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{{trope}}
[[File:
There's something [[Tragedy|tragic]] about a beached ship; not only is it
▲There's something [[Tragedy|tragic]] about a beached ship; not only is it 'dead', but it's died on land rather than in the ocean and been denied a sailor's burial. You can imagine the surprise then, when our intrepid heroes run into a ship ''in the middle of the desert.''
Somehow this ship has been wrecked on land and far from water. If it isn't just there to look ominous and creepy like a [[Ribcage Ridge]], then it will very likely hold important supplies, clues or shelter from the desert environment for the heroes.
The fact that the ship has run aground can mean a lot of things about the desert or setting. Mundane explanations include receding shorelines due to climate change or a typhoon/tropical storm/tornado. Weirder possibilities include but aren't limited to: a [[Teleporter Accident]], [[The End of the World
{{examples|Examples:}}▼
== Anime and Manga ==
* Featured in several episodes of ''[[
* From ''[[Space Battleship Yamato]]'':
{{quote|
* One of the earlier establishing shots at the beginning of ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' is of an oil tanker ''embedded in a skyscraper''. A definite sign that you're going to see some serious shit.
* Second act of ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' had the cast encounter one run by Cockatrimon. [[Sand Is Water|It actually functions]], at least until it sails at full steam into [[All Deserts Have Cacti|a gigantic cactus]] and gets flung away.
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* In ''[[Holes]]'', a plot-important wrecked rowboat sits in the middle of the dried-up lake.
* Near the beginning of ''[[Tank Girl]]'', a ship is seen on a dried harbor bottom. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI9-VfuOoI4 Watch it here, starting at 2:35].
* ''[[
* Used symbolically in ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: At World's End'' where Jack Sparrow's version of [[Ironic Hell]] has him pulling one of these, as a pirate the worst place for him to be would be in the middle of a desert.
** Not that this minor setback [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|stopped him, mind you]].
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** The funny thing about this is that ancient versions of the Suez Canal have been constructed and reclaimed by the desert before, in ancient human history. If the Suez Canal of today were to be abandoned, it would eventually sand in.
* An interesting subversion is seen in ''[[Waterworld]]'' during the expedition in the diving bell - a submarine is seen having crashed into the side of a skyscraper in the flooded city.
* The plot of ''[[Sahara]]'' involves a literal shipwreck in the Sahara which is supposed to be loaded with confederation gold coins of [[The American Civil War]].
* An upside-down riverboat is found in ''[[Cowboys and Aliens (
* In one of the most surreal scenes of ''[[Aguirre, the Wrath of God]]'', an abandoned ship is found atop a tree in the middle of the jungle. The original script expanded this into an actual subplot<ref>The Amazon sometimes has drastic changes of water flow so it's actually not that far-fetched for ''a ship to end trapped in a tree''</ref> but the final cut leaves it ambiguous and it might as well be a figment of the men's imagination who have gone mad at that point. Since ''Aguirre'' is the ultimate [[River of Madness]] story, this is actually very fitting.
* Invoked in the movie ''[[Fitzcarraldo]]'' (also from [[Werner Herzog]], the director of ''Aguirre'') where the titular mad rubber baron moves a steamship through mountains and jungles in order to put it on an unreachable river. The movie's [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Fizzcarraldo.jpg?uselang=es prop ship] was later abandoned in the Peruvian jungle after filming was completed, making it also a [[Real Life]] version of the trope.
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* ''Wolf in Shadow'' by [[David Gemmell]] has the [[Big Bad]] headquartered in the Titanic, exposed when the Earth shifted on its axis, moving all of the oceans.
* The plot of ''Sahara'' by [[Clive Cussler]] involves a literal shipwreck in the Saharah- a ''Confederate Ironclad''. Really.
**
* Played with in Andre Norton's ''Quag Keep.'' Whilst traversing the Sea of Dust, the heroes discover a slightly-buried ship. However, it had been specially designed to travel through the dust.
** Norton's ''No Night Without Stars'' features the nearly-intact remains of a submarine in a dried-out ocean basin, hundreds of years [[After the End]].
* Appears in Louis Sachar's classic novel ''[[Holes]]''. No, it's not in the Sahara, and it's not a ship. It's a small two-person rowboat several miles from Camp Green Lake. It provides shade from the brutal sun, as well as some jars containing moldy peaches, which are later used to carry water. {{spoiler|It also contains Zero, who has run away from Camp Green Lake.}}
* In [[John Christopher]]'s [[
* ''[[Star Trek: Destiny]]'' begins with Earth's second starship, the NX-02 Columbia, [http://images.wikia.com/startrek/images/f/f7/Columbia_in_desert.jpg being found on the surface of a remote desert planet.]
== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Just a Pilgrim]]'' did this with the Titanic (It's a post-apocalyptic world where the oceans have dried up).
* A Viking ship in ''[[Land of the Lost (TV series)|Land of the Lost]].''
* The Black Rock in ''[[
* The third season of ''[[
* One of the most memorable images to come out of ''[[
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== Video Games ==
* Spaceship example: In ''[[The Dig]]'', one of the first things Brink and company find on Cocytus is the deserted ruins of a space ship, which also houses the first "ghost" in the game.
* Another spacecraft burried beneath the sands of a desert is what kick-starts the plot of the first ''[[
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]: [[The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games|Oracle of Seasons]]'' involves a pirate crew that somehow shipwrecked into a desert. Apparently, they beached themselves so hard that the front end of the ship ''punched through the ground'' and now sticks out in ''Subrosia''.
** ''[[Skyward Sword]]'' gives us the Sandship, which used to be a seafaring vessel until the seas dried out and filled with sand. At least, until you activate the Timeshift Stone onboard...
* Happens in the original ''[[
** There's also the remains of a ship somehow in a cave, early in ''[[Bowsers Inside Story]]''.
* This is one area in ''[[Pokémon Colosseum|Pokemon XD]]''. In this case, you actually see how it got there in the beginning of the game. It was dropped there by Shadow Lugia.
** [[Fridge Horror|Unlike most of the examples, the Libra was dumped in the Eclo Wastes far more recently than most ships described by this trope, and aside from Cipher and Snagem interlopers, there's only one local onboard. Cipher looted the Pokemon on the ship during their attack, but that means the human sailors either were taken down or thrown overboard. And your visit to the Libra is the first time anyone could get a good glimpse of what happened to it.]]
* There's an infamous wreckage of a ship in the salty, dried-up lakebed known as Shimmering Flats in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''. After much [[Wild Mass Guessing]] to its origins, the location is one of several obvious choices to be ''re''flooded in the new expansion.
* The party actually uses one of these as their main transportation in ''[[
* In ''[[Crysis (
* [[Half-Life 2
* The mission "Sangre del Toro" in ''[[Battlefield
* One is featured during a mission in ''[[Just Cause (
* There are a number of rusted, wrecked barges in ''[[STALKER]]: Call of Pripyat'' in previously low-waters that have now turned into swamps and marshes. One is used as a 'town' of sorts, and others are hiding places for other Stalker gangs, or Stalkers trying to find somewhere to rest, away from the [[Everything Trying to Kill You|weather, wildlife, or random blowouts/emissions]].
* A beached ship acts as one end of the arena in one of the settings for the post-apocalyptic [[Fighting Game]] ''[[Primal Rage]]''.
* ''[[Donkey Kong Country Returns]]'' features a shipwreck at the top of a cliff.
** An argument could be made for the ship mast seen in the [[Lost Woods]] of [[Donkey Kong Country]] 2, althought it may just be there as a "spiritual resting place" for the [[Palette Swap|ghost version]] of the boss you fought earlier.
** Also in ''2'', a wrecked ship is located in Crocodile Cauldron, the second world and a [[Lethal Lava Land|volcano]]. The ship itself is in a small lake of superheated water. The third world with the [[Bubblegloop Swamp|swamp theme]] has also a semi sunken ship in it. Given that the overall theme of this game is [[Pirates]], there could have been even more
* [[Digital Devil Saga]] has a cruise ship in a desert, there's no bodies of water in the Junkyard ''period'', and only it started to rain during the game's events. Many characters had expressed confusion about it, including the fact they even knew what a ship was - more evidence that the Junkyard wasn't what it seemed.
* Various small ships in [[Fallout 3]] show that the water level was gone down significantly in the last 200 years.
* The original ''[[
* The [[Portal (
** Also, in the original [[
* The Crystal Desert of ''[[Guild Wars]]: Prophecies'' contains several derelict Margonite ships from a time when the area was still known as the Crystal Sea.
* Early on in ''[[Uncharted Drakes Fortune]]'', Drake and Sully stumble upon an abandoned Nazi U-Boat stuck miles upriver in the middle of the jungle. Sully's explanation that it floated up there then got stuck isn't ''entirely'' implausible but still quite unlikely.
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== Western Animation ==
* Part 2 of the [[Five Episode Pilot]] of ''[[
== Real Life ==
* [[Truth in Television]]: The [
* The Mediterranean Sea has [
* Salton Sea, after it was abandoned in the 60's, suffered some flooding but mostly receding shorelines, leaving many abandoned boats (probably already sunk on the bottom by the time they were dried out) marooned high and dry on cracked, parched earth far from water.
* [[Urban Legend|According to legend]] this has happened in real life, [[Your Mileage May Vary|if you believe the lost cvilization types]]. There are supposed to be lost ships from Atlantis in the North African desert and in the Atlas Mountains, as well as a famous [[Horny Vikings|Viking longship]](!) in the deserts of the American southwest with skeletons still at the oars.
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