On this beach there are rows of stranded ships and they did not arrive there by chance.
On the beaches, shipwrecks are sometimes found. For the most part, the boats have been victims of incidents or bad weather and have ended up stranded on the coast. However, this is not always unintentional. In the ship graveyard of Shipwreck Beach, on the Hawaiian island of Lāna`i, some of the boats were intentionally placed there. Over a ten-kilometer stretch of sea skeletons can be found.
They all washed up in the area between 1870 and 1940. They were mostly small, old steamboats. While they had once been used to ferry passengers or cargo between islands, sailors eventually outgrew them and newer models were developed to haul sugar cane and livestock, so they wanted to get rid of them and beach them at this graveyard. “The wreck beach was where you could take an old cargo and let it wash up on the shore, and it would stay there and not be a navigational hazard,” said Hans K. Van Tilburg, maritime heritage coordinator for the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, who participated in a study of the place.
The sailors were desperate to prevent these wrecks from becoming a nuisance to shipping or even dangerous. That’s why they brought them to Shipwreck Beach. The trade winds, regular winds that blow year-round in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic, kept them in place. These winds also brought other ships that, this time, ran aground unintentionally.
Among these ships is a World War II tanker made of steel and cement, the YOGN-42, abandoned there by the US Navy. It is now in ruins but is one of the most imposing. Hikers can come and discover it. If Shipwreck Beach has become a tourist spot, researchers also want to continue the excavations to find other remains hidden in the area in order to estimate their exact number. About twenty have been identified so far but there are still others.