Looking Down
August 25th, 2025
PILOTS SPEND a lot of time looking down. One of the odder sights I’ve beheld is that of Sable Island, a low-lying castaway crescent in the North Atlantic, about 170 miles east of Nova Scotia.
I remember the first time I saw it, maybe two decades ago, flying back from Europe one afternoon. I looked down, and there was this stretched-out sickle of land where common sense told me there should be nothing but blue. “What’s this thing underneath us?” I asked the ATC facility in Gander.
“Sable Island,” came the answer. I jotted down the name and looked it up.
It’s Ile de Sable, in French, which means Island of Sand. That more or less sums it up. It’s about 27 miles long, but only a miles or so across at its widest point. From 35,000 feet it looks like a giant toenail clipping lost at sea.
It’s home to a small airstrip, a research station, and about 500 Sable Island horses, a feral breed that has roamed there since the 1700s. A Canadian National Park Reserve, Sable is off limits to visitors without a permit. Which is probably just as well, considering its remoteness and the bleakness of the North Atlantic climate.
Sea level rise and erosion have the island marked for oblivion by the end of this century, so see it while you can. Keep your window shade cracked next time you’re flying westbound from Europe, and maybe sneak a peek.
Photo by the author.
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3 Responses to “Looking Down”
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Roy Plomley was thinking about Sable for his Desert Island Discs. Some nice Google Street View images around as well… https://bit.ly/3HFaSSV
Sable Island was a notorious place in the age of sail and even thereafter (there were a couple of slightly post-WW2 wrecks). Hundreds of vessels and thousands of lives have been lost there, and a lifesaving station stayed active until 1958, when it became apparent that radar and augmentation of the lighthouse with a radio beacon were finally enabling ships to give it a wide berth.
The September issue of National Geographic has a memorable article on it (as well as other items of likely interest hereabouts: a cover story about the US Air Force and another story about the longest spacewalk thus far).
Interesting – I’d heard about Sable Island from the book ‘The Perfect Storm’, as the island was right in the path of the terrible weather that sank the boat involved. Much of the wreckage was washed up there. I’d never seen it before, so thank you. Nicholas.