Graveyard of the Atlantic

Graveyard of the Atlantic is a nickname for the treacherous waters and area of numerous shipwrecks off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, United States, which are due to the coast's shifting sands and inlets.

To a lesser degree, this nickname has also been applied to Sable Island off of Nova Scotia, Canada, as well as the waters off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, United States.

Along the Outer Banks, navigational challenges posed by the Diamond Shoals area off Cape Hatteras, caused the loss of thousands of ships and an unknown number of human lives.

Thirty-two years later, in August 1750, at least three Spanish merchantmen ran aground off North Carolina during a hurricane: the El Salvador sank near Cape Lookout, while the Nuestra Señora de Soledad went ashore on near present-day Core Banks, and the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe went ashore near present-day Ocracoke Island.

[9] During World War II, German U-boats would sit offshore and prey on passing freighters and tankers silhouetted against the lights onshore.

[9] In the twenty-first century, ships still have trouble in the area including the Bounty which sank off Cape Hatteras in 2012 due to Hurricane Sandy and a 72-foot fishing boat called the Ocean Pursuit which ran aground on Bodie Island in 2020.

[10][11] The title "Graveyard of the Atlantic" is also applied to Sable Island, a narrow crescent of sand that lies 300 km southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In 2013, Sable Island was designated a National Park Reserve[16] In the age of sail, the danger of Sable Island was due to the shifting sand bars that surround it, and the thick fog in the area due to the close proximity of the cold Labrador Current and warm Gulf Stream current.

Due to the strange (and mostly uninhabited) location of Sable Island, Guglielmo Marconi made it an outpost for radio communication experimentation.