Transcription (ZL):
Twenty-Mile Strip of Sand Scene of More Than Two Hundred Wrecks.
Davy Jones must be very familiar with Sable Island. This little stretch of sand 110 miles southeast of Cape Canso in Nova Scotia is constantly shifting its position and shape. Seamen call it “the graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Every year this narrow spit of sand, twenty miles long by a bare mile in width, has added its tale of disaster to the fast-growing list Davy Jones writes up each year. More than two hundred wrecks have been catalogued for this island. At either end dangerous bars extend for about seventeen miles out into the ocean. The coast is without a harbor and peculiarly liable to fogs and storms.
For the puny size of this bit of floatsam [sic] in the Atlantic it is strange to find that there is a lake ten miles long in its interior. Since 1873, on one of the highest points of land (the island rises to a height of eighty-five feet in some places), an efficient lighthouse has been kept up by the Canadian Government, and since 1904 it has maintained connection with the mainland by radio.
Before any of these modern innovations removed some of the hazard from Sable Island storms dashed to pieces on its shores troop ships of both French and English alike during the war between those two countries.
It was in 1746 that the Duc d’Anville lost a transport and a fireship in a terrific storm near the island. Five years later, one of the vessels that had been with Wolfe at the siege of Quebec was wrecked, and about it a strange tale is told.
In the form of a pyramid of sand a hundred odd feet in height an old landmark stood on the island. This, in 1842, was razed by a hurricane. Beneath it were revealed some small huts built from the wreckage of ships cast up on the shore.
In the huts were articles of furniture, military goods, blankets, military shoes and a brass dog collar. On the dog collar was engraved the name of the dog’s owner, Major Elliot, Forty-third Regiment. Major Elliot had headed the regiment which had been lost in the storm of 1761. Records showed the soldiers who had been saved from Wolfe’s transport had been taken off the island. The site of the old encampment has since been buried beneath the waves.
