Graveyard of the Pacific
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The Graveyard of the Pacific was a mariner's nickname for the Pacific Northwest Coast from Oregon north to the tip of Vancouver Island. The region's seas are beset with heavy weather year-round and the coastline is rugged, especially along Vancouver Island and its northwestern tip at Cape Scott.
Combinations of fog, wind, storm, current and wave had crashed hundreds of ships in the region by the middle of the 20th Century, many of them famous wrecks in regional history. Maps of the region show its famous, and dangerous, landmarks - the Columbia Bar (a giant sandbar off the mouth of the Columbia River), Cape Flattery and the reefs and rocks lining the west coast of Vancouver Island and up the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and shipwreck maps are studded with sites. Actual physical wreckage is minimal due to the violence of the wrecks and their age, despite the difficulty of access for salvagers.
The term is believed to have originated in the earliest days of the marine fur trade, not only as increasing numbers of traders' ships began to be wrecked, but also because of the ongoing state of incipient warfare that all ships had to be provided for in the region, which was considered one of the most dangerous and deadly regions to trade in the Pacific.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- First Approaches to the Northwest Coast, Derek Pethick
- A Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, Derek Hayes
