UK's ship graveyard: what an eerie shore with abandoned ships looks like and why no one removes them
Not all Britons know that there is a real boat cemetery near the Severn River in Gloucestershire, England, the largest in the UK. It is called Purton Hulks. SSPDaily told more about it.
The rusted and rotten sides are deliberately not removed from there to strengthen the river banks. According to the Daily Mail, there were 86 steel barges, concrete ships, and wooden cargo boats.
Most of them were left on the shore in the 1950s and have since been left to nature. Later, people dumped other ships here as well.
From the outside, it may seem that all these ships sank and were washed ashore, but that's not why the cemetery appeared at this place.
The collapse of the bank in 1909 caused fears that the barrier between the river and the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal would be destroyed. The old ships were stranded and soon filled with water and silt to create a barrier against erosion.
Although there are less than 100 ships here, it has not yet been possible to research the history of each of them. Some of them have been here for so long that it is impossible to identify their owners and origin.
Others have an interesting history. For example, one barge is listed as an ancient monument, and several others are listed in the National Register of Historic Ships.
