Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first prime minister, president and leader of a single party, was not happy that the port of Takoradi was two hundred miles west of his seat of power in Accra, so he built a new port in Tema. , a small fishing port just twenty miles to the east. Fishing Harbor Road runs along the east coast from the new harbor and the old fishing port to end in a cove with a curving sandy beach. But this is not a potential tourist attraction because the view is dominated by the huge rusting hulls of five ocean going ships stranded and abandoned forever.
This otherwise pleasant location can often be found completely deserted even though it’s not far from the busy town of Tema and nearby housing. However, the remains of a giant tortoise shell lying face down in the sand suggest that locals take an interest in the beach, and occasionally a hardy swimmer can be seen moving around on the deck of one of the wrecks, presumably looking for fish. of something worth saving.
One of the hulls is washed up fairly close to shore and only shallow water separates it from the dry sand. Its large bow towers above anyone standing on the beach. One wonders how such a huge monster could have been driven so close to shore before being stopped by sand and rocks. No doubt being devoid of charge lifted it higher in the water. Other hulls are located a bit further away and present more of a challenge to swim rescuers. When first seen in 1987, the paint on most hulls was little affected by rust, but they are said to have remained there for up to two decades. Twenty-eight years later, the satellite map shows them still in position, but they can be expected to be in much worse condition.
By world standards, this ship graveyard is small. The one said to be the largest, in Nouadhibou Bay in Mauritania, is the permanent resting place of three hundred boats. Even the largest hoards in India and Pakistan are not permanent graveyards because ships are being broken up and recycled as they arrive, with Gadani, near Karachi in Pakistan, handling a hundred ships a year producing a million tons of steel. The Indian operation in Alang is said to be even larger, accounting for 50 percent of the world’s ship dismantling. Hopefully, similar operations could be carried out temporarily in Tema to turn the attractive little cove into a place of recreation for locals and tourists.
