Number 10: Amy Lynn Bradley The 1998 disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley
is a terrifying cautionary tale that you should be careful who you trust.
The 23-year-old was on a family vacation on Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas.
After fun days asea with the folks, Bradley let her hair down at night, explicitly getting
chummy with a cruise band player called Alister “Yellow” Douglas.
Although Yellow was never charged with her disappearance, and to this day, he denies
being complicit in any foul play, he was the last person she was known to be with.
On the night she disappeared, Yellow and Bradley said their goodnights at 1 a.m.
After that, the details get fuzzy.
Some reports say that Bradley went out to have a cigarette and vanished.
Others say that they saw her asleep on her balcony.
What happened to Bradley?
She might have slipped and fallen, drowning in the ocean, or she may have been sold into
the international sex trade.
There have been many Bradley sightings in brothels and escort websites in Central and
South America.
To this day, we still don’t have any definitive answers.
Number 9: Jure Sterk Jure Sterk was no slouch when it came to maritime
adventure, crossing the Atlantic Ocean 8 times, the Indian Ocean twice, and the Pacific Ocean
once, during his illustrious career out on the big blue.
Unfortunately, the Slovenian sailor met a strange and possibly gristly fate when he
left Tauranga, New Zealand, in December 2007 to sail around the world.
Sterk was 70 when he embarked on this last, fatal trip aboard his trusty craft “Lunatic.”
Sterk’s objective, to be the oldest person to circumnavigate the world, would never be
realized.
Sterk’s last radio message arrived on January 1, 2009, with no hint of foul play.
He’d managed to survive a full 379 days asea, but a mysterious fate befell him in
the early days of 2009, and he was never heard from again.
His craft, Lunatic, was discovered about 1,000 miles off Australia’s coast with torn sails,
a banged-up hull, and no sign of Sterk.
Even more damning was the last log entry, dated January 2, 2009.
It seemed like the seasoned seaman simply evaporated into the waves.
Number 8: Rebecca Coriam Rebecca Coriam’s experience on Disney’s
cruise ship Wonder was a whole lot less magical and a whole lot more macabre for the 24-year-old
entertainer.
Like many other tales on our list, Coriam’s no-doubt ended in tragedy, but what exactly
happened to the young woman simply isn’t clear.
We know that she had a contentious conversation over the Wonder’s internal phone system
and then went to one of the upper decks.
The official story is that Coriam was carried off by a rogue wave, but Coriam’s parents
aren’t buying it.
They believe that the walls of the pool area would have prevented a huge surge from whisking
away their daughter.
Stranger still is Disney’s deliberate attempt to sweep the incident under the rug.
Rogue wave?
Accident?
Foul play?
Suicide?
It’s anyone’s guess.
Number 7: Richard Fearnside
As proof that cigarettes can kill you, we give you exhibit Richard Fearnside.
This unlucky lad was crossing the English Channel on a routine ferry ride in May of
2013, when he went out for a smoke and simply never returned.
The English Channel is one of the last places that you’d expect a maritime mystery.
It’s a well-traveled bit of sea that connects London and Paris, and tons of ferries and
ships traverse it all of the time.
What started as a routine trip for Fearnside quickly turned into something far more enigmatic
and tragic.
Did Fearnside lean too far over the railing and tumble into the channel?
Did he jump?
Was he pushed?
Did aliens abduct him?
We will never know because most of the ferry’s CCTV cameras were inoperational.
In fact, the only one that worked was in the gift shop.
Number 6: Daniel Kublbock German pop sensation Daniel Kublbock vanished
on September 9, 2018, while en route between Hamburg, Germany, and New York City.
Before his untimely and mysterious disappearance, Kublbock was a German television star, gaining
accolades on singing competitions all throughout the country.
His big break came in 2004 when he signed up with BMG, and he continued to do television
work on Big Brother and Let’s Dance.
Tragically, the young star wouldn’t get to grasp at even higher fame.
He boarded the cruise ship AIDAluna on August 29 and leapt into the Labrador sea about 115
miles north of St. John’s, Canada.
His fate was caught on camera.
Although the Coast Guard conducted a frantic search for Kublbock, he was never found; alive
or dead.
Number 5: Evi Nemeth
Evi Nemeth was one of the world’s experts on Unix and Linux until she disappeared at
sea in 2013, along with six other people on the ill-fated cruiser “Nina.”
Nemeth was a computer whiz, penning multiple system administration handbooks for intricate
computer languages, and her death was a massive blow to the IT world, but what exactly happened
to Nina and her crew?
The 69-foot Nina was sailing near the western part of New Zealand when she reported rough
weather, indicating that terrible winds had shredded the sails.
Still, the craft never activated its EPIRB emergency beacon, leading rescuers to hope
beyond hope that the ship and her crew were still alive and afloat somewhere.
Unfortunately, their hopes were dashed when neither the Nina nor her crew were ever seen
again.
Number 4: Merrian Carver Merrian Carver’s 2004 disappearance from
the Royal Caribbean’s Mercury cruise ship is an enigma for the ages.
She was traveling from Seattle up to Alaska and vanished somewhere in that chilly stretch
of ocean.
Nobody knows when she dropped off the face of the planet because alarm bells only went
off for the staff when someone realized that her room hadn’t been used for several days.
What’s more, Carver might have only brought two small handbags, a single dress, and one
pair of shoes with her on the trip, all of which were found in her vacant room.
Carver’s family blames the cruise line for not conducting a more thorough investigation,
including a search and rescue sweep of the area.
Her father launched his own research, alleging that far from being proactive, Royal Caribbean
actually hampered the search by erasing video footage and failing to take steps to protect
his daughter.
Number 3: Henry Hudson You can find tributes to Henry Hudson all
over Canada, including Hudson River and Hudson Bay, but his legacy is dampened by one small
thing; a strange disappearance at sea.
In 1611 Hudson, his young son, and 7 other companions vanished from James Bay, Canada,
never to be seen again.
While it’s uncanny that one of the most famous British navigators who literally has
giant bodies of water named after him would go missing, that’s precisely what happened.
According to local legend, Hudson was notoriously tough to work for, often pushing his exhausted
crew to the very limit in his lust to discover new land.
Hudson might have fallen prey to one of the sea’s most fickle forms of street justice;
a mutiny.
While it’s unclear whether or not Hudson, his teenage son, and his most diehard loyal
crewmen were murdered by the others or simply left to their own devices in a tiny lifeboat,
we don’t know.
Since Hudson was a celebrity, and his body was never recovered, there’s speculation
that the great navigator survived the mutiny and went on to live out the rest of his life
in balmy Central America.
Although that’s a nice thought, it’s really just wishful thinking...
Number 2: Harold Holt Harold Holt was Australia’s Prime Minister
when he vanished in 1967 near Point Nepean.
Unlike many other stories on our list, Holt wasn’t in a boat when he disappeared into
the sea.
He was swimming.
Holt was an accomplished swimmer, but what started as a routine dip turned disastrous
for the 59-year-old Prime Minister.
Conspiracy theories swirled about the disappearance, ranging from the implausible to the absurd.
Some say that he was beamed up by a UFO or captured by a Chinese submarine.
Others think that he faked his own death so that he could run off with his mistress, Marjorie
Gillespie.
The likely truth is more mundane and ultimately more tragic.
In 2005, Holt’s death was determined to be an accidental drowning.
He was either swept out by a rip current, attacked by a sea creature, or encountered
some other ominous but natural force in the ocean.
Number 1: Amelia Earhart Amelia Earhart is the most famous person ever
to go missing over the Pacific Ocean, and we’re still no closer to solving the mystery
of her disappearance as we were in 1937 when it happened.
Earhart was a pioneer who specialized in air travel but also dabbled in fashion, teaching
and writing before her untimely passing at the age of 39.
Earhart was traveling with her navigator Fred Noonan when a mysterious catastrophe struck
on July 2, 1937, and the two were lost forever.
A massive search effort immediately went into effect to find Earhart and Noonan, but no
hide nor hair of the pair was discovered.
While common knowledge speculates that Earhart ran out of fuel, wilder theories cropped up.
Some say that F.D.R. contracted her to spy on Japan during the Second World War.
Others claim that she faked her death to live a simpler life under a new alias.
Ultimately, we may never know.
Thanks for watching!
Would you rather be stranded in a lifeboat with Henry Hudson or take your chances with
Evi Nemeth on the Nina?
Let us know in the comments section below.