The English Cemetery (Camariñas, Spain)

In Camariñas, Spain, a dead silence echoes across a windswept headland, where the ocean's cold currents once swallowed one of the most storied maritime disasters of the 19th century. Here stands the English Cemetery – a haunting monument to a harrowing navigational error of the HMS Serpent, which ran aground near the shore of Punta do Boi on November 10, 1890. Three survivors washed ashore at Trece, and the rest of the crew were left at the foot of this cliff, their remains scattered across the shore.

The local priest, eager to help, gathered the community to recover and bury the remains. For half a century after the disaster, the area known as Baixos do Serpent reverberated with annual gun salutes from passing English warships, in honor of their lost comrades. And today, only a stone inscription remains as a testament to the tragedies that befell this coastline – the English Cemetery, now part of the European Route of Singular Cemeteries, stands as a lasting monument to the sailors who never made it home.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons