The ship graveyard is where ships find their final resting place. Previously, wooden ships were simply sunk into the sea. Today the situation has changed: metal ships must be scrapped. In developed countries, ships are disposed of in special factories, in countries with a low standard of living, they are simply thrown ashore, where they rust.
Natural cemeteries
Throughout the history of mankind, the sea has swallowed up many ships. These ships lie at the bottom of the seas and oceans, mothballed in salt water for future generations of archaeologists. In especially dangerous places, ships literally lie in layers: over ancient triremes you can find Viking boats, over medieval ships - frigates, over frigates - steel hulls of modern military and merchant ships.
One of the iconic places in the Atlantic is the Goodwin Shoals, located off the southeast coast of Britain. These underwater sand banks are described in many literary works. The number of human victims brought to the sea by Goodwin's shoals is in the tens of thousands. The ships could not get around the shoals due to the fact that the sands were constantly moving, as well as because of the fog and strong currents.
Ship graveyard in Chittagong
One of the world's largest ship scraping centers is located in Bangladesh, in the city of Chittagong. The staff of this center reaches 200,000 people. However, no one knows the exact number: employees come and go as they please, having received payment for the work performed. The need to build such a cemetery in one of the developing countries arose after the Second World War, when a large number of ships in need of recycling accumulated in the world. In Europe, labor is expensive, so it was decided to build a cemetery in Bangladesh.
The history of the Chittagong Ship Scrapping Center dates back to the 1960s. Then, not far from the coast, the Greek ship MD-Alpine ran aground. Attempts to remove the ship from the shallows were unsuccessful, and the ship was left to rust in the open. However, the locals did not let him completely rust and quickly dismantled the ship into parts, and sold the scrap metal.
It turned out that it is possible to disassemble the ships profitably. The fact is that the price of scrap metal in Bangladesh has always been quite high, so all the work paid off. Unskilled labor was inexpensive, and metal was expensive - that was the benefit. Nobody thought about decent wages, about safety measures either: every week at least one person died at the enterprise.
The government intervened and introduced safety standards for workers. As a result of the government's actions, labor became more expensive, the cost of scrapping ships increased, and business began to decline. However, the Chittagong cemetery is still in operation, utilizing about half of the ships that have been decommissioned worldwide.
