Sable island that moves. The dark secrets of the drifting Sable Island. History of the Lost Ships

It seems that the time when humanity sacredly trusted myths has gone forever. To explain something incomprehensible, we have science, thanks to which the place of the gods on the celestial chariots was taken by aliens, and the tambourines of shamans, who predicted the weather, were replaced by meteorological satellites. But, despite all the achievements of progress, human nature is still attracted by the incomprehensible and mystical.

On the verge of fiction

2012 - the film “Life of Pi” was released, based on the novel of the same name by Yann Martel. This adventure drama (which, by the way, won four Oscars) features a mysterious carnivorous island located somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. According to the plot of the book, during the day this island was a paradise, but at night it turns into a trap for all living things. After sunset, the algae that made up the island begin to secrete acid, and the lake located here becomes an acidic vat, digesting all living things. The only salvation was in the treetops, where they could wait out the night while the surface of the island bled gastric juice.

Fortunately, the movie predator island is a fiction, but, as you know, there is some truth in every fairy tale. For example, a thousand miles from Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean is located, which at first glance is a tropical paradise with lush vegetation, picturesque lagoons, reefs, white sand and everything else that attracts tourists. However, this island is uninhabited, and among those who have visited it, there is an opinion that Palmyra has a living and, without a doubt, black aura. External prosperity here is very deceptive: the weather changes instantly, calm lagoons are teeming with sharks, algae release toxic substances, and the surface of the island is full of poisonous insects. Even the fish that live in the creeks and lakes of the island are inedible, and a feeling of strange melancholy and hopelessness hangs in the air.

During World War II, the Americans used Palmyra as a springboard for an attack on Japan, but according to the soldiers who stayed there for several months, island life seemed like hell to them. The landing force was plagued by a series of mysterious suicides. The psychologically exhausted unit turned into a gang of deserters that wandered around the island and did God knows what. The reason for the unexpected soldiers' madness remained a mystery.

Ship Devourer

In the North Atlantic, one hundred and ten miles southeast of the Canadian port of Halifax, Sable Island is located, which is deservedly considered the most dangerous island ever marked on navigational charts. The peculiarity of Sable is that it is a sandbank, which, as a result of the meeting of the warm Gulf Stream and the cold Labrador Current, moves at a speed of 200-230 meters per year! Over the past two hundred years, Sable has “sailed” forty kilometers from Canada, although, of course, this “swim” should not be taken literally. The fact is that the western part of the island is constantly being washed away by waves, and the eastern, on the contrary, is overgrown with sand, like living tissue. In fact, these are quicksand in the ocean, and any ship washed ashore disappears without a trace after 2-3 months. The exact number of ships that hit the damned piece of land is unknown, but it definitely exceeded a hundred.

The island's main killer weapon is that it has an almost flat surface, and it is almost impossible to see it from the sea, especially during the storm season with fifteen-meter waves. According to legend, the sand that covers the island is like a chameleon, and even in clear weather is colored the color of the surrounding ocean. The ability to mimicry is characteristic only of living organisms, which led many sailors to think that the island, with its quicksand and sharp reefs, was “hunting” passing ships.

Sable was first depicted on official maps in the 16th century. At that time the length of the island was almost 200 miles. In the 19th century, scientists assumed that Sable, which had shrunk by almost 10 times over the previous 300 years, would soon completely disappear from the surface of the earth, but this did not happen. Moreover, over the past 100 years it has increased by two miles.

Almost every island on the planet is the surface part of a mountain, which, in turn, is located on tectonic plates. Islands cover our planet like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, moving at speeds of several millimeters per year. Sable's travel speed is 100,000 times greater, suggesting that the island has no physical connection to any of Earth's tectonic plates. Numerous questions, to which there are still no intelligible answers, have pushed some scientists to the sensational and, at first glance, completely crazy idea that Sable is something like a living organism, which is based on silicon, and not carbon, like all living beings on our planet. If you agree with this theory, then you can try to explain where the sand comes from on the eastern part of the island, while the western part is constantly eroded by a strong ocean current. It is possible that sand (aka silicon) is the waste product of an insatiable ship devourer, which is what Sable appears to be.

It is curious that shortly before the start of World War II, the island presented researchers with a new mystery. In the spring of 1939, storms of unprecedented force raged in this area, removing hundreds of tons of coastal sand, as a result of which a hole with the skeletons of eight ships formed on the island. It was in this pit, a hundred miles from Canada, that the remains of a Roman galley from ancient times were found! While the members of the scientific expedition sent to the island were arguing about the find, another storm broke out, and the tomb, which had been opened for a short time, was again covered with tons of damp sand.

The Curse of Bulawan Island

Bulawan is a small piece of land in the Banda Sea, which belongs to Indonesia, and has long gained the reputation of a bad and dangerous place. The island became widely known after the plane of American pilot Willy Van der Haage crashed in its vicinity in 1989. The pilot was able to eject, but for the next 3 years he had the opportunity to be in Robinson's shoes, making many amazing discoveries.

During his forced confinement, Van der Haage explored the length and breadth of the tropical island; his attention was especially drawn to the deep wells of obviously artificial origin that led to dry underground caves. Having descended into one of these caves, the American discovered a truly priceless treasure of gold coins, which, as is known from legends and horror stories, rarely brings happiness and longevity.

The treasure, found by an unwitting researcher, was in four clay jugs, sealed with natural asphalt. Inside the vessels were faceless, perfectly round coins, more like polished lenses. After the gold was delivered to America, an expert commission of numismatists and specialists in ancient culture could not determine the nationality of the coins, which gave reason to assume that these coins were a means of payment on the territory of some high-tech lost civilization, maybe even Atlantis.

The stay on the island ended as unexpectedly as it began: an Australian destroyer passing by saw a distress signal, thanks to which the missing pilot was finally rescued. Upon his return, the American gave a couple of dozen interviews in which he said that Bulavan is a powerful anomalous zone, and the cause of the plane crash, after which he became a prisoner of the island, was powerful geomagnetic deviations.

From newspaper articles, the public learned about the gold coins found, and detachments of black treasure hunters poured into Bulavan. The wells, adits, and caves of the island were repeatedly ransacked by lovers of quick money, and it should be noted that many did not return empty-handed. Only now treasure hunters came across not gold coins, but amazing silver bars in the shape of horse heads. These zoomorphic silver, according to scientists, were used in sacred rituals of a civilization unknown to us. But the most amazing thing is that there are no traces of artificial processing on the ingots, and we can say that this is nothing more than a masterpiece of the anomalous zone of Bulavan Island.

As for Willy Van der Haage, after undergoing retraining, he returned to his favorite job - flying, and, probably, this story would have had a happy ending if the pilot’s disfigured body had not been discovered in his own home in March 1993. The motive for the murder has not been fully clarified, but the police hastened to attribute everything to a banal robbery.

It is worth noting that since 1999, almost all the diggers who removed precious loot from the island were hanged, poisoned or shot! It’s simply ridiculous to talk about banal robberies here.

Drifting Nightmare

The islands of Palmyra, Sable, Bulavan are just a small list of mysterious, cursed islands fraught with danger for careless travelers. But the various anomalous zones that are shrouded in a fog of secrets and mysteries are nothing compared to the main island on this list, which is more than real, and whose appetite for absorbing living flesh is much worse than the figment of Yann Martel’s imagination.

As sad as it sounds, the first place in the list of damned killer islands is occupied by a man-made creation - Garbage Island, which drifts between America and Eurasia. Currently, a huge landfill in the North Pacific Ocean is twice the size of the United States and is rightfully called the “Eastern Garbage Patch.”

The basis of the giant floating landfill is plastic waste, which is thrown into the ocean in huge quantities. The weight of this dump is already estimated at 100 mils. tons, and this figure continues to grow at a tremendous pace. At the same time, 70% of waste sinks to the bottom, so Garbage Island is just the tip of the iceberg.

Only two countries in the Pacific region - Australia and New Zealand - effectively control plastic recycling, while advanced Asian states have designed and began mass production of equipment that processes all ship debris (plastic bottles, bags and other waste) into powder. Next, the shredded plastic, visually invisible to environmental services, is dumped into the ocean, saving enormous amounts of money.

The trouble is that over the past couple of decades we have become accustomed to such concepts as “humanitarian” and “ecological disaster”. It seems to us that if something like this happens not in the next block, then it is unlikely that the consequences will affect our own skin. However, Garbage Island is a disaster not of a local, but of a planetary scale. The worst thing is that this is no longer just a polluted aquatic environment, but a real cemetery of marine life. Every year, about a million birds and a hundred thousand mammals die from plastic waste dumped in the Pacific Ocean.

This happens according to the following scheme: under the influence of sunlight, plastic begins to disintegrate into small fractions without losing its polymer structure, then fish, jellyfish and other inhabitants of the ocean, confusing the waste with plankton, begin to eat it. Birds and mammals swallow larger things: lighters, bottle caps, syringes and toothbrushes. Of course, the “plastic diet” leads to death, but some of the commercial fish poisoned by chemicals still ends up on the average person’s plate.

How many of you would like to taste the meat of cattle raised on a farm near Chernobyl? Fish with a belly stuffed with plastic is little better, but the average consumer rarely thinks about what he puts in his mouth. Even when the obvious is explained to us, we pretend not to hear, or hope at chance, believing that misfortunes will affect anyone, but not us.

This kind of garbage islands, albeit smaller ones, exist in all oceans. We can only admit that these drifting killers are already stretching their bony fingers far into the interior of the continents. And this is just the beginning...

THE INCORPORABLE, WANDERING SABLE ISLAND.

It just so happens that Sable Island is considered one of the most dangerous and mysterious islands in the world. It is located in the Atlantic Ocean and belongs to Canada. It lies southeast of Halifax (Nova Scotia). The area of ​​the island is small, but for the sake of uniqueness, let’s say that its length is 42 km, and its width... no more than 1.5 km. From the air, Sable resembles some kind of huge worm. Although size is a relative thing for an island...

The fact is that Sable is a living island! Alive in the sense that it moves! No typo, the island really moves. If you look at old nautical maps of the 16th-17th centuries, you can see that the size of Sable is much larger than it is today - 270-380 km.

For almost five centuries, the name of the island struck terror into the hearts of sailors, and finally it gained such gloomy fame that it began to be called “the island of shipwrecks,” “the devourer of ships,” “the deadly saber,” “the island of ghosts,” “the cemetery of a thousand lost ships."

Refers to inhabited islands. There are 5 people living on Sable who work at the meteorological station and monitor the lighthouse. Note that previously the staff was larger and numbered 15-25 people. Since over time the danger from Sable ceased, the contingent was reduced.

Many call this place not just mysterious, but damned. Believe me, there are reasons for this. No one can say with certainty how many ships were lost here. Some put the figure at 350, others about 500. The important thing is that for many Sable was the last thing they saw in their lives. “Graveyard of the Atlantic” - the sailors call it. Inexplicably, the sand on the shores of the “living island” has the property of “adjusting” to the color of the sea waves. This optical effect is the main reason for the death of ships. The ships (especially in bad weather) crashed into the coastline at all speeds, and until the collision, the crew thought that there was only a vast ocean ahead...

Some lucky ones managed to survive and lived on the island for some time. But the stranded ships had the same fate - they were swallowed up by quicksand. Within two months, not even a trace remained of the large ships! (hence the phrase “ship eater”).

Most modern geographers and historians agree that Sable was discovered by the French traveler Léry, who in 1508 sailed from Europe to the “Land of the Bretons” - a peninsula that the British later called Acadia and even later Nova Scotia. It is possible that supporters of this particular version are right, claiming that the navigator Léry gave the new island the French name “SABLE”. After all, in French it means “sand,” and the island actually consists only of sand.

Sable is located 110 miles southeast of Halifax, near the continental shelf - just in the area where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current. It was this circumstance that led to the formation of a giant sandy crescent mound here, which once extended to Cape Cod. Geologists believe that Sable is nothing more than the peak of this crescent protruding from under the water.

In its current state, the island stretches from east to west for 24 miles. The predominant terrain is dunes and sand hills. In some places there are areas of herbaceous vegetation. The highest “mountain” here is Riggin Hill, 34 meters high. Four miles from the western tip of the island is the semi-salty Lake Wallace, no more than four meters deep. Although it does not communicate with the ocean, waves still enter it by rolling over the dunes.

The western end of the island, under the continuous action of currents and waves of the Atlantic, is gradually eroded and disappearing, while the eastern end is washed out and lengthened, and thus the island continuously moves east, gradually moving away from the shores of Nova Scotia. It is estimated that over the past two hundred years, Sable has “walked” almost ten nautical miles across the ocean. The current speed of its movement is also known - about 230 meters per year.

The main danger that awaits ships near Sable is the quicksand of the shallows, a kind of “ocean quagmire.” Sailors and fishermen seriously say that they tend to take on the color of ocean water. The swells of the treacherous island literally swallow the ships that are captured by them. It is reliably known that steamships with a displacement of five thousand tons and a length of 100-120 meters that found themselves on the Sable shallows completely disappeared from view within two to three months.

The moving and changeable Sable has been constant in only one thing since the days of the ancient Vikings: in its irreconcilable hostility towards passing ships.

Historical documents - for example, numerous volumes of the Chronicle of Shipwrecks, maritime chronicles and other sources - allow us to judge that in ancient times Sable served as a giant ship graveyard of the North Atlantic. Here, under many meters of sand, rest the sharp-chested canoes of the brave Vikings, the clumsy carracks and galleons of the Spaniards and Portuguese, the gulets of the fishermen of Brittany, the strong pine ships of the Nantucket whalers, the English smacks, the cutters from Goole, the heavy three-masted ships of the West India Company, the elegant American clippers... And this armada of sailing ships, which has sunk into oblivion, is crushed by the heavy hulls of sunken steamships that sailed under the flags of all countries of the world. Some stumbled upon it, lost in the fog and shroud of rain, others were carried to the shallows by the current, and most of the ships found their last refuge here during storms.

Sometimes the sandbanks and dunes of the island, having moved under the influence of ocean waves, reveal to the human eye the remains of ships that disappeared a long time ago. Thus, a quarter of a century ago, the durable teak hull of an American clipper, which had gone missing in the last century, “resurrected” from shifting fishing lines. And three months later, dunes 30 meters high again grew above the hull... From time to time, broken masts and yards of sailing ships, steamship pipes, boilers, pieces of rusted ocean liners and even submarines are exposed.

Sable is one of the most conscientious and generous suppliers of unique exhibits to the defunct museum of romantic relics of the past. The current inhabitants of the island find rusty anchors, muskets, sabers, grappling hooks and huge quantities of ancient coins in the dunes... In 1963, a lighthouse keeper discovered in the sand a human skeleton, a bronze boot buckle, a musket barrel, several bullets and a dozen gold doubloons minted in 1760 . Later, a thick stack of banknotes - British pounds sterling from the middle of the last century - worth ten thousand was found in the dunes.

Some estimates show that the value of the valuables buried in the sands of Sable is at modern exchange rates almost two million pounds sterling. This is only if we take into account the ships about which information has been preserved that at the time of death they were carrying valuable cargo on board.

The first “devouring” of a ship by Sable was recorded back in 1583. Then an English ship called “Delight”, part of Humphy Gilbert’s expedition, rammed the sands of the island due to poor visibility. The last disaster is considered to be a shipwreck in 1947: the steamship Manhasset could not avoid a collision with the island. The entire crew was saved. However, we managed to find information according to which in 1999 the yacht Merrimac “met” with the sands of the “living island” (the navigation instruments malfunctioned). The three-person crew was not injured. The fate of the yacht is unknown.

Sometimes “gentlemen of fortune” buried their treasures here. They burned false fires on the dunes to lure merchant ships into a trap.

How many crimes were committed here and how many criminals Sable hid will forever remain a mystery. Until now, many superstitious residents of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia consider Sable a place cursed by God and the abode of evil spirits and ghosts. That’s what they call it: “THE GHOST ISLAND” - “Ghost Island”.

In 1598, Sable suddenly turned into... hard labor. Here 48 criminals were disembarked from the French ship Marquis De La Roche. The Marquis actually intended to found a colony in Nova Scotia, but after a long storm his ship developed a leak. Having never reached his goal, De La Roche turned back to the shores of Europe. Seeing the island, the Marquis came up with nothing else but to land the “extra cargo” on Sable, and so that the convicts would not starve right away, he left them fifty sheep. The exiles were remembered only seven years later, and the King of France signed a pardon for them. In the summer of 1605, a ship sent to Sable brought eleven overgrown people, who had lost their human appearance, dressed in sheep's skins, to Cherbourg. The rest, unable to bear the severe hardships, died. Surprisingly, five of those who returned to their homeland asked the king to allow them to return to Sable. Henry IV not only agreed, but also ordered to supply them with everything they needed. This is how a small French colony was formed. And when in 1635 a ship returning from Connecticut to England was wrecked on Sable, its crew was rescued and taken to the American mainland by these French Robinsons.

The British intended to erect a lighthouse on the dangerous island and create a rescue station. Its servants were charged with the duty of providing assistance to shipwrecked people and saving property from sea robbers. And in England itself at that time, notices were posted that, on pain of death, prohibited anyone other than rescuers from settling on the island without government permission.

What in 1802 bore the loud name “rescue station” was a tightly built barn about one and a half hundred meters from the shore. In it, an ordinary whaling whaleboat rested on wooden runners. Nearby is a stable. No, the horses were not brought here on purpose. Horses have lived here since ancient times, although no one really knows where they came from on Sable. According to one version, these are the descendants of cavalry horses that sailed to the island from a certain French ship that once perished on the shallows. According to another version, they were brought to the island by Thomas Hancock, the uncle of the famous John Hancock, a famous American patriot during the War of Independence. Sable's horses are more like large ponies. They are very hardy, live in herds, feed on sedge, wild peas and some flowers that grow only on Sable.

Every day, four rescuers rode around the island on horseback along the surf, walking in pairs towards each other. They searched for sails in the fog and looked to see if the ocean had thrown up the wreckage of the ship. A ship was spotted dying near the island... The watchmen galloped towards the barn and sounded the alarm. The oarsmen on duty harness four ponies into a team, which drag the whaleboat to the water. Having skillfully overcome the first three waves of the surf, the rowers rush to where the ship is in distress. Meanwhile, the rest of the rescuers, including the lighthouse keeper, are already racing to the scene by land. Then a rope is thrown from the sinking ship to the island: this is the only way to snatch people in trouble from Sable’s mouth.

In modern sailing directions, an important note remains: “If the ship becomes stranded near Sable Island, the crew should remain on board until the lifeboat station provides assistance. Practice shows that all attempts to escape on the ship’s boats invariably ended in human casualties.”

Perhaps Sable's most dramatic shipwreck was the sinking of the American passenger steamer State of Virginia on July 15, 1879. This ship, with a registered capacity of 2,500 tons and a length of 110 meters, was sailing from New York to Glasgow, carrying 129 passengers and crew. During a thick fog, the ship found itself on a sandbank on the south side of the island. 120 passengers and crew were rescued by the island service. The happy parents added a fourth to the names of the smallest rescued girl - Nellie Sable Bagley Hord.

In the middle of the 19th century, a new station building was built on the island, and the wooden whaleboat was replaced with an iron one. In 1893, an even more substantial building for rescuers was erected, but a strong storm destroyed it to the ground in one night.

The situation with the lighthouses on Sable was much worse. At first, the wooden structure of the only lighthouse tower rose in the middle part of the island. In 1873, when, despite numerous repairs, the tower completely fell into disrepair, the lighthouse was replaced by two new ones - metal, openwork design. The eastern lighthouse served safely for about a hundred years, but the western one had to be changed several times: the insatiable Sable “swallowed”... six of its lighthouses!

Ships still pass by the island every day - hundreds of merchant ships flying the flags of countries all over the planet. Captains, plotting a course on maps, try to miss the island at a considerable distance. And although these days Sable no longer poses such a danger as before, sailors do not like to approach him. What if?.. God knows, these shallows changing shape every day...

Two lighthouses send warning rays into the night. Their light is visible 16 nautical miles in clear weather. Clear warning radio signals are heard on the air around the clock. It was thanks to them that shipwrecks off the coast of the island actually stopped. The last victim, a large American steamship called the Manhassent, was swallowed up by the island in 1947.

Sable now belongs to Canada. It is still inhabited: usually 15-25 people live here. These are specialists and workers of the Canadian Department of Transport who service the island's hydrometeorological center, radio station and lighthouses. Their duties also include rescuing people in the event of a shipwreck and providing assistance to them. For this purpose, they have undergone special training and have the most modern rescue equipment at their disposal. Canadian specialists live on the island with families.

There are only two real houses here - for the island manager and the head of the radio beacon. The rest are housed in “caravans” - trailer houses. These dwellings were specially designed to withstand the destructive effects of cutting sand. There is also a small power station.

Three hundred wild ponies still live on Sable. On those that are tamed, keepers travel around the coast of the island every day. They look to see if a yacht or fishing boat has washed up on the shallows, or if a bottle or plastic container with a note is lying on the sand, which is used to study sea currents.

Sable, without a mistake, can be called the most amazing, most mysterious and most treacherous island ever put by people on the map of the globe.

Perhaps the most amazing thing is that Sable is constantly moving. This is a nomadic island, constantly changing its size, configuration and coordinates. On maps of the 16th century, published in France, England and Italy, its length varies from 150 to 200 miles, and already in 1633, the Dutch geographer Johann Last, describing Sable in his atlas, reports:

“... the island has a circumference of about forty miles, the sea here is stormy and shallow, there are no harbors, the island has received a bad reputation as a place of constant shipwrecks.”

Sable is located 110 miles southeast of Halifax, near the continental shelf, just in the area where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current. This led to the formation of a giant shoal of sand, pebbles and shells that once stretched in a crescent shape to Cape Cod. Geologists believe that Sable is nothing more than the peak of this crescent protruding from under the water.

Stretching from east to west for 24 miles, Sable is no more than one mile wide. The surface of the island is occupied by two almost parallel sand ridges, which stretch along the island and, under the influence of the wind, are formed into dunes and hills, constantly changing their position and shape. In some places the surface of the island is covered with grassy vegetation. The highest point of the island is the Rigging Hills, 34 m high. Four miles from the western tip of the island is the semi-salty Lake Wallace with a depth of 1.5 - 4 m. Ocean waves penetrate it, rolling over the dunes.

The western end of the island, under the continuous action of currents and waves of the Atlantic, is gradually eroding and disappearing, while the eastern end, on the contrary, is washing up and increasing. Every year, new sandbanks form at the eastern edge of the island, and the island thus continuously moves east, gradually moving away from the shores of Nova Scotia. It is estimated that over the past two hundred years, Sable has “walked” almost ten nautical miles across the ocean. Even the speed of its movement is known: 1/8 mile (about 230 m) per year.

In the last century, scientists assumed that since the island moves away from the coast, moving towards greater depth, it should completely disappear from the surface of the ocean in a few years. But this did not happen. Quite the contrary: compared to the last century, Sable has increased in size. Recent measurements show that it is now two miles longer than it was 75 years ago.

Sable is located on the ocean shipping route across the North Atlantic - the busiest and most stressful shipping route in the world and poses a great danger to ships. Since Sable's height above sea level does not exceed 34 m, it is almost invisible from the sea. Only on fine days from the deck of the ship can one discern a narrow sandy strip of this island on the horizon.

Canadian fishermen claim that the coastal sands of the island, like chameleons, adapt their color to the color of the ocean. How often in these waters have bewildered captains passed through the island, leading their ships to certain destruction!

Danger awaits sailors, mainly at the eastern and western capes of the island. From Cape East Point, a drying sand spit stretches 3.5 miles to the northeast, over which breakers can be observed during storms. From West Point the same drying spit extends two miles to the northwest, and to the west-northwest of it the West Bar Shoal extends 19 miles. In the area of ​​the northern edge of this shoal, in stormy weather, waves directed against the wind are observed. The boundaries and topography of West Bar Shoal are constantly changing.

Parallel to the northern coast of the island, at a distance of 4 cables from it, in some places there are sandy ridges with shallow depths, over which breakers rage during a storm.

The white foam of the breakers is constantly boiling around the island, and only in the summer, in July, when the fury of the ocean subsides, can you approach the island (only its northern side) by boat.

A storm on Sable is usually preceded by an unusually dazzling sunrise. But God knows where the haze of leaden clouds appeared from, covers the sun, the sky darkens almost to blackness, and now the wind whistles subtly in the dunes. It gets stronger, begins to howl and tear sand from the tops of the dunes and drives it across the island into the ocean... Because of this cutting sand, there is not a single tree or even a bush on the island. Only in the valley between two ridges of dunes do stunted grass and wild peas grow.

The tidal current at Sable goes north at a speed of 1-1.5 knots, and the ebb current, directed south, passes through the shallows of the eastern and western ends of the island at a speed of up to 2 knots. Moreover, these currents are deceptive: under the influence of the wind, their speed and direction change.

The main danger that awaits sailors near Sable is the quicksand of its shallows. This is a kind of “swamp of the ocean”, which can only be observed on Goodwin Sands and near Hatteras. The sands of the treacherous island literally swallow the ships that fall into their embrace.

It is reliably known that steamships with a displacement of 5000 tons and a length of 100–120 m that found themselves on the Sable shallows completely disappeared from view within two to three months. Sailors dubbed this island the “ship devourer.”

Once, at the end of the last century, a famous American scientist, inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, witnessed ships disappearing before his eyes in the sands of Sable. He was shocked by the drama that unfolded near Sable on July 4, 1898, when the French steamer La Bourgogne sank as a result of a collision. The scientist believed that some of the people from the ship had reached Sable and were awaiting help there. Bell, using his own money, organized a rescue expedition, arrived on the island and carefully examined it. To his chagrin, there were no survivors there after the disaster. While waiting for the ship, Bell lived on the island for several weeks. The scientist turned out to be an eyewitness to the burial of the huge American four-masted bark Crofton Hall. In July 1898, Bell wrote: “The bark ran aground in April of this year. The magnificent vessel seemed intact, except that its hull was cracked in the middle. Today the sands have completely swallowed up the victim.”

The history of Sable is a continuous chronicle of human tragedies, an unbroken chain of events associated exclusively with shipwrecks and all kinds of crimes. According to documents preserved at the island's life-saving station, lighthouse keeper Johnson mapped the places and dates of shipwrecks since 1800. By counting the number of ships stuck forever in the sands of the island, you will get that every two years, on average, three ships were wrecked here. What happened before 1800? Historical documents in the form of numerous volumes of “Chronicles of Shipwrecks”, various maritime chronicles and other sources allow us to judge that even before the beginning of the 19th century. Sable was a gigantic graveyard of the North Atlantic and, perhaps, no less than the Ship Eater Sir Goodwin.

Here, under many meters of sand, lie the sharp-chested canoes of the brave Vikings, clumsy carracks and galleons of the Spaniards and Portuguese, gulets of Brittany fishermen, strong pine ships of Nantucket whalers, English shmucks, cutters from Goul, heavy three-masted ships

The West India Company, elegant American clippers... This entire armada of ships that has sunk into oblivion is crushed by the heavy hulls of steamships.

Moving and constantly changing its shape, Sable has been constant in only one thing since the times of the ancient Vikings: in his irreconcilable hostility towards the ships passing by him.

The reason why the ships found themselves off the coast of a dangerous island was different: some ships stumbled upon it, getting lost in the fog, others were carried to its shallows by the current, others did not notice it in the shroud of rain, and, finally, most of the ships found their last refuge here in storm time.

The strength of the storms near Sable can be judged at least by this fact. In August 1926, two American schooners, the Sylvia Mosher and the Sadie Nickle, were lost off the island on the same day. The first one capsized on the sandbanks and its crew were killed. The second was thrown over the spit of the island by the waves from one end to the other, where it also capsized and was later washed away by sand. In general, 1926 turned out to be unlucky for the sailors and very fruitful for the “ship eater”. In addition to two schooners, Sable’s annual menu included two ships: the Canadian Labrador and the English Harold Casper.

The first one found himself in the grip of the island, lost in the fog. The second, sailing from England to New York with a cargo of coal, was washed up on the Sable Banks by a storm on February 11 and also got stuck in the sand.

After each storm, Sable changes the topography of its coastline beyond recognition. About a hundred years ago, long storms washed out a channel on the northern side of Sable: a large inner harbor was formed inside the island, which for many years served as a refuge for fishermen. But one day another strong storm closed the entrance to the bay, and two American schooners remained trapped there forever. Over time, this closed bay became a 7 mile long inland fresh-salt lake. It's called Wallace. Now it serves as a landing site for seaplanes that deliver mail and food to the island.

Sometimes, after particularly strong and prolonged storms, the sandbanks and dunes of the island, having moved under the influence of ocean waves, reveal to the human eye the remains of ships that disappeared centuries ago. Thus, a quarter of a century ago, the strong Indian teak hull of an American clipper, which went missing a hundred years ago, “resurrected” from the quicksand. Three months passed, and dunes 30 m high grew above the hull of the resurrected ship...

Sable is one of the most “conscientious” and generous suppliers of unique exhibits to the non-existent museum of romantic relics of the past. The current inhabitants of the island, after a strong wind, find rusty anchors, muskets, sabers, grappling hooks and many ancient coins in the dunes... In 1963, a lighthouse keeper discovered a human skeleton in the sand, a bronze boot buckle, a musket barrel, several bullets and a dozen gold doubloons minted in 1760. Later they found a dense bundle of banknotes - English pounds sterling from the middle of the last century - in the amount of ten thousand. An old boot lay nearby, with bones spilling out of it.
Gold coins are not uncommon here. Maritime chronicles of the past indicate the names and dates of the sinking of ships that carried gold in the form of bars and coins.

Calculations show that the value of the valuables resting in the sands of Sable is almost £2 million at today's exchange rates. And this is if we take into account only ships about which information has been preserved that at the time of death there was valuable cargo on board.

The first settlers of Sable were shipwrecked: for them this meager piece of land, becoming the cause of misfortune, became a refuge. The unfortunate people made their homes from the wreckage of ships scattered throughout the cemetery. To their surprise, the first Robinsons saw cows in the valley of the island. These animals were left there by the Frenchman Lery in 1508, when he first visited Sable. The animals multiplied and went wild. Distressed sailors could also feed on fur seals, for which the local sandbanks are still a favorite rookery. The island's semi-salt lake abounded in fish, and seabirds nested on its shores.

The tragedy of the sailors who found themselves on Sable was aggravated by the fact that they had nowhere to wait for help: the ships avoided approaching the terrible island, even when they saw the smoke of signal fires above it. What else could they hope for? To someone else's tragedy? The fact that the next doomed ship will bring them essential items in its wreckage and, most importantly! – a few pounds of table salt? Yes, probably for that too.

Sometimes Sable turned out to be the patrimony of pirates of the North Atlantic... Probably, “gentlemen of fortune” buried their treasures here, burning false fires on the dunes of the island to lure merchant ships into a trap. How many crimes were committed here and how many Sable hid criminals will remain forever a mystery. Until now, many superstitious residents of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia consider Sable a place cursed by God and the abode of evil spirits and ghosts. They call it “The Ghost Island”.

At the end of the 16th century. Sable suddenly became a penal island. In 1598, 48 criminals appeared on it. They were landed from the French ship of the Marquis De La Roche, who intended to establish a colony in Nova Scotia. After a strong and prolonged northwest storm in the ocean, the ship developed a leak. Having never reached his goal, De La Roche turned back to the shores of Europe. Seeing the island, the Marquis came up with nothing else but to land the “extra cargo” on Sable. To prevent the convicts from starving to death, he left them 50 sheep. The unfortunate people were remembered only seven years later. Apparently, remorse prompted the King of France to sign a pardon for them. In the summer of 1605, a ship sent to Sable brought eleven overgrown people, who had lost their human appearance, dressed in sheep's skins, to Cherbourg. The rest, not you, suffered such severe adversities, died. Surprisingly, five of those who returned to their homeland asked the king to allow them to return to Sable. The king not only agreed, but ordered to provide them with everything they needed. This is how a small French colony was formed. And when in 1635 one of the ships was returning from Connecticut to England and was wrecked on Sable, its crew was rescued and taken to the American mainland by these French Robinsons.

Years passed. News began to reach Europe more and more often about too frequent shipwrecks near Sable Island. The sailors demanded that their governments build a lighthouse and a rescue station on the island. But neither France, which at that time owned Sable and lost two ships of the Anville expedition here in 1746, nor England, the “mistress of the seas,” nor Holland, no one wanted to bother with such a tiny territory... and if not for chance, – who knows how much longer Sable would remain, as they say, “in the dark.”

At the beginning of 1800, the English authorities found valuable things among the fishermen of Nova Scotia: gold coins and trinkets, geographical maps with the coat of arms of the Duke of York, books from his personal library and even his furniture. Simple-minded fishermen called these things “Sable things.” It turned out that they exchanged them for fish from the settlers of the “Island of Sands.” This alarmed the British. In addition, the ship "Francis" did not arrive from Nova Scotia to London. After all, it carried the personal belongings of the Duke of York!

The English Admiralty assumed that after the death of the Francis, the people on board reached Sable, but were killed by his Robinsons. And so a punitive expedition was sent to the island. However, it turned out that no one killed the people from the lost ship. They all died, and the islanders could not help them - there was not even a lifeboat on the island.

Less than a year after the death of the Francis, the English ship Princess Amelia perished in quicksand. Of the more than two hundred crew members, officers and soldiers, no one escaped. Another English ship that came to the rescue also got stuck in the sands of the island, and everyone on it also died. Three ships lost on Sable decided the matter: the British finally set up a lighthouse and created a rescue station on the dangerous island. Its servants were charged with the duty of providing assistance to shipwrecked people and saving property from sea robbers. And in England itself at that time, notices were posted prohibiting anyone other than rescuers, on pain of death, from settling on the island without government permission.

What was loudly called a “rescue station” in 1802 was a tightly built barn, one hundred to fifty meters from the shore. It contained an ordinary whaling whaleboat on wooden runners. There was a stable nearby - no, the horses were not brought here on purpose! Horses lived here long before that. And there are about three hundred of them on the island now. Nobody really knows where they came from here. According to one version, these are the descendants of cavalry horses that came to the island from a French ship that perished on the Sable Shoals at the end of the 18th century. According to another version, they were brought to the island by a certain Thomas Hancock, the uncle of the famous John Hancock, a famous American patriot during the War of Independence.

Sable's horses resemble large ponies rather than horses. They are very wild, hardy, live in herds, feeding on sedge, wild peas and some flowers that grow only on Sable.

Every day, four rescuers circled the island along the surf, following from different sides towards each other. They searched for sails in the fog and looked to see if the ocean had thrown up the wreckage of the ship. So they noticed a ship dying near the island... The patrolmen galloped to the barn and sounded the alarm. The oarsmen on duty harness four ponies into a team, which drag the whaleboat to the water. Having skillfully overcome the first three waves of the surf, the rowers rush to where the ship is in distress. Meanwhile, the rest of the rescuers, including the lighthouse keeper, are already racing to the scene by land.

Then a rope is thrown from the sinking ship to the island: this is the only way to snatch people in trouble from Sable’s mouth.

To this day, in the English sailing directions describing the Nova Scotia area, an important note remains: “If the ship becomes stranded near Sable Island, the crew should remain on board until the rescue station provides assistance. Practice shows that all attempts to escape on the ship’s boats invariably ended in human casualties.”

In the annals of shipwrecks, only eight ships are recorded that managed to escape from the tenacious embrace of Sable and avoid death.

In 1852, a new, larger rescue station building was built on the island, and the wooden whaleboat was replaced with a new iron one. In 1893, a new building was built, but a strong storm destroyed it to the ground in one night - it had to be built anew and more reliably.

The situation was worse on Sable with the lighthouses. Since 1802, the wooden structure of the only lighthouse tower stood in the middle part of the island. In 1873, when, despite numerous repairs and strengthening, the lighthouse tower completely fell into disrepair, the lighthouse was replaced by two new ones with an iron openwork structure. The eastern lighthouse served safely for about a hundred years, but the western one had to be replaced six times: the insatiable Sable “swallowed” six of its lighthouses. People knew that the island was stubbornly creeping to the east, leaving its western “tail”, where the lighthouse stood, under water, but they simply did not have time to move it to another place. So it was necessary to deliver new lighthouse tower designs from the continent six times.

Hundreds of merchant ships still fly past the island every day, flying the flags of countries all over the planet. Captains, plotting a course on maps, try to miss the island at a considerable distance. And although these days Sable no longer poses such a danger as before, sailors do not like to approach him. But what if?

Two lighthouses at each end of the island send warning rays into the night. Their light is visible 16 nautical miles in clear weather. Clear warning signals from the radio beacon can be heard on the air around the clock. It was thanks to him that shipwrecks off the coast of the island actually stopped. The last victim, the large American steamship Manhattan, was swallowed by the island in 1947.

A power plant powered by a diesel generator was built on Sable. Several years ago, a large warehouse, a forge, a carpentry workshop, a hostel for shipwrecked people (in case it happened) and a hangar were built here, where metal whaleboats stand on rails, ready to be launched at any moment. These ships are not afraid of any waves, they are unsinkable and so stable that they practically cannot capsize. But if this happens, then a ship flooded with water is designed in such a way that it again stands on an even keel.

Of the old buildings on Sable, only the building of the old rescue station has survived, a kind of landmark of the island. The station was built from ship masts, topmasts and yards thrown up on the island by the ocean. “Name boards” with the names of the ships are nailed to the walls of this building. These boards also washed up on the island. These are, as it were, the remaining passports of former victims of the “ship devourer”.

A herd of three hundred wild ponies still lives on Sable. On those that are tamed, keepers travel around the coast of the island every day. They look to see if a yacht or fishing boat has washed up on the shallows, or if a bottle or plastic envelope with a note is lying on the sand - to study sea currents. Explorers of the island often encounter interesting finds in the sand. Each family living on Sable has thus created a good collection of sea relics. Old gold coins are still found in the sand.

Although Transport Canada, which oversees Sable, has tried to create maximum amenities for its residents, their work is not easy and dangerous. The meteorological conditions here are so harsh that people often experience nervous tension. Long-lasting hurricane-force storms often prevent island residents from leaving the shelter of their buildings for weeks. But this is not what they consider the most difficult part of their stay on the island. The question rests on another, rather psychological, rather than physical, tension. Indeed, living on a remote island, always shrouded in fog and tormented by storms, is not easy. But it’s even more difficult to constantly realize that you live not on an ordinary island, but on a cemetery island. Every now and then, human skulls and bones found in the sand make the inhabitants of the island remember that the remains of tens of thousands of shipwreck victims lie under their feet. Who enjoys this?

Nowadays, the great “ship devourer” is practically neutralized. From 1947 to this day, there has not been a single case of death of a large vessel in its quicksand. But the sailors still vigilantly peer into the fog as they pass by the dangerous island. The formidable warning of the radio beacon does not stop for a minute: “You are passing near Sable Island - the cemetery of the North Atlantic.”

In the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately 180 km southeast of the coast of Canada, the “nomadic” crescent-shaped Sable Island drifts. This island is considered one of the most dangerous and mysterious islands in the world. Geographic coordinates of Sable Island: 43°55′57″ N. 59°52′48″W

Since this small island was discovered by Europeans, it has struck genuine terror into the hearts of even the bravest sailors. As soon as they called it: “shipwreck island”, “deadly saber”, “ship devourer”, “ghost island”...

These days, Sable Island is called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” By the way, its official name in English means black, mourning color (sable).

It was not by chance that this land ringed by water received its notorious fame - shipwrecks actually happened here all the time. Now it’s difficult to say for how many ships it became the last harbor...

The fact is that in the coastal waters of Sable, navigation is very difficult due to two currents found here - the warm Gulf Stream and the cold Lambrador. The currents create whirlpools, huge waves and the movement of the sand island.

Sable Island is constantly moving in the ocean waters. The western end of the island, under the continuous action of currents and powerful waves of the Atlantic, is gradually eroded and disappearing, while the eastern end is washed out and lengthened, and thus the island continuously moves east, gradually moving away from the shores of Nova Scotia.

It is estimated that over the past two hundred years, Sable has “walked” almost ten nautical miles across the ocean. The current speed of its movement is also known - about 230 meters per year. Moreover, along with the position of the treacherous island, which is poorly visible due to constant fog and giant waves, its size is constantly changing.

If we look at maps of the 16th century, we will see that its length was about 300 km, but now it has decreased to 42. It was assumed that the island would soon completely disappear, but over the last century, to the surprise of many inquisitive minds, it, on the contrary, began to increase.

A storm on Sable is usually preceded by an unusually dazzling sunrise. It would seem that a wonderful morning should end with an equally beautiful sunset. But God knows where a veil of thunderclouds appeared from, covers the sun, the sky turns black, and now the wind whistles subtly in the dunes. It grows stronger, howls, tears sand from the tops of the dunes and drives it across the island into the ocean... Because of this cutting sand, there is not a single tree on the island, not even a bush. Only in the valley between two ridges of dunes do stunted grass and wild peas grow.

The main danger that awaits ships near Sable is the quicksand of the shallows, a kind of “ocean quagmire.” Sailors and fishermen seriously say that they tend to take on the color of ocean water. The swells of the treacherous island literally swallow the ships that are captured by them. It is reliably known that steamships with a displacement of five thousand tons and a length of 100-120 meters that found themselves on the shallows of Sable Island completely disappeared from view within two to three months. These sands became a natural talisman for sunken treasures and an eternal grave for someone's remains.

The last victim of the insatiable and mysterious island was the American steamship Manhattan in 1947. After this tragedy, 2 lighthouses and a radio station were installed on Sable - since then, disasters have finally stopped.

Now about 20-25 people permanently live on Sable Island - all of them maintain the lighthouses, radio station and local hydrometeorological center, and are also trained to carry out rescue operations in case of a shipwreck.

These people work in very difficult conditions, and not only because of heavy fog and hurricane winds - many of them say that they sometimes see the ghosts of dead sailors. Not surprising, because they literally live on bones.

One of the workers even had to be evacuated from the island, because every night he was begged for help by a ghost with the schooner Sylvia Mosher that was wrecked here in 1926...

• More than one sailor who has plied the waters of the Atlantic Ocean can tell the story that before a storm, an extremely bright sunrise is often observed near Sable. But just a few hours are enough for the beautiful sunny weather to turn into a real nightmare.
• People who are part of the staff servicing the lighthouses and the meteorological station are constantly over the bones of the sailors who died on the island (we are talking about thousands of corpses). The very understanding of this requires a very stable psyche. The caretakers have spoken about ghosts more than once. Moreover, in the 50s. one of the lighthouse keepers had to be urgently returned to the continent. He claimed that he was haunted by the ghosts of the ship "Sylvia Mosher" and asked to save them... Could you live in such a place?
• Everyone who works on Sable has their own collection of relics from lost ships. Many have gold coins and rare antiques.
• Since 1920, only two people can boast that they were born in the "Graveyard of the Atlantic."
• Sable Island horses are featured on 2005 Canadian stamps and coins.

Photo - Sable Island

Video - the mystery of Sable Island

It is believed that the discoverers of the island at the beginning of the 16th century were Portuguese sailors.

Its first name was Santa Cruz, which translated means “Island of the Holy Cross”. Later it received its current name - Sable (according to various sources, translated it means “sable”, “sand” or “saber”). Some sailors nicknamed the island Mourning. This is due to the fact that it was here that a large number of different ships perished: English, Portuguese, French. Many pirate ships have also crashed near this island.

According to another version, the discoverers of this Sable Island were the Vikings, who landed on it 1000 years ago. This is not surprising, given their lifestyle and desire for endless travel. But some researchers provide facts that deny this statement.

It is assumed that this piece of land became an independent island only 500 years ago. Until that time, it was part of the continent, but then, for some reason, it separated from it and began to gradually move into the oceanic expanses.

From the very beginning, Sable may have been quite impressive in size: it was around 300 km wide and 370 km long. Scientists found such data in nautical charts dating back to the 16th century. This means that at that time the island had already been found. But the only thing that is unknown is what the relief and soil were like on it then.

According to some scientists, none other than Jean de Lery is the discoverer of Sable. This is a famous traveler, originally from France, who lived for some time among the Indians of South America. This means that such an event could have occurred at the beginning of the second half of the 16th century. A small number of historians point to the British whalers, who could also have been the first to discover this island. One way or another, the question of the discoverer still remains unfinished.

Sable is called "Shipwreck Island"

So, what sinister secrets does Sable Island hide? What is so mystical and unusual about it? Why does he scare more than one generation of sailors so much? And why do sailors so often in taverns and taverns tell each other terrible stories about the cursed Shipwreck Island or, as it is also called, the Graveyard of the Atlantic, avoiding saying its real name out loud?

Sable Island has long been of interest to researchers from various countries. Back in the 20th century, they managed to notice one interesting feature. As is known, Sable is influenced by a strong sea current from the Western side. And it is still unknown how long powerful waves have been contributing to the erosion of the coastal zone of Sable.

But the most amazing thing is that on the eastern side of the island, new sand deposits are constantly growing, as if by magic. But where do they come from, because neither the laws of physics, nor even the simple logic of things can explain this phenomenon. In addition, there is another mystery that researchers also cannot solve. This is that the island is in endless motion, which is also still inexplicable, and besides, throughout its many-hundred-year history of existence, it has changed its length indicators very slightly.

“Shipwreck Island”, like a large and predatory monster, is moving towards its goal - to the east. The research data is amazing, because the island is moving eastward at a speed of approximately 200 meters per year.

For almost a whole year, bad weather rages in the water element washing the shores of Sable. But July is the only month when a boat can land on the island. During this period, the sea elements completely calm down on the northern side of the island.

Sable Island is very treacherous. It conceals a formidable weapon against sailors - sharp reefs located close to the shoals. The reefs are absolutely amazingly painted in a bluish color and “dissolve” against the background of the sea surface. Thanks to this property, they become almost invisible. Therefore, ships easily fall into a trap. This phenomenon has existed for a very long time, and 200, and 300, and 400 years ago, entire ships were lost.

At first, only small ships made of wood received this fate. Gradually it was the turn for sailing ships, and later for huge ships. The sand sucked in everything that floated towards Sable Island, regardless of size. It is also interesting that, having fallen into a trap, the ship sank into the sand very slowly and unhurriedly. The island seemed to be intently trying to “taste” what the ship tasted like.

But with each subsequent day, the immersion in the sand became faster and faster. It took only two weeks for the island to half-absorb a large ship. And the huge ship completely disappeared into the quicksand in just a month and a half, as if it had never existed at all.

Sable Island Horses

Nowadays, sometimes near the island you can see part of the hull of a ship when the sand is washed out a little by water. You can see both ships of the 20th century and sailing ships that existed in the 17th century. Gradually the sands are washed with water again and hide their crimes. The island keeps the history of these ships under its sands.

Sailors who lost their ships in the greedy sands of Sable Island often made it to land and lived quite well on it. In order to somehow survive, people used fresh water, which could be found in the Sable lakes. Various vegetation and the remains of a ship helped them build houses. They often ate fur seals.

Fortunately, this was the favorite island for these animals, and they lived on it in entire colonies. However, the sailors had a hard time when the seals' mating season ended and they swam far from the island. They returned only after 6 months, which, of course, affected the condition of people if they arrived on the island during this period.

Horses began to live on this unusual island in the 18th century. Perhaps they got there as a result of a shipwreck, however, this remains unclear. These animals were able to survive in harsh conditions for them, and even fully adapt to them.

Now the island has about 300 individuals of these animals. People also managed to settle on Sable at the end of the 19th century. These were English civil servants who, due to endless shipwrecks, installed a lighthouse on the island. The employees served as lighthouse keepers and also acted as rescuers.

In the mid-20th century, a radio beacon and two lighthouses were installed on the mysterious island. And in the 21st century, Sable was officially recognized as a protected area. In this regard, wild horses and fur seals living on the island are protected objects. You can get to the Sable itself only with special permission.

Now this land belongs to Canada. Civil servants live on the island with their families, and the number of people is around 30. Specialists maintain the radio station, lighthouses and monitor the proper functioning of the Hydrometeorological Center. In addition, the employees are professionally trained rescuers, but, fortunately, their help has not been needed for a long time, since there have been no shipwrecks near the island for 65 years.

There are not many buildings on the island. There are only two houses that are installed according to all the rules on a solid foundation. Everything else is trailer houses and one hangar for boats that are used for rescue. There is also a monument on Sable that includes the names of ships that crashed near its shores. It is constructed from ship masts, and this chronology dates back to 1800. Looking at this monument, there is no doubt that hundreds of ships were lost in the area of ​​the Sable coast.

Sable is a living alien organism

Despite the fact that the island has long been inhabited, it still remains one of the most mysterious places on the planet. The most amazing thing is, given its movement into the ocean, it should have disappeared under water 40 years ago. But, in an absolutely incredible way, it still exists, and has even increased in size. The island definitely hides some secrets, and the most important of them is why does it always sail in an easterly direction?

Many researchers have tried to excavate it, but to no avail. The island instantly fills the dug space with water; even the fastening material could not help the scientists. Some brave researchers of the 20th century put forward the hypothesis that Sable Island is an alien organism, and exists in the form of a kind of biorobot. He is probably collecting information for some other inhabitants of the Universe.

Perhaps a little time will pass, and the mysteries of the unusual Sable Island will be revealed, who knows?