dangerous island. Her servants were charged with the duty to assist the shipwrecked and save property from sea robbers. And in England itself, at that time, announcements were posted prohibiting anyone, except for rescuers, under pain of death, to settle on the island without government permission.

What in 1802 was loudly called the "rescue station" was a well-knit barn, a hundred to fifty meters from the shore. In it, on wooden skids, stood an ordinary whaling whaleboat. There was a stable nearby - no, horses were not specially brought here! Horses lived here long before that. And now there are about three hundred of them on the island. No one really knows where they came from. According to one version, these are the descendants of cavalry horses who came to the island from a French ship that sank on the shallows of Sable at the end of the 18th century. According to another version, they were brought to the island by a certain Thomas Hancock, the uncle of the famous John Hancock, a famous American patriot during the Revolutionary War.

Sable's horses are more like large ponies than horses. They are very wild, hardy, live in a herd, eating sedge, wild peas and some flowers that grow only on Sable.

Every day, four rescuers circled the island along the surf, following from its different sides towards each other. They searched in the mist for sails, to see if the ocean had washed up the wreckage. So they noticed a ship that was dying near the island ... The sentinels rush at a gallop to the barn and sound the alarm. The rowers on duty harness four ponies to the team, they drag the whaleboat to the water. Skillfully overcoming the first three waves of the surf, the rowers rush to where the ship is in distress. Meanwhile, the rest of the rescuers, including the lighthouse keeper, are already jumping to the scene by land.

Then a rope is thrown from the sinking ship to the island: this is the only way to wrest people in trouble from Sable's mouth.

Until now, in English sailing directions describing the Nova Scotia area, an important note has been preserved: “If the ship is stranded near Sable Island, the crew should remain on board until the rescue station provides assistance. Practice shows that all attempts to escape on the boats of the vessel invariably ended in human casualties.

In the annals of shipwrecks, only eight ships are registered that managed to get out of the tenacious embrace of Sable and avoid death.

In 1852, a new, larger rescue station building was built on the island, and the wooden whaleboat was replaced with a new one - an iron one. In 1893, a new building was erected, but a strong storm destroyed it to the ground in one night - it had to be rebuilt and more reliable.

The situation was worse on Sable with lighthouses. Since 1802 the wooden structure of the only light tower stood in the middle part of the island. In 1873, when, despite numerous repairs and fortifications, the lighthouse tower was completely dilapidated, the lighthouse was replaced by two new ones with an iron openwork structure. The eastern lighthouse successfully served for about a hundred years, but the western one had to be replaced six times: the insatiable Sable "swallowed" six of his lighthouses. People knew that the island was stubbornly crawling to the east, leaving its western “tail”, where the lighthouse stood, under water, but they simply did not have time to move it to another place. So it was necessary to deliver new designs of lighthouse towers from the continent six times.

As before, hundreds of merchant ships pass by the island every day flying over the flags of the countries of the whole planet. The captains, laying a course on the maps, try to pass the island at a considerable distance. And although today Sable is no longer such a danger as before, sailors do not like to approach him. But what if?

Two lighthouses, standing on each edge of the island, send warning beams into the night. Their light in clear weather is visible for 16 nautical miles. All around the clock, clear beacon warning signals are heard on the air. It was thanks to him that shipwrecks off the coast of the island actually stopped. The last victim, the large American steamship Manhassent, was swallowed up by the island in 1947.

A power station was built on Sable, powered by a diesel generator. A few years ago, a large warehouse, a forge, a carpentry workshop, a hostel for the shipwrecked (in case it happens) and a hangar were built here, where metal whaleboats stand on rails, ready to be launched at any moment. These ships are not afraid of any waves, they are unsinkable and so stable that they practically cannot capsize. But if this happens, then the ship flooded with water is arranged in such a way that it again rises on an even keel.

Of the old buildings on Sable, only the building of the old rescue station, a kind of landmark of the island, has been preserved. The station was built from ship masts, topmasts and yards thrown out by the ocean onto the island. To the walls of this building are nailed "name boards" with the names of the courts. These boards also washed up on the island. These are, as it were, the remaining passports of the former victims of the “ship eater”.

Until now, a herd of three hundred wild ponies lives on Sable. On those that are tamed, caretakers go around the coast of the island every day. They look to see if a yacht or a fishing boat has washed up on the shallows, if a bottle or a plastic envelope with a note is lying on the sand - to study the sea currents. Travelers of the island often meet the most curious finds in the sand. Each family living on Sable thus has a good collection of maritime relics. Ancient gold coins are still found in the sand.

Although the Canadian Department of Transportation, which includes Sable, has tried to create the maximum comfort for its residents, their work is not easy and dangerous. The meteorological conditions here are so severe that people often get nervous. Long-lasting hurricane-force storms often keep the inhabitants of the island from leaving the shelter of buildings for weeks. But this is not what they consider the most difficult in their stay on the island. The question rests on another, rather psychological, rather than physical, tension. And indeed, living on a remote, forever shrouded in fog and tormented by a storm island is not easy. But it is even more difficult to realize all the time that you do not live on an ordinary island, but on an island-cemetery. Every now and then, human skulls and bones that come across in the sand make the inhabitants of the island remember that the remains of tens of thousands of shipwreck victims lie under their feet. Who is pleased?

In our time, the great "devourer of ships" is practically neutralized. From 1947 to this day, not a single case of death in its quicksand of a large vessel has been noted. But the sailors are still vigilantly peering into the fog, passing by a dangerous island. Not for a moment does the formidable warning of the radio beacon cease: "You are passing near Sable Island - the cemetery of the North Atlantic."

It so happened that sable island(Sable Island) is one of the most dangerous and mysterious islands in the world. It is located in the Atlantic Ocean and belongs to Canada. Lies southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The area of ​​the island is small, but for the concept of uniqueness, let's say that its length is 42 km, and its width is ... no more than 1.5 km. From the air, Sable resembles some kind of huge worm. Although the size of the island is a relative thing ... The fact is that Sable - living island! Alive in the sense that it moves! No typo, the island really moves. If you look at the old nautical charts of the 16th-17th centuries, you can see that the size of Sable is much larger than today - 270-380 km.

For almost five centuries, the name of the island struck terror into the hearts of navigators, and, finally, it gained such a gloomy fame that it began to be called the "island of shipwrecks", "devourer of ships", "deadly saber", "island of ghosts", "graveyard of a thousand dead ships.

Refers to inhabited islands. There are 5 people living on Sable who work at the meteorological station and monitor the lighthouse. Note that earlier the staff was larger and consisted of 15-25 people. Since over time the danger from Sable ceased to emanate, the contingent was reduced.

Many call this place not just mysterious, but the most cursed. Believe me, there are reasons for this. No one can say with accuracy how many ships died here. Some call the figure 350, others - about 500. The important thing is that for many, Sable was the last thing they saw in their lives. " Cemetery of the Atlantic' Sailors call him. In an incomprehensible way, the sand on the shores of the "living island" tends to "adjust" to the color of the sea waves. This optical effect is the main cause of the death of ships. Ships (especially in bad weather) crashed into the coastline at all speeds, and the crew thought until the very collision that there was only an immense ocean ahead ...

Some lucky ones managed to survive and for some time they lived on the island. But the ships that ran aground had the same fate - they were swallowed up by quicksand. For two months, not even a trace of large ships remained! (hence the phrase " ship eater»).

Until now, no one knows for sure who discovered this ill-fated piece of land, cursed by many generations of sailors. The Norwegians claim that the Vikings were the first to stumble upon it, who even before Columbus sailed the ocean to North America. The French believe that the discoverers of Sable were the fishermen of Normandy and Brittany, who at the very beginning of the 16th century were already fishing for cod and halibut on the Newfoundland shallows. Finally, the English, who, after the French, added the island to their once vast possessions, declare that the island was discovered by their whalers, who settled on the shores of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Some British geographers, speaking of this, refer to the name of the island itself: the first meaning of the word "SABLE" in English language- "sable". Strange, isn't it? After all, sables have never been found on this island. Maybe the fact is that the image of the island on the map resembles a jumping animal? Some etymologists tend to see a kind of historical incident in the name of the island. They believe that the island was previously designated by English maps the word "SABRE" and that some cartographer mistakenly replaced the "R" with the letter "L". By the way, "SABER", which means "saber", is the best fit for an island that really looks like a scimitar. The second meaning of the word "SABLE" (with a poetic touch) is black, gloomy, sad, terrible - as applied to the "island of shipwrecks" is also quite understandable and logical.

Most modern geographers and historians, however, agree that Sable was discovered by the French traveler Leri, who in 1508 sailed from Europe to the "Land of the Bretons" - a peninsula that the British later called Acadia and even later - Nova Scotia. It is possible that the supporters of this particular version are right, claiming that the navigator Leri gave the new island the French name "SABLE". After all, in French it means “sand”, and the island actually consists only of sand.

By the way, about poets. Sable's stories and "reputation" have inspired many writers, including Thomas-Chandler Haliburton, James MacDonald, Thomas H. Ruddal, and others.

Clickable

North Atlantic Cemetery

On the maps of the 16th century, published in France, England and Italy, the length of the island is estimated at 150-200 miles, and already in 1633 the Dutch geographer Johann Last, describing Sable, reports: “... the island has a circumference of about forty miles, the sea is stormy here and shallow water, no harbors, the island has received a bad reputation as a place of constant shipwrecks.

Sable is located 110 miles southeast of Halifax, near the mainland - just in the area where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current. It was this circumstance that led to the formation here of a giant crescent-shaped sandy mound, which once extended to Cape Cod. Geologists believe that Sable is nothing more than the top of this crescent protruding from under the water.

In its present state, the island stretches from east to west for 24 miles. The prevailing relief is dunes and sand hills. In places there are patches of herbaceous vegetation. The highest "mountain" here is Riggin Hill, 34 meters high. Four miles from the western tip of the island is the semi-salty Wallace Lake, no more than four meters deep. Although it does not communicate with the ocean, the waves still get into it, rolling over the dunes.

The western end of the island, under the continuous action of the currents and waves of the Atlantic, gradually erodes and disappears, while the eastern end is washed out, lengthened, and thus the island continuously moves east, gradually moving away from the coast of Nova Scotia. It is estimated that over the past two hundred years, Sable has "walked" the ocean for almost ten nautical miles. The current speed of its movement is also known - about 230 meters per year.

The height of Sable above the ocean level, as we already know, is small, and therefore it is almost imperceptible from the sea. Only on very fine days from the deck of a ship can one discern a narrow strip of sand on the horizon.

And clear weather happens here only in July, when the fury of the ocean subsides, and you can approach the island from the north side by boat.

A storm on Sable is usually preceded by an unusually dazzling sunrise. It would seem that a wonderful morning should end with an equally beautiful sunset. But God knows where the veil of lead clouds has appeared, covering the sun, the sky turns black, and now the wind is whistling thinly in the dunes. It grows stronger, howls, tears off the sand from the tops of the dunes and drives it across the island into the ocean ... Because of this cutting sand, there is not a single tree on the island, not even bushes. Only in the valley between two ridges of dunes grow stunted grass and wild peas.

The main danger that lies in wait for ships at Sable is the quicksands of the shallows, a kind of "ocean quagmire". Sailors and fishermen seriously say that they tend to take on the color of ocean water. The quicksands of the insidious island literally devour the ships that have been captured by them. It is authentically known that steamships with a displacement of five thousand tons, a length of 100-120 meters, which ended up on the shallows of Sable, completely disappeared from sight within two to three months.

The famous American scientist Alexander Graham Bell hurried to the aid of the French steamer La Bourgogne, which was in distress on July 4, 1898, near Sable. The scientist was sure that some of the people from the ship got to Sable, waiting for help there. Bell, using his own money, organized a rescue expedition, arrived on the island and carefully examined it. Alas, there were no survivors after the disaster. While waiting for the steamer, Bell lived on the island for several weeks, settling in the house of the lighthouse keeper, Boutilier, and the lifeguard Smallcombe. In July 1898, Bell wrote: “The barque Crafton Hall ran aground in April of this year. The magnificent vessel seemed unharmed, except for the fact that its hull was cracked in the middle. Today, the fishing lines have completely swallowed up the victim.”

According to the documents preserved at the island's lifeguard station, Johnson, the lighthouse keeper, plotted the places and dates of ship wrecks on the Sable map starting in 1800. And it turned out that every two years an average of three ships were wrecked here.

And what happened before 1800?

The moving and changeable Sable has been constant since the time of the ancient Vikings in only one thing: its irreconcilable hostility to passing ships.

Historical documents - for example, numerous volumes of the Chronicle of Shipwrecks, marine chronicles and other sources - suggest that in ancient times Sable served as a giant ship graveyard of the North Atlantic. Here, under many meters of sand, the sharp-breasted canoes of the brave Vikings, the clumsy carracks and galleons of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, the gulets of the fishermen of Brittany, the strong pine ships of the Nantucket whalers, the English smacks, the cutters from Ghoul, the heavy three-masted ships of the West India Company, the elegant American clippers ... And this armada of sailing ships, which has sunk into oblivion, is crushed by the heavy hulls of sunken steamships sailing under the flags of all countries of the world. Some stumbled upon it, straying in the fog and a shroud of rain, others carried the current to the shallows, and most of the ships found their last refuge here during storms.

After each storm, Sable changes the topography of its coastline beyond recognition. About a hundred years ago, storms washed out a channel in the northern part of Sable: a large harbor formed inside the island, which for many years served as a refuge for fishermen. But once another strong storm closed the entrance to the bay, and two American schooners remained in this trap forever. Over time, the former harbor turned into an inland fresh-salty reservoir seven miles long. Now Wallace Lake serves as a landing area for seaplanes that deliver mail and products to the island.

Sometimes the sandbanks and dunes of the island, having moved under the influence of ocean waves, reveal to the human eye the remains of ships that disappeared a long time ago. So, a quarter of a century ago, the solid teak hull of an American clipper ship, which went missing in the last century, “resurrected” from quicksands. And three months later, dunes 30 meters high again grew over the hull ... From time to time, broken masts and yards are exposed sailing ships, steamship pipes, boilers, pieces of rusted ocean liners and even submarines.

Sable is one of the most conscientious and generous suppliers of unique exhibits to a non-existent museum of romantic relics of the past. The current inhabitants of the island find rusty anchors, muskets, sabers, grappling hooks and ancient coins in huge quantities in the dunes ... In 1963, the lighthouse keeper discovered in the sand a human skeleton, a bronze buckle from a boot, a musket barrel, several bullets and a dozen gold doubloons minted in 1760 . Later, a thick bundle of banknotes was found in the dunes - English pounds sterling of the middle of the last century - in the amount of ten thousand.

Some estimates show that the value of the valuables resting in the sands of Sable is almost two million pounds sterling at the modern rate. This is only if we take into account the ships, about which information has been preserved, that at the time of their death they were carrying valuable cargo on board.

The first "devouring" of the ship by Sable was recorded back in 1583. Then an English ship called "Delight" ("Delight"), which was part of the expedition of Humphrey Gilbert, rammed the sands of the island due to poor visibility. The last catastrophe is considered to be a shipwreck in 1947: the steamer "Manhasset" could not avoid a collision with the island. The entire crew was rescued. However, we managed to find information according to which in 1999 the Merrimac yacht “met” with the sands of the “living island” (navigation devices failed). The crew of three was not injured. The fate of the yacht is not known.

If you want to get to know the history of Sable Island in detail, we recommend reading books such as Sable Island: its History and Phenomena (1894, George Petterson); Sable Island, Fatal and Fertile Crescent (1974) and Sable Island Shipwrecks: Disaster and Survival at the North Atlantic Graveyard (1994) by Lial Campbell; "Dune Adrift: The Strange Origins and Curious History of Sable Island" (2004, Marc de Villers).

But there is a story that originates in the late 30s. the last century. Near our Sable, bad weather raged for several days in a row, storms were unusually strong even for these places. Giant waves literally “shaved” the island, removing balls of sand from it. God alone knows how many hundreds of tons were washed off the coast. When the ocean played enough, a scientific expedition arrived on the island. She discovered a huge hole in which there were eight ships that at different times were buried in the sands of Sable. There was no end to the surprise of the researchers when, among other ships, the remains of ... a Roman galley were discovered! There were debates in scientific circles about where the ancient galley could have come from. The ocean put an end to the disputes: a new storm covered the “grave of ships” with sand. The question remains open to this day...

Robinson convicts and rescue riders

The first settlers of Sable were shipwrecked: for them, this meager piece of land, having become the cause of misfortune, served as a shelter. From the wreckage of ships scattered over the cemetery of ships, the unfortunate built dwellings. To their surprise, the first Robinsons saw cows in the valley of the island. These animals, for some unknown reason, were left behind by the Frenchman Leri when he first visited Sable. Animals bred and became feral. Distressed fishermen could also feed on fur seals, for whom the local sandbanks are still a favorite rookery. The tragedy of the sailors who got on Sable was aggravated by the fact that they had nowhere to wait for help: the ships avoided approaching the terrible island, even when they saw the smoke of signal fires above it. What else could they expect? For someone else's tragedy? The fact that the next doomed ship will bring them, along with the wreckage, essentials and - most importantly! - a few pounds of table salt? Yes, probably for that too.

Sometimes "gentlemen of fortune" buried their treasures here. They burned false fires on the dunes to trap merchant ships.

How many crimes were committed here and how many criminals Sable sheltered will forever remain a mystery. Until now, many superstitious residents of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia consider Sable a god-cursed place and the abode of evil spirits and ghosts. They call it that: "THE GHOST ISLAND" - "Ghost Island".

In 1598, Sable suddenly turned into ... hard labor. Here, 48 criminals were landed from the French ship of the Marquis de La Roche. The Marquis actually intended to establish a colony in Nova Scotia, but after a long storm, his ship began to leak. Never having reached the goal, De La Roche turned back to the shores of Europe. Seeing the island, the marquis did not think of anything else but to land the "extra cargo" on Sable, and so that the convicts did not starve to death immediately, he left them fifty sheep. The exiles were remembered only seven years later, and the King of France signed a pardon for them. In the summer of 1605, a ship sent to Sable delivered eleven overgrown, dehumanized people dressed in sheep's skins to Cherbourg. The rest, unable to bear the hardships, died. Surprisingly, five of those who returned to their homeland asked the king to allow them to return to Sable. Henry IV not only agreed, but also ordered to supply them with everything necessary. Thus a small French colony was formed. And when, in 1635, a ship returning from Connecticut to England was wrecked on Sable, its crew was rescued and brought to the American mainland by these French Robinsons.

Years passed. News of shipwrecks near Sable Island began to reach Europe more and more often. The navigators demanded from their governments the construction of a lighthouse and a lifesaving station on the island. But neither France, which owned Sable at that time and lost two ships of the D’Anville expedition here in 1746, nor England, the “mistress of the seas,” nor Holland wanted to mess with such a tiny territory. And if it wasn't for the occasion...

At the beginning of 1800, the British authorities found illegal valuables among the fishermen who lived on the shores of Nova Scotia: gold coins, jewelry, geographical maps with the coat of arms of the Duke of York, books from his personal library, and even furniture with the same coat of arms. Simple-minded fishermen called these things "things from Sable." It turned out that they received them in exchange for fish from the settlers of the island. This alarmed the British. In addition, the Francis ship did not come from Nova Scotia to London, and after all, the Duke of York’s personal belongings were transported on it!

The English Admiralty came to the conclusion that after the death of the Francis, the crew on board made it safely to Sable, but were killed by the Robinsons. And so a punitive expedition was sent to the island, the settlers were interrogated. However, it turned out that no one killed people from the dead ship. They all disappeared into the depths of the sea, and the islanders were unable to help them, because they did not even have a lifeboat available.

Less than a year later, the English ship Princess Amelia sank in the quicksand of Sable. None of the more than 200 people escaped. Another English ship that came to the rescue again got stuck in the sands of the island, and everyone on it also died. Three ships lost on Sable and decided the matter: the British finally set out to put a lighthouse on a dangerous island and create a rescue station. Her servants were charged with the duty to assist the shipwrecked and save property from sea robbers. And in England itself, at that time, announcements were posted, under pain of death, forbidding anyone, except for rescuers, to settle on the island without government permission.

What in 1802 bore the loud name "rescue station" was a well-knit barn about a hundred and fifty meters from the shore. In it, an ordinary whaling whaleboat rested on wooden skids. Nearby is a stable. No, horses were not specially brought here. Horses have lived here since ancient times, although no one really knows where they came from on Sable. According to one version, these are the descendants of cavalry horses that sailed to the island from a certain French ship that once died on the shallows. According to another version, they were brought to the island by Thomas Hancock - the uncle of the famous John Hancock, a famous American patriot during the Revolutionary War. Sable horses are more like large ponies. They are very hardy, live in herds, feed on sedge, wild peas and some flowers that grow only on Sable.

Every day, four lifeguards on horseback rode around the island along the surf, following in pairs towards each other. They searched in the mist for sails, to see if the ocean had washed up the wreckage. Here a ship was seen dying near the island ... The sentinels rush at a gallop to the barn and sound the alarm. The rowers on duty harness four ponies to the team, they drag the whaleboat to the water. Skillfully overcoming the first three waves of the surf, the rowers rush to where the ship is in distress. Meanwhile, the rest of the rescuers, including the lighthouse keeper, are already jumping to the scene by land. Then a rope is thrown from the sinking ship to the island: this is the only way to wrest people in trouble from Sable's mouth.

In modern sailing directions, an important note is preserved: “If the ship is stranded near Sable Island, the crew should remain on board until the rescue station provides assistance. Practice shows that all attempts to escape on the boats of the vessel invariably ended in human casualties.

Only eight cases have been registered when ships managed to get out of the island's tenacious embrace and avoid death. The English three-masted Myrtle, which was distinguished by a very strong construction, was found in the autumn of 1840 near the Azores without any signs of a team. An investigation revealed that the Myrtle was washed up in a storm on the Sable Shoals in January of that year. The crew apparently died while attempting to disembark. For two months, the ship remained captive to the sands, until another storm pulled it from the shallows to clear water. This "Flying Dutchman" sailed in the ocean for several months until he was near the Azores.

The American fishing schooner "Arno" under the command of Captain Higgins fished near the island in 1846. A squall that unexpectedly swooped in at night tore off most of the sails and almost capsized the ship. At dawn, the captain realized that the current and the wind had carried the Arno to the shallows of Sable. Hope remained only at anchor. They were given away, having etched 100 fathoms of rope from each hawse. By noon, the northwest turned into a 9-magnitude storm. The ocean boiled over the shallows like water in a cauldron. The schooner was carried towards the deadly breakers. Higgis, not counting on the vigilance and vigilance of Sable's rescuers, decided to try his luck. To prevent panic on the ship, he locked the crew in the hold. He put two experienced sailors on the forecastle at each side and, so that they would not be washed away by the wave, he tied them to the railings. He grabbed the steering wheel himself. The schooner with incredible speed rushed to the shore. Tied sailors poured fish oil from barrels into the water. The wind drove him in front of the bow of the ship towards the island. This ancient and reliable method of smoothing the crests of waves with grease, blubber or oil is often used by sailors today when it is necessary to bring down the excitement. The breakers tossed the schooner across the sandy bar of the island, and she found herself safe at the foot of the surf-drenched dunes. Although all the people escaped, the schooner died - the next day it was broken by a storm, and the wreckage of the Arno hid in the sandy belly of Sable.

And this was the only case when the team did not need the help of the islanders.

Perhaps the most dramatic shipwreck off Sable was the sinking of the American passenger steamer State of Virginia on July 15, 1879. This steamship with a registered capacity of 2500 tons, 110 meters long, sailed from New York to Glasgow, with 129 passengers and crew on board. During a dense fog, the ship was stranded on the south side of the island. 120 passengers and crew were rescued by the island service. To the names of the smallest rescued girl, happy parents added a fourth - Nelly Sable Bagley Hord.

In the middle of the 19th century, a new station building was built on the island, and the wooden whaleboat was replaced with an iron one. In 1893, an even more solid building for rescuers was erected, but a strong storm destroyed it to the ground overnight.

With the lighthouses on Sable, things were much worse. At first, the wooden structure of the only lighthouse towered in the middle part of the island. In 1873, when, despite numerous repairs, the tower was completely dilapidated, the lighthouse was replaced by two new ones - metal, openwork construction. The eastern lighthouse successfully served for about a hundred years, but the western one had to be changed several times: the insatiable Sable "swallowed" ... six of his lighthouses!

Sable today

In the "recent" history of the insatiable womb, the year 1926 was especially mournful. In August of this year, two American schooners, the Sylvia Mosher and the Sadie Nickle, were lost on the same day off Sable. The first capsized on the shallows, her crew died. The second wave was thrown over the spit of the island from one side to the other, where it also capsized and was later covered with sand. In addition to other schooners, Sable's annual menu included two steamboats: the Canadian Labrador and the English Harold Kasper.

As before, ships pass by the island every day - hundreds of merchant ships under the flags of countries all over the planet. The captains, laying a course on the maps, try to pass the island at a considerable distance. And although today Sable is no longer such a danger as before, sailors do not like to approach him. What if? .. God knows them, these shallows that change shape daily ...

Two beacons send out warning beams into the night. Their light in clear weather is visible for 16 nautical miles. Clear warning radio signals are heard on the air around the clock. It was thanks to them that shipwrecks off the coast of the island actually stopped. The last victim - a large American steamer called the Manhassent - was swallowed up by the island in 1947.

Sable is now owned by Canada. It is still inhabited: usually 15-25 people live here. These are specialists and workers of the Canadian Department of Transport, serving the island's hydrometeorological center, radio station and lighthouses. Their duties also include rescuing people in the event of a shipwreck and providing assistance to them. To do this, they have undergone special training and have at their disposal the most modern life-saving equipment. Canadian specialists live on the island with their families.

There are only two real houses here - for the manager of the island and the head of the radio beacon. The rest are accommodated in "caravans" - cabins. These dwellings were specially designed in such a way as to withstand the destructive action of secant sand. There is also a small power plant.

A few years ago, a warehouse, a forge, a carpentry workshop, hostels for the shipwrecked (in case such a nuisance happens) and a hangar were built here, where metal whaleboats stand on rails, ready to be launched at any moment. The inhabitants of the island believe that these amazing ships are not afraid of any waves, they are unsinkable and so stable that they can hardly capsize.

Of the old buildings on Sable, only one has survived - the building of the former rescue station, a kind of local landmark. The station was built from ship masts, topmasts and yards thrown onto the island. “Name boards” are nailed to the walls of the building, on which the names of the ships are displayed. These are, as it were, the remaining passports of the former victims of the “ship eater”.

Three hundred wild ponies still live on Sable. On those that are tamed, caretakers go around the coast of the island every day. They peer to see if a yacht or a fishing boat has washed up on the shallows, if a bottle or a plastic container with a note is lying on the sand, which is allowed to study sea currents.

Modern Robinsons have learned to plant vegetable gardens and even orchards on Sable. The main problem is to protect the plants from the sands. If the weather permits, which is still rare, the inhabitants of the island swim and go fishing on whaleboats into the ocean.

Although the Canadian Department of Transportation, which includes Sable, has tried to create the maximum comfort for its residents, their work is not easy and dangerous. Prolonged hurricane-force storms often keep people out of their homes for weeks or more. But this is not considered the most difficult here. The question rests on something else - rather psychological, rather than physical stress. Indeed, living on a remote island, forever shrouded in fog and tormented by storms, is not easy. But it is even more difficult to get along with the idea that under you is an island-cemetery, where every now and then human skulls and bones come across in the sand. One of Sable's Robinsons, the lighthouse keeper, had to be removed from service and sent to the mainland. Long years during his watch, he was invariably haunted by the ghosts of the schooner Sylvia Mosher, the same one that disappeared into the surf in August 1926. The old caretaker was an eyewitness to this drama. Together with other inhabitants of the island, he did everything possible to save those people.

In our time, the helicopter available on Sable can help those who die at sea, and the great "ship-eater" is practically neutralized. Over the past 30 years, not a single case of the death of a large vessel in its quicksand has been noted. But the sailors are still vigilantly peering into the fog, passing by a dangerous island. Not for a minute does the formidable warning of the radio beacon cease: "You are passing near Sable Island - the cemetery of the North Atlantic."

In the late 70s of the 20th century, after another storm passed, the bow of an American ship was visible from the sand, which disappeared without a trace back in the 19th century, along with the cargo and the entire crew. The wreck of the ship, for several days, was clearly visible from passing ships. As usual, after another strong storm, the sand again buried this ship in its thickness.

Sable Island has been repeatedly visited by scientific expeditions. It's not that simple. "Tomb of the Atlantic" knows how to keep its secrets. Attempts to start excavations on the island ended in failure. The holes dug on the island were immediately filled with sea water. Where does the water in the center of the island come from - a mystery!

At the end of the 20th century, researchers of anomalous phenomena put forward a rather original and bold hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, Sable Island is nothing more than an alien living organism that functions according to laws that are incomprehensible and unknown to terrestrial science. The basis of the vital activity of this organism is silicon, and not like our carbon. And silicon is sand! The main danger that awaits passing ships is the quicksands of the shoals, the so-called "quagmire of the ocean." The quicksands of the island literally absorb the ships that have fallen into them. It is known for certain that ships 100 - 120 meters long, and with a displacement of 5 thousand tons, completely disappeared from sight within 2-3 months.

Often this photo of a sand-covered ship on the Internet is associated with Sable Island. But it's not. Most likely, this is facilitated by the nickname of the island as the "cemetery of the ships of the Atlantic." But in fact, this ship lies in the sands of the Namib.

Edward Bohlen is a German cargo and passenger ship weighing 2272 tons and 310 feet long, which ran aground off the coast of the Namib Desert on September 5, 1909. The ship was built in Hamburg in 1891 and sailed along the route Hamburg - West Africa. However, the fast currents and dense fogs characteristic of the coast of the Namib Desert caused a disaster.

Attempts to save the ship, which had run aground, were unsuccessful, the steel cable for towing Edward Bohlen burst by the ship that came to the rescue. Passengers without injuries survived the accident and were evacuated.

Currently, the wreckage of the ship, rusty and partially buried in the sand, lies a few hundred meters from the coastline.

sources
http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/vs/article/5984/
http://islandlife.ru/ostrova-v-okeanah/82-sable.html
http://nepovtorimosti.ru/bluzhdayushhiy-ostrov-seybl/

Let me remind you about a few more interesting islands and their inhabitants: or behold, and here is the ominous The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -