In the late 1930s, in Comox Bay on Vancouver Island, near the town of Royston, it seems that a breakwater was needed to help prevent rough waters from breaking up  log booms before they could be towed to market.

 

About  fourteen decommissioned boats of various kinds were scuttled in a line to form a breakwater to protect the shoreline from the worst of the sloshing waves.

Now, about 100 years later, pieces of a few of the wrecks still remain.

But it is only a matter of time before the saltwater and southeast winds will rust and break up the last of the wrecks.

Meanwhile, they are a bit of a landmark (or seamark), fondly called:

 

“The Royston Wrecks”

 

We were not always carcasses of rust,

But fine in form, yet seaworthy, robust;

Our time had come, our breakup loomed ahead,

They dragged us to the beach to rot instead.

At least our strength allowed us to reclaim

Some semblance of our pride and long-term fame.

Though battered by the sea from time to time,

Our rusting hulls and decks beset by slime,

We rested firmly on the bar to break

The might of stormy waves that tried to shake

Us loose from settling on the rocky floor,

Where we regained our usefulness once more.

A hundred years, we sheltered yonder beach

And proudly kept the onslaught out of reach.