Fear Not VOD

Sable Island, approximately 300 km east-south-east of Halifax, Nova Scotia, is a remote offshore sandbar perched on the edge of the Scotian Shelf (the continental shelf south of Nova Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean). Over the past 300 year 400+ ships have become victims to the island shoal where the waters surrounding Sable Island are scattered with their remains. In reflection of this Sable Island is commonly called “the Graveyard of the Atlantic”.

Fig 1.1 Map of shipwrecks surrounding Sable Island (Click to view).

For many sailors, this sandy island hidden by waves, storms and fog meant death and destruction. Since 1583 there have been over 400 recorded shipwrecks on Sable Island. While the number of shipwrecks has decreased with the development of modern navigational aids, but the island and it’s shoals continues to provide a hazard to shipping. The last vessel wrecked on the island was on July 27, 1999, the small yacht Merrimac.

Until recently, sextants were the instruments used to figure out a ship’s position. Sextants are accurate, but they worked by taking a sighting from the sun or stars. They were useless in dense fog or under cloudy skies.

In bad weather, the Captain navigated by “dead reckoning”- using ship speed and direction to estimate his position. But even in good conditions this was educated guessing. Currents and storms confused the calculations of the best skippers.

Many accounts of ships wrecked on Sable report that the Captain simply lost his way – he had misjudged his ship’s position and bumped into Sable Island by mistake.

After World War II radar and other advanced navigation equipment became widely used on merchant and fishing ships. Sable ceased to be a major threat to shipping.