Derelict Graveyard: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:March - July 2002, Abandoned vessels cast an eery glow (5202013538).jpg|thumb]]
An area (could be an abandoned harbor, a Lagrange point or the bottom of an ocean) which contains a number of craft (space, sea or otherwise) in varying states of disrepair. It might be just a few sunken ships lying near each other on the ocean floor, it might be a giant conglomeration of space derelicts rammed together in horrible ways over thousands of years. The crews of all these vessels long ago died or abandoned their ships... probably.
Of course, all sorts of important [[Plot Coupon|plot-related things]] could be hidden in such a place - [[Pirate]] [[Pirate Booty|gold]], the lost plans to a [[Forgotten Superweapon]], spare parts for the heroes' own badly damaged ship, an unexplainable [[Distress Call]]
Between the idea of exploring tumbling derelicts crammed with ancient technology, apparently dead hulks suddenly coming to life, a hidden base made of ancient battleships linked together, the explorers running into weird indigenous creatures or the mutant cannibal descendants of the original crews, the kind of dread powers that can gather all these vessels together in the first place, and simply the whole idea of abandoned, empty derelicts, the [[Derelict Graveyard]] is ''insanely'' [[Rule of Cool|cool]].
Compare: [[Ghost Ship]]. See Also: [[The Bermuda Triangle]], [[Saharan Shipwreck]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
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* The film ''[[Real Steel]]'' features one. Charlie and Max break into a robot junkyard to find parts to build a new robot boxer. After a near-death experience, Max discovers the film's robot protagonist, Atom, buried in the mud.
* In the opening scene of ''[[Deep Rising]]'', before we switch to the main plot the creatures are seen travelling through a deep sea ship graveyard, some of them hundreds of years old, ''all of which they presumably attacked, ate all the people on it, and sank the ships afterwards''. There are even the remains of whale skeletons besides the derelict ships.
* The planet Jakku in [[The Force Awakens]] was originally a desert planet until it an offscreen battle between the New Republic and what remained of the Galactic Empire littered a section of the planet with the wreckage of several Imperial Star Destroyers. And by the film's events, it also attracted a colony of scavengers.
== Literature ==
* In the [[Backstory]] of [[David Brin]]'s ''Startide Rising'', a Terran starship discovers a fleet of derelict [[Precursors|Progenitor]] ships and unleashes a galaxies-wide holy war.
* Old [[World War
** "Bronco", in ''Clear and Present Danger'', speculates that the [https://web.archive.org/web/20121008025446/http://www.amarcexperience.com/AMARCDescription.asp Boneyard] in Arizona is where the a captured druggie DC-7B will eventually be dumped, given that one more old aircraft in storage there won't be particularly noteworthy.
* The [[Redwall]] book ''The Bellmaker'' has a
* The Nartec city in'' [[Animorphs]]'' #36 is built from wrecks recovered from the seabed.
* [[Andre Norton]]'s novels contain several:
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* In the ''Dream Park'' South Seas Treasure Game, some important items are found amid a collection of abandoned ships and planes, which the villainous {{spoiler|Fore sorcerors}} had summoned to New Guinea with their [[Cargo Cult]] magic.
* Star Trek's ''Dominion War'' series placed one of these in the Badlands.
* In the ''[[Star Trek: The
** The previous novel, ''Chain of Attack'', actually outclasses it,
* In the ''[[Starfleet Corps of Engineers]]'' series, we've got the Sargasso Sector, named for the Sargasso Sea on Earth. It's a junkyard of abandoned ships floating around a collection of black holes and quasars. The protagonists are assigned to clear a path through it to allow a convoy access - one of the series' more notable cases of [[Space Is an Ocean]].
** Finally, to show how much ''[[Star Trek]]'' likes this one, there's the Rashanar battle site in [[Star Trek: A Time to...]], a collection of wrecked ships destroyed during the Dominion War.
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== Live Action TV ==
* in one episode of ''[[Space Cases]]'', the Christa comes across a graveyard of ships that had all their energy sapped by an entity that inhabits the region. The ship picks up echoing transmissions that confirm the entity has been at work for more than 100 years. the Christa narrowly avoids joining them.
* In ''[[Star Trek: The
* ''[[Andromeda]]'' had a graveyard full of abandoned High Guard ships, captured by the Nietzscheans after the war and left to sit there for 3 centuries until they could figure out how to deal with the [[A Is]] defending them. There were also a couple of episodes where they came across single abandoned ships from the same time, generally presumed to be haunted wrecks (including the Andromeda itself in the pilot).
* The ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' episode "Psirens" featured an asteroid belt full of wrecked spaceships; it was there because the titular creatures were causing the ships to crash.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Happens quite a lot in ''[[Warhammer
** Examples of merely a lot of spread-out wrecks happen occasionally, including in the graphic novel ''Bloodquest''.
** Space Hulks - giant asteroids with the ancient wreckage of hundreds of ships embedded in them - are a recurring plot device and the basis for an entire series of Space Hulk games, whether full of handfuls of Genestealers, millions of Orks, or an STC device the Imperium has to snatch from the claws/choppas of aforementioned nasties.
** Games Workshop sells a downed Aquilla Lander as a miniature (landscape element).
** ''[[Rogue Trader]]'' grabs it and flies off with it. There are many. A bunch of derelicts left after an ancient battle on the outskirts of a system is a generic feature for [[Randomly Generated Levels|randomly generated discovered systems]]. There's one location of which seems to change and it's rumoured to actually be a nest of a Space Kraken that captures ships and devours their crew. There's a whole system full of derelicts in different stages of damage and disassembly, lots of which by all rights should not be anywhere near that area at all, with strange creatures scavenging them and generally sanity-impairing atmosphere. There are also places like Breaking Yards, full of derelicts and squalid scavenger habitats - you may try to find something useful there, but this "cheap" approach isn't exactly respected in the spacefaring community, the most obvious good stuff is probably taken many centuries ago, and it's not necessarily safe to rummage.
* The Lintha Family stronghold of Bluehaven in ''[[Exalted]]''.
* Several locations in the ''[[Ravenloft]]'' setting qualify, including the ring of battered wrecks that encircle Monette's isle, and the kelp-mired vessels enmeshed in the domain of Saragoss.
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** ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' has the Ozmone Plain, which may ''appear'' to be a nice, pleasant grassland, but all around, you find the wrecks of crashed airships...
** In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', {{spoiler|the final battle map is a "Graveyard of Airships".}}
* In ''[[Star Trek:
** {{spoiler|Actually, pretty much the entire game takes place in one.}}
* The ''[[Homeworld]]'' games had at least two boneyards-in-space, the Karos graveyard (light years wide and has many functional ships inside too) and the ancient ships in the garden of Kadesh.
* One of the first levels of ''[[
* Several levels in ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]''.
* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', the planet Rakata becomes a ship graveyard due to an ancient jamming field installed there to keep wandering ships away from [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon|the Star Forge]].
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* The Spaceship Graveyard in ''[[Ratchet and Clank|Secret Agent Clank.]]''
* The Ship Graveyard level in ''[[Hydro Thunder]]''.
* The Keyblade Graveyard in ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep]]''.
** [[Pirates of the Caribbean|Port Royal]] in ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' featured Isla Del Muerte from the first movie and a second area filled with shipwrecks when Sora and co return to the world.
* ''[[Far Cry]] 2'' has the Train variety in multiple areas, and a multiplayer map. Also Saharan Shipwrecks of a sort if you follow the tracks into the desert.
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** Which you can if your pilot is [[Handicapped Badass|Joker]].
** There's also Korlus, the shipbreaking planet where Grunt is recruited.
* The Sirius star system in ''Sol-Feace'' has several ship
* ''[[Prehistoric Isle|Prehistoric Isle in 1930]]'' features this in the second part of the underwater level, showing all the ships that have gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle.
* Seventh story mission in ''[[Jaws Unleashed]]'' has you chasing some divers into a lagoon filled with partially and completely sunken ships.
* ''[[Starfleet Adventures]]'', a ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|TOS]]''-based [[Game Mod|fan conversion]] for ''[[Escape Velocity|EV Nova]]'', has one of these in the system Surplus Depot Z15.
* In the ''[[X Universe]]'', the sector President's End has about a dozen burned out capital ships and space stations floating around, leftovers from a Kha'ak attack.
* As fitting for a ''[[GeGeGe no Kitaro]]'' reference, Gerogero no Kitako's first course in ''[[Battle Golfer Yui]]'' is a graveyard. If a golf ball hits a grave here, spirits pop out.
== Western Animation ==
* The ''[[Star Trek: The
* In ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire]]'', the expedition finding one of these is the first sign of trouble: They were sunk by the Leviathan.
* At the end of ''[[The Little Mermaid]]'', [[One-Winged Angel|The now gigantic]] Ursula creates a whirlpool that exposes several damaged ships. Prince Eric finds one of them, and uses it to dispatch Ursula.
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== Real Life ==
* As well as numerous fictional depictions as a
** Although apparently the only reason the Bermuda Triangle accumulates shipwrecks is because so many shipping lanes pass through it. Statistically, it's actually safer than the rest of the ocean.
** Subverted with quiet, methodical, bludgeoning research by [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bermuda_Triangle#Larry_Kusche Larry Kusche in ''The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved''] where he discovers that while there are genuine mysteries most disappearances either happened well outside the Bermuda Triangle, occurred during a time of bad weather, the start of the search was delayed, had a number of plausible explanations, wreckage was found, the vessel never existed and/or [[Did Not Do the Research|it was reported missing but eventually got home safely]]!
* Large concentrations of sunken ships can occur in Real Life. Naval battles are one reason (such as "Ironbottom Sound" off Guadalcanal, rumored to be lined with the hulks of so many sunken ships a magnetic compass is useless), mass scuttlings another, such as when the German High Seas Fleet was [[wikipedia:Gutter Sound|scuttled at Scapa Flow]] at the end of [[World War
* This is actually true of the aptly-named Ironbottom Sound. Fifty or so ships went down in fierce battles. It is said that a compass will deflect off true north at least twice on any trip across the sound, sometimes as many as five times.
* The area off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina is referred to as "The Graveyard of the Atlantic" with good reason, having a remarkably high shipwreck density; partially because of the ever-shifting sandbank known as Diamond Shoals, and partially because of German U-boats during two World Wars.
** Also the hurricanes and other storms which regularly sweep through the area.
** Bikini Atoll was the site of [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Operation_Crossroads several atomic bomb tests] involving a "fleet" of derelict ships, many of which now lie in shallow waters on the bottom.
* Collections of semi-functional machines are maintained for all sorts of reasons, such as the US Military's "[https://web.archive.org/web/20121008025446/http://www.amarcexperience.com/AMARCDescription.asp Boneyard]".
** Or the Mothball Fleet at Suisun Bay, California.
* Some Russian naval ports are a bit like this, with rusting subs and ships waiting for disposal. Word of advice- some of the subs may be radioactive.
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* Paracas, a bay in Ica, Peru has sunken ships in what's now a national reserve, they are wooden and much joy for children...
* Pearl Harbor has a small graveyard of two sunken ships, the ''USS Arizona'' and ''Utah'', that have remained there since the Japanese attack on the harbor during World War II. There used to be more sunken ships, but the majority were salvaged, with the ''Arizona'' and ''Utah'' deemed too damaged to raise. The ''Arizona'' itself was eventually turned into a war memorial.
** The ''Arizona''
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