Sable Island - A Dune Adrift

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Sable Island: A Dune Adrift

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Sable Island, a sand dune in the Atlantic, is crucial to the world and our imagination.

Sean Street reveals how Sable Island, a sand dune in the Atlantic Ocean, is crucial to the world and our imagination. From 2009.


100 miles east of Nova Scotia lies a 30 mile-long sand dune: Sable Island, population, two, who work in the weather and research station - and 300 wild horses.

Sean Street reveals how this remote place, this dune adrift in the Atlantic, is providing information vital to us all, and has gained a powerful presence in the imagination.

In the middle of the world's worst weather systems, held tentatively in place by ocean currents, it’s the perfect place to monitor climate change, and air and sea pollution.

More than 500 ships have been wrecked here. There have been several attempts at colonisation, by the Portuguese, the French (Sable is the French word for Sand) and even a group of prominent Bostonians, and all have failed.

Thomas Raddell, Nova Scotia's finest writer, was a radio operator on Sable for a year, and this inspired his novel The Nymph and the Lamp. Poet Elizabeth Bishop visited and wrote about the island.

Sean examines wreckage from some of over 500 ships that came to grief here. There is a poignant baby's crib made from wreck wood. He meets artist Roger Savage who battled to capture the landscape. And he meets a man who dedicated years to studying the rare Ipswich Sparrow, which nests only here. 

What emerges is that Sable Island is for the Canadians what the Galapagos are for the people of Ecuador, or Easter Island for Chileans. It is important scientifically and historically, but more than this it is important culturally, as part of their identity.

Producer:  Julian May.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2009.

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