Ship Wrecks of Lanka

Famous shipwrecks
around the coast of Sri Lanka

For millennia, the paths of travellers from strange lands beyond and yonder have fallen across a small island of paradise in the Indian Ocean that will one day be known as Sri Lanka. Traders and invaders have come and gone, remnants of their legacy evident only by the infusion into the island's culture and the derelict remains of their transportation — once mighty symbols of trade, commerce and imperial power, now mere echoes from the past resting beneath the waves of the coastal seas.

Based on historical records, there are over 200+ estimated shipwrecks around the coast of Sri Lanka. Five hundred years of trade, commerce, conflict and war from the times of the Portuguese, Dutch and British resulted in a vast amount of shipping traffic all around the coast — and the reason for the proportionately high number of wrecks.