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Hulk, Ships Graveyard, Purton, Gloucestershire (3)

This is a pair of about thirty ships and boats beached on this stretch of the Severn estuary. These hulks were deliberately placed here to protect the adjacent Gloucester and Sharpness Canal from the threat to it posed by erosion of the river bank. Erosion episodes occurred in 1909 and 1951. The presence of the hulks interferes with the flow of the tide and causes the deposition of silt thus keeping the river at bay. These hulks are both of concrete construction, built by Wates Group in 1941 and beached here in the early 1960s.