From "ghost ships" to a real yellow submarine, here are 8 of the most mysterious, abandoned
sea vessels.
8.
Carroll A. Deering Have you ever read the books "A Series Of
Unfortunate Events"?
If you have, you might see some similarities here...The Carroll A. Deering had a very odd
set of events happen to it before it was found abandoned on the shores of North Carolina
without a clue as to where the crew went.
The Deering was a commercial schooner.
It was known to transport coal, among other things, and had just dropped off a load of
coal in Rio De Janeiro.
On its way back though, things got weird.
First, during a routine stop in Barbados, something went wrong with the First Mate of
the ship.
He was arrested on the charge of making threats to the Captain.
It all got settled and the ship continued its course.
As it got close to North Carolina, someone on the ship contacted the Cape Lookout Lightship
with a warning that they had lost their anchors, which meant that if they made port, they'd
have no way to keep the ship from drifting.
But they continued their journey anyway.
Fast forward to when the ship was last seen, and it ran aground at Cape Hatteras.
But when people went to check on things, the crew and everything they owned was gone.
No trace of them on the ship.
Where did they all go?
Many have wondered, but there has never been a clear answer.
Some think it was pirates, or some other kinds of thieves, but those theories have left more
questions than answers.
A few people feel the Bermuda Triangle is to blame, since they were in Barbados which
is near it.
But, the Triangle ends near Florida, and North Carolina is much farther north than that.
Only the ocean knows what happened to this abandoned vessel.
7.
The Suicide Club Yeah, if this is your nickname, you know you're
screwed.
The time was World War I, and the British Navy was dealing with a small crisis in regards
to their submarines.
Submarines are important scouts and are a great element of surprise during wartime.
To give them a greater advantage, they needed to be faster so they could scout ahead of
a fleet, submerge and attack the enemy.
Enter the K-class submarine.
In order to make it faster, a naval architect decided to use steam to power the subs.
Steam engines in submarines are a terrible idea.
They were humongous and were fast, but they took forever to actually submerge and were
easily attacked by enemy ships.
They dove too fast and there were too many holes so there were gas leaks, explosions,
fires, etc. etc.
They even crashed into each other during battle!
The military refused to disclose what happened until certain crew members had died and couldn't
try and sue.
The kind of good news is that only 18 were ever made, 6 of which were sunk due to collision
accident.
K was for “Kalamity” and it was so bad that whoever was put on these submarines were
dubbed the "Suicide Club", because you most likely weren't coming back from the adventure.
It is interesting to note now though, that every nuclear powered submarine at sea today,
it a steamship.
Submarine technology has come a long way! 6.
High Aim 6 Here's a strange one for you.
The High Aim 6 was a Taiwanese ship that was found completely abandoned.
In 2003, the Australian Navy found the 80-foot vessel that was going full throttle.
The ship had plenty of fuel and supplies to keep the crew going.
There was also a hold full of valuable tuna that they had most likely gone out to fish
to bring back.
The clothes and documents were all in their place but where was the crew??
A massive rescue mission was launched to try and find the crew, but nothing came of it.
Everyone started calling it the Ghost Ship.
People who had been working with boats all their life said they had never seen anything
like it.
There were reports that the ship's engineer had made phone calls from his cellphone while
the crew were all in Bali but nothing came of it.
They left Indonesia and went fishing.
When the owner didn’t hear from the captain again, he reported it to the coast guard.
What was going on?
Was there a mutiny?
If so, why were there valuables left on board?
There is a theory that the boat belonged to people smugglers or that they had been attacked
by pirates.
The radio was missing, but pirates would have taken the boat and the expensive tuna.
If they were murdered, where is the evidence?
Where are they?
Nobody will say and the mystery remains.
5.
The "Unsinkable" Joyita Many ships that have been built to be "unsinkable"
have proven to be just the opposite.
And I’m not talking about the Titanic, but the MV Joyita.
A ship with a much more mysterious history.
The MV Joyita disappeared from view in 1955.
The small ship had cargo and 25 people onboard.
It was sailing in the South Pacific when it simply vanished and everyone assumed it was
just lost at sea.
When it didn't arrive for its scheduled port date, people started to look for it.
Five weeks later, it was found just drifting.
It was clear that this wasn’t a normal accident.
The crew and passengers were gone, but they weren't the only things missing.
Four tons of cargo on the ship were unaccounted for.
Furthermore, the radio on the ship was tuned to the emergency distress channel.
All lifeboats were all gone, and some windows were smashed.
Pirates?
A raid that ended in bloodshed?
Some said they had come upon some Japanese fishermen doing something they shouldn’t
have been and so they attacked them.
What do you think happened?
Let us know in the comments below!!
4.
St. Patrick The Bering Sea is known as one of the most
treacherous waters in the world.
It's the setting of the show Deadliest Catch, where brave crab fisherman fight the fierce
winds, waves, and freezing oceans to get rich hunting for King Crab.
However, there are many tales of ships that have sunk in these waters, and one of the
most haunting tales was of the scallop vessel the St. Patrick.
The St. Patrick was on its way to its fishing grounds when a massive storm hit the ship.
While it started off as normal, the ship soon took a wave that crippled the vessel, taking
out the engine and its electrical systems.
Fearing the worst, the 12-man crew fled the vessel.
Unfortunately, the crew wasn't fully able to prepare for this, and only 9 of the 12
were able to get on their survival suits.
Even with the survival suits, not all of them made it.
After 24 hours of drifting in the water only two members of the crew were rescued by the
coast guard.
Why is this so haunting?
Well, when the two were rescued, they learned the hard truth...the St. Patrick was still
afloat.
Despite a massive storm with winds and waves that would've sunk most ships...this one stayed
upright.
Meaning, if they had just stayed on board, they would've had a terrifying experience...but
all the crew would most likely still be alive.
The story was so powerful that it was not only told on Deadliest Catch, but it was made
into a movie called Deadliest Sea.
3.
The Yellow Submarine I appreciate all the Beatles fans who get
that reference!
And there was in fact a real yellow submarine.
If you go to Coney Island, and take a look at its creek, you'll notice that there's a
lone submarine sticking out of the water.
The whole creek is a ship graveyard full of burned and rotting ribs of old ships.
But the yellow submarine is the only sub there.
People have long wondered what it's doing there, and why it's in the creek.
Well, it's a tale of intrigue, lost treasure, and a man who went a little too cheap in an
attempt to get rich.
In 1956 there was a ship called the Andrea Doria, which was a well-known cruise liner.
A lot of rich people were happy to take the ship on various journeys or to just get away.
Sadly though, the ship sank one day, taking the lives of nearly 50 people.
But, what also went down with the ship were a lot of "artifacts" that could make you rich!!
The only catch was...you had to go get it yourself.
If you get it, you keep it.
Enter Jerry Bianco, a shipyard worker who wanted to go after the Andrea Doria.
It took him four years of work, but he eventually built his own submarine out of scrap metal.
And yes, it was yellow...but not because of the Beatles song, but because the paint was
cheap.
He called it the Quester I.
Speaking of cheap, to get a good deal on getting the sub into the water, Bianco made sure that
every piece of non-vital weight was stripped from the ship.
Which meant it had to go a certain way into the water, but it tipped sideways and got
stuck in the muck.
He was unable to raise enough money to recover it and Mr. Bianco had to give up his dream
of looking for treasure.
His buried submarine a sad reminder of what could have been.
2.
The "Pearl" Of Submarines When you think of submarines, you often think
of them as a military instrument, especially in WWII and the Cold War, but it might surprise
you to learn that submarines were actually used long before that for non-military expeditions.
And one was lost to history for nearly for 150 years.
In Panama, there were stories about a beached submarine that appear during low tide.
An archaeologist named Jim Delgado was in the area and knew the story, and decided to
look into it.
When he found it, he noticed the sub was American.
So how did it get to Panama?
Researching the answer took years, but eventually, he found it in the New York Times!
From 1886!
This submarine was made in the 19th century, and it was actually one of the first successful
submarines to be able to fully go underwater.
A process that took quite a long time to perfect.
The craft was made by Julius Kroehl, a German-American who made the ship to do one thing...mine for
pearls.
Didn't see that one coming, did you?
The ironic thing was that it was quite successful at its job, to the extent that it once harvested
ten TONS worth of pearls in one trip, bringing in over $2,000.
Which back then was a fortune.
Because this was one of the earliest submarines, some of the side effects of going so deep
underwater weren't known, and many of the crew who went on these expeditions got decompression
sickness, include Kroehl himself.
Many of them died.
Deeming it too dangerous to use, Panama decommissioned the craft and left it in the water.
1.
Mary Celeste The Mary Celeste was a ship from 1872 that
was abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean.
The ship was actually a merchant ship of all things, so it being abandoned is a bit odd.
But when you dive deeper, it gets even weirder.
The ship was on its way to the Azores along with 7 crewmembers, the Captain, and his family.
A British ship called Dei Gratia found the Mary Celeste floating in the choppy seas and
went to investigate.
The ship was completely abandoned, but why?
There was nothing wrong with it, and no evidence of foul play.
Everyone’s belongings were still intact, and the cargo of 1701 barrels of industrial
alcohol was all there.
What's more, there was apparently six months worth of provisions on board, so there's no
way that it was starvation or lack of supplies that caused everyone to flee...So...why did
they?
The crew of Dei Gratia was also investigated in case they had something to do with it but
there was no evidence.
In 1884 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story claiming that an ex-slave was seeking
vengeance and had murdered everyone.
Everyone was wondering what happened to the ghost ship and the family onboard.
The documentary “The True Story of the Mary Celeste” was also unable to offer a definite
conclusion.
The ship went on to have several different owners.
The last captain ran it aground in Haiti to try to claim insurance on it.
He was accused of fraud.
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