Regions
Waters of the Registry
Browse shipwreck histories through the waters and coastlines that shaped them.
The Florida Keys
A shallow coral archipelago that has claimed ships for four centuries
A curving reef line runs the length of the Keys, close to the surface and close to the shipping lanes. Vessels lost here often settled in water shallow enough to see from the surface.
Door County & Lake Michigan
The Door Peninsula, long known to mariners as a hard passage
The passage around the Door Peninsula concentrated Great Lakes traffic into narrow, rock-bound water. Wisconsin protects many of the resulting wrecks as state-owned historic sites.
The Channel Islands
Fog, current and rock off the Southern California coast
Gold Rush steamers ran the Panama–San Francisco route past a chain of islands frequently wrapped in fog. Several never cleared them.
Isle Royale & Lake Superior
The coldest, deepest, and least forgiving of the Great Lakes
Isle Royale stands in the path of vessels crossing western Lake Superior. Cold fresh water has preserved the ships lost around it with unusual completeness.
Cape Ann & the Gulf of Maine
New England winter, and the coastal trade that sailed through it
The coastal tanker and fishing trades worked these waters year-round, including through the winter storms that periodically overwhelmed them.
The Outer Banks
The Graveyard of the Atlantic
Shifting shoals, converging currents and open Atlantic weather meet off Cape Hatteras. The wrecks here include some of the most significant vessels in American maritime history.
The Salish Sea
Fog-bound inland waters between Washington and Vancouver Island
Heavy traffic, narrow water and persistent fog have produced a long record of collisions in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Thunder Bay & Lake Huron
A shipping funnel with a rock shelf beneath it
Northern Lake Huron narrows here, and for a century every cargo bound between Chicago and the lower lakes passed off Thunder Bay.
Whitefish Point & Eastern Lake Superior
The turn every laker had to make
Every vessel leaving Lake Superior funnels past Whitefish Point toward the locks at Sault Ste. Marie.
Apostle Islands & Western Lake Superior
Sandstone islands at the head of the lake
Twenty-two islands stand between the Bayfield peninsula and open Lake Superior, cut by channels that carried brownstone, lumber and ore.
The Lake Erie Islands
The shallowest of the Great Lakes
Lake Erie is shallow enough that a hard wind builds a steep, breaking sea within hours.
Cape Cod & Nantucket Shoals
Sand that moves faster than the charts
The outer arm of Cape Cod and the shoals off Nantucket sit directly in the coastal shipping lane between New York and Boston.
The Straits of Mackinac
The narrow gate between two great lakes
A four-mile-wide passage carries nearly all traffic between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and everything that moved between the two had to thread it.
Annapolis & the Upper Chesapeake
The Severn, the Patapsco and the head of the Bay
The upper Chesapeake carried the traffic of Baltimore and Annapolis: bay steamers, schooners, oyster dredgers and naval craft moving between the Patapsco, the Severn and the Susquehanna Flats.
The Potomac & the Virginia Chesapeake
From Point Lookout to the Washington reaches
The Potomac was a working river of steamboats, schooners and wartime gunboats, and its shallows hold one of the largest concentrations of abandoned vessels in the country.
Lake Ontario & the St. Lawrence
Deep water at the head of the seaway
Lake Ontario is deep, cold and open, and the river that drains it narrows into a maze of channels and islands.
Tangier Sound & the Eastern Shore
The oyster fleet waters of the lower Bay
Tangier and Pocomoke Sounds and the Eastern Shore rivers were the heart of the Chesapeake oyster trade, worked by skipjacks, bugeyes, pungies and log canoes.
Georgian Bay & the North Channel
Rock and reef on Lake Huron's north shore
The north side of Lake Huron is a shoreline of granite islands, unmarked reefs and shallow channels.
Boston Harbor & Massachusetts Bay
The approaches, the islands and Broad Sound
Boston Harbor and the bay beyond it funnelled three centuries of Atlantic traffic past Boston Light, the Graves and the harbor islands.
Chicago & Southern Lake Michigan
The busiest lee shore on the lakes
The south end of Lake Michigan gathered the traffic of the whole lake into a handful of crowded harbours.
Saginaw Bay & the Michigan Thumb
Shoal water off a lumber coast
A wide, shallow bay opens into Lake Huron behind a long sandy point, with hard shoals well offshore.
Buzzards Bay & Vineyard Sound
Cuttyhunk, the Elizabeth Islands and the Sound
Coasting traffic bound around Cape Cod crowded Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay, threading between the Elizabeth Islands, Sow and Pigs Reef and Hedge Fence Shoal.
Narragansett Bay & the Rhode Island Coast
Newport, Block Island Sound and Point Judith
Narragansett Bay and Block Island Sound carried Newport's colonial trade, the Fall River Line steamers and the Long Island Sound passenger fleet.
Delaware Bay & the Approaches
The narrow way to Philadelphia
A long bay funnels ocean traffic toward Philadelphia through shoal-lined channels and heavy shipping.
The Georgia & South Carolina Coast
Bars, sounds and blockade water
Low barrier islands, shifting bars and shallow sounds line a coast with few deep natural harbours.
Long Island Sound & the Connecticut Shore
From the Race to the Connecticut River
The Sound was a protected highway between New York and New England, worked by night steamers, coasting schooners and oyster fleets.
Texas & the Western Gulf
Hurricane coast and shipping lanes
A flat, harbourless coast fronts warm shallow water crossed by heavy commercial traffic.
Penobscot Bay & Midcoast Maine
From Muscongus Bay to Downeast
Penobscot Bay shipped lime, granite and lumber in schooners and coasters, and its islands and ledges are dense with documented losses.
Southern California & Catalina
Fog, wind and island channels
The channel between the mainland and Santa Catalina Island carries steady coastal traffic through fog and steep island shores.
The Isles of Shoals & the New Hampshire Coast
Portsmouth, the Piscataqua and the outer ledges
New Hampshire's short coast and the Isles of Shoals guarded the approach to Portsmouth and the Piscataqua, one of New England's great shipbuilding rivers.
The Aleutians & the Bering Sea
The stormiest water on the American coast
A thousand-mile chain of volcanic islands separates the North Pacific from the Bering Sea, with passes that run like rivers.
Long Island & the New York Approaches
The doorway to the busiest harbor in America
Everything bound for New York crossed the shoals and bars off Long Island and Sandy Hook.
The New Jersey Coast
Open beach, heavy traffic, hard weather
A hundred and thirty miles of unbroken barrier beach lies between Sandy Hook and Cape May, alongside the approaches to two major ports.
The Minnesota North Shore
Basalt cliffs and open water above Duluth
The North Shore runs from Duluth to the Canadian border with few harbours of refuge, and vessels caught by a northeaster had little room between the shipping lanes and the rock. Several of the ships lost here lie in shallow, clear water and are among the most visited wreck dives in the upper lakes.
Manitou Passage
The sheltered short cut past Sleeping Bear
Manitou Passage carried traffic between the Manitou Islands and the Michigan mainland as a shorter, calmer route than the open lake. Shoals on both sides of the channel claimed schooners and steamers alike, and many now lie inside a state underwater preserve.
Chesapeake Bay
A great bay with shallow edges
The largest estuary in the country carried tobacco, grain, oysters and coal on shallow, crowded water.
Florida's Atlantic Coast
The Gulf Stream runs close to the beach
From Cape Canaveral south to Palm Beach the Gulf Stream squeezes shipping into a narrow lane close inshore.
The Gulf of Mexico
Hurricanes, bars and a soft bottom
The Gulf carried cotton, sugar, oil and passengers across water with few natural landmarks and shifting river bars.
San Francisco & the Northern California Coast
Fog at the gate
Everything bound for San Francisco had to find one gap in a mountain coast, often in fog.
The Columbia River Bar & Oregon Coast
The bar they called the graveyard
The Columbia meets the Pacific across a shifting bar that breaks heavily in almost any swell.
The Inside Passage & Alaska
Long distances, poor charts, hard water
Steamers carrying gold seekers, canned salmon and mail worked a thousand miles of narrow channel and open gulf.
The British Columbia Coast
The Inside Passage from Victoria to Dixon Entrance
The Inside Passage carried coastal steamers, canneries, freighters and gold-rush traffic through narrow channels between Vancouver Island and the mainland.
Baja California & the Mexican Pacific
From Ensenada to Cabo and south to Acapulco
The Pacific coast of Mexico was a route for Manila galleons, whalers, mail steamers and coastal freighters.
The Sea of Cortez
The Gulf of California and its islands
The Gulf of California carried pearl fishers, ferries and cargo between Baja and the Mexican mainland, and now holds several well-known dive wrecks.
The Mexican Gulf Coast & Campeche
Veracruz, Campeche Bank and the Yucatan
Veracruz and the Campeche Bank were the Spanish treasure fleets' American terminus, and later a route for tankers and cargo ships.
Cuba & the Greater Antilles
Havana, the Bahama Channel, Hispaniola and Jamaica
Havana was the assembly point for Spain's homeward treasure fleets, and the Greater Antilles funnelled every ship bound for Europe through narrow channels.
The Bahamas
The banks, the Tongue of the Ocean and Abaco
Shallow banks, blue holes and narrow reef passages made the Bahamas both a shipping route and a wrecking ground, and the islands once lived by salvage.
The Lesser Antilles
From the Virgin Islands to Trinidad
The island chain from the Virgins to Trinidad was contested by Spain, France, Britain and the Netherlands, and its roadsteads are full of wrecks.
Bermuda
The reef platform and the Bermuda Triangle waters
Bermuda's reef platform extends miles offshore and has wrecked ships since the Sea Venture came ashore in 1609, founding the colony.
The Gulf of St Lawrence
Cabot Strait, Anticosti and the river approaches
The Gulf was the gateway to Quebec and Montreal, crowded with emigrant ships, timber carriers and liners.
Nova Scotia & Sable Island
Halifax approaches, Cape Sable and the Graveyard of the Atlantic
Nova Scotia's coast and the shifting sandbars of Sable Island lie directly across the great circle route between Europe and North America.
Newfoundland
The Avalon, Cape Race and the Strait of Belle Isle
Cape Race was landfall for transatlantic shipping, and Newfoundland's coast was worked by the cod and sealing fleets.
The Hawaiian Islands
Reef, surf and a mid-ocean crossroads
The islands were a provisioning stop for whalers, a hub of the sugar trade and a naval crossroads.
The Labrador Sea
The Labrador coast and the Davis Strait approaches
The Labrador coast was fished by Newfoundland schooners, supplied by mission and coastal steamers, and patrolled in wartime convoy routes.
Hudson Bay & Hudson Strait
York Factory, Churchill and the Strait
Hudson Bay was the Hudson's Bay Company's route to the interior for two and a half centuries, reached through the ice of Hudson Strait.
Puget Sound & Discovery Bay
Sheltered inland waters, timber ports and burning steamers
Puget Sound carried the timber, coal and passengers of the young Pacific Northwest, and its narrow, fog-prone waters collected a heavy toll of steamers, schooners and barges.
Lake Washington
Seattle's fresh-water shipping ground
For half a century before the bridges were built, steam launches and ferries did the work of moving people and freight across Lake Washington.
Lake Tahoe
Alpine clarity over preserved hulls
The steamer era of Lake Tahoe moved mail, lumber and passengers around an alpine lake of extraordinary clarity and depth.
Lake Champlain
Two centuries of lake commerce preserved in cold water
Lake Champlain saw military fleets in 1776 and 1814 and a century of canal-boat commerce after the Champlain Canal opened in 1823.
Lake George
The oldest intact warships in North America
Lake George was a military waterway in the French and Indian War and later a playground of steam launches and early motorboats.
The Finger Lakes
Deep glacier-carved lakes holding canal-era boats
Seneca and Cayuga lakes carried the coal, grain and passengers of the canal era on routes that fed the Erie Canal system.
Flathead Lake
Montana's inland sea
Flathead Lake, the largest natural fresh-water lake west of the Mississippi, supported its own small fleet of pleasure steamers and mail boats.
Great Salt Lake
The briny inland sea that claimed its first steamers
The Great Salt Lake supported a brief but genuine steamboating era hauling railroad ties and freight across its briny expanse.
Hudson River
The busiest river in nineteenth-century America
The Hudson carried the fastest steamboats in the world, and their races and collisions became national news.
New York Harbor
The crowded gateway of American immigration and trade
The busiest harbor in America also became the scene of its deadliest maritime disaster.
