Pictured: the Aral Sea's ship graveyard near Muynak, Uzbekistan — a different but related phenomenon covered further down.
Ship graveyards exist wherever decommissioning a vessel costs more, in money or paperwork, than simply leaving it to rust. Baku's version sits at Bibi-Heybat, a working Caspian port on the same stretch of shoreline that produced the world's first mechanically drilled oil well — and it's one entry in a pattern that repeats, at very different scales, from West Africa to the Aral Sea.
Bibi-Heybat's Rusting Fleet
Retired Azerbaijani vessels are left moored at Bibi-Heybat rather than being promptly broken up, and photo documentation of the site over the years has recorded hulls including the General Salimov, Nizami, Ashug Aleskar, General Mehmandarov and Gahraman Hasanov — several named for Azerbaijani military figures and cultural icons. It's an informal, evolving cast: ships arrive as they reach the end of service, and occasionally, one is finally scrapped and disappears from the lineup.
A Site Steeped in Oil History
Bibi-Heybat's significance goes well beyond the rusting hulls. A well drilled here in 1846 is recognised as the world's first oil well produced by mechanical drilling rather than hand-dug excavation, predating Pennsylvania's famous Drake Well — commonly credited internationally as the first — by more than a decade. The area became a major offshore oil field by the 1890s, with land reclamation extending production further into the bay by 1924.
Not the Only One in the Bay
Bibi-Heybat isn't Baku's only cluster of retired ships. A separate and larger group of rusting hulls has long been documented on the shore of Nargin (Boyuk Zira), an uninhabited island further out in Baku Bay — a reminder that this is a regional pattern from the former Soviet Caspian fleet, not a one-off.
How Ship Graveyards Compare Around the World
Baku's is modest next to the world's largest: the bay of Nouadhibou, Mauritania, holds more than 300 scuttled vessels, the legacy of a 1980s boom in which ship owners paid small bribes to abandon unwanted hulks rather than pay for proper disposal. Left in place, the wrecks became artificial reefs, boosting local fish stocks enough to revive a fishing industry that overfishing had previously gutted.
The Aral Sea's ship graveyard, near Muynak in Uzbekistan, tells a very different story — the ships didn't move, the sea did. Decades of Soviet-era irrigation drained the Aral Sea back by tens of kilometres, stranding an entire fishing fleet on what is now dry, cracked seabed far from any water. Where Nouadhibou and Bibi-Heybat are about ships being left behind, Muynak is about the sea itself disappearing out from under them.
Planning an Actual Visit
Bibi-Heybat is a working port and oil-industry site, not a promenade, so there's no walk-up access to the ships themselves. For the closest legitimate vantage point and how to fit it into a Baku itinerary, Tourister's guide to the Baku ship graveyard covers how to actually see it in person.
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