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How many ships lie at the bottom... | Almanac.com

How many ships lie at the bottom...

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How many ships lie at the bottom of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans?
Answer
Ships have gone under since man took to the water, and since that reaches into ancient history, there can be no accurate count. Explorers have recently been able to retrieve artifacts from ships sunk as early as the 5th century B.C. Many ships of the ancients Romans have also recently been explored. In 1958 the American Peter Throckmorton found a graveyard of ancient ships and discovered the oldest shipwreck ever recorded, at Turkey’s Cape Gelidonya: a Bronze Age shipwreck of the 14th century BC. War and weather makes no shortage of shipwrecks throughout history. Some of the larger, mass wrecks include those sunk in the battle of Salamis — an island off the Greek coast — between the Greek and the Persians. In 480 B.C., 240 ships were sunk. One of the biggest ships ever sunk was the battleship Bismarck, all 52,600 tons, sunk in the North sea 1941. Sable Island, in eastern Nova Scotia, Canada, is called “the graveyard of the Atlantic”. It is a major hazard to navigation, and more than 200 shipwrecks have occurred here since 1583. The Outer Banks, North Carolina at Cape Hatteras are full of shipwrecks and pirate lore. Norman’s Woe on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, a reef off the cape’s east coast, has been the scene of numerous shipwrecks. Fire Island, New York, was notorious for shipwrecks until the building of the lighthouse at its western tip in 1858. While England had a governor in Williamsburg, Virginia, he sent a monthly written report back to the king. To be safe, the governor always sent the report and a copy of it on two different ships, since too often was a sailing ship lost.