About Visible Shipwrecks

What’s so interesting about shipwrecks? 

 

 Good question.

 

 Some people admire the view of a once beautiful ship slowly decaying on a    lonely beach, but for others it’s just an eyesore, a heap of rust spoiling nature. Obviously, I belong to the first category.

 

 I became interested when I lived in Aden (Yemen) close to a port with abandoned ships. This was in 1984. Now 25 years later, I still like shipwrecks. It is also the fun of adventurous travelling to find them which keeps me going .  

 

Travelling is nice, but you need a Destination! After visiting more than 100 countries I have enough of “tourist” attractions. No more picturesque villages, ancient temples, “authentic” cultures or voracious lions for me. And no fellow tourists please!  Today every remotely interesting place is in the Lonely Planet guide and has a kind of touristic infrastructure around it. Convenient  Yes, adventurous, No way.

 

Fortunately, shipwrecks are not yet included in the tours operators’ programme. Shipwrecks can be found on deserted beaches, on coral reefs in the middle of the ocean, at restricted diamond areas, uninhabited islands or other remote & uncivilized places. So the trip to a wreck is often more interesting than the wreck itself.

 

But what to do with all these pictures stored in bulging shoeboxes and overflowing hard disks?

 

Just put them on the web and hope other people will enjoy these!

 

About the wrecks:

You can find the exact location of every wreck with the Google place markers next to each picture (although not all wrecks are still visible today).  If you have comments, information to add, or you want background information of the ship, please let me know. All pictures, with 2 exceptions are mine. Please mail me if you want to use the pictures for publication

 

Enjoy my site

 

Anton Rijsdijk

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

Special thanks to:

 

Ms. Nemia Temporal and all my other friends and travel companions for their endless patience with me, while I was taking pictures of wrecks

Wil Hendriks (Foto de Zavel) for the processing of all my slide films

Mr. Fedde vd Bosch for his South Africa shipwreck database

Mr. Koos Los for his research

Mr. Jaco Boschhoff (South African Maritime Museum) for his help on SA shipwrecks

Mr. Cees de Keijzer for his picture of  the M.S. Telamon 

Mr. Dirk Pilkes for his picture and history of the “Van Ghent”

Mr. Marc Montocchio for his information  about the “Tekumseh”

Mr. Robert de Lange for his information on S.A. shipwrecks