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Throughout history there have been many ships that left their ports and were never found
again.
Most of the time, these ships were sunk or destroyed on their journeys.
But occasionally, there are ships whose fates are more mysterious.
Ships that were found whole or in pieces, with their crew missing and a fate that remains
a mystery even to this day.
Here are four Ghost Ships, whose haunting tales remain mysteries to this day.
SS Baychimo
The Baychimo was a German cargo ship built in 1914, and then sold to the Hudson’s Bay
Company as war reparations in 1921.
She spent the next decade plying the waters between Scotland and Northern Canada.
She was used to transport furs and for trading with Inuit settlements in the arctic regions
of North America.
In late September 1931, Baychimo was struck by a blizzard near Point Barrow in Alaska,
and on the 1st of October, she became stuck in pack ice.
The crew, fearful for their lives and knowing that the ship could remain stuck for some
time, chose to leave the ship and march across the ice to the town of Barrow.
For the next month and a half, they would regularly return to the ship and try to clear
away the ice from the hull, until on the 24th of November, another blizzard struck the region.
Afterwards when the crew returned to the Baychimo to try and get her free of the ice, they found
her to be missing.
At first, they assumed that she had sunk in the storm, but they soon received word from
a hunter that the ship was in fact still afloat and had somehow drifted over 70km to the south.
The crew tracked her down once again and managed to remove the cargo of furs from her hold
before flying back to Vancouver and declaring the ship a loss.
This should have been the end of the Baychimo.
It was unmanned and trapped in ice.
By all reasonable metrics it should have sunk just a few weeks or months in the arctic conditions,
and yet, despite being abandoned and declared a loss by the company, the Baychimo would
remain afloat for at least the next 38 years.
The first sighting of the ghost ship came in 1932, when it was seen once again, having
drifted 500 km to the east, floating silently and completely intact.
There were multiple sightings that year from dog sleds and prospectors.
In 1933, a group of Indigenous people stumbled across the trapped ship in a blizzard and
took shelter on board for 10 days until the storm passed.
The ship may have saved their lives, despite being abandoned and drifting through ice packs.
Word had spread by now that the ship was still afloat, but the Hudson Bay Company did not
have any interest in trying to salvage her.
Privately, some tried, but the thick ice in the area and dangerous weather meant that
no attempt was ever successful.
There were no more sightings for over 20 years between the late 30s and early 60s, but in
1962 she was finally spotted again, drifting off Alaska’s northern coast.
It was incredible that after 30 years of abandonment and horrendous conditions, the Baychimo was
still afloat and in good condition.
The last known sighting of the Baychimo occurred in 1969, when she was found, having been trapped
in ice once more between Point Barrow and Icy Cape.
Though she has not been seen since, she has remained a famous ship for her almost 40 years
of remaining afloat on her own, sailing up and down Alaska’s coast and surviving decades
of ice and disrepair.
Sadly, it is likely that she has by now sunk, as there have been no new sightings since
the 60s.
However, in 2006 the Alaskan government began searching for the wreckages of the thousands
of lost ships in the north.
Perhaps soon we will learn where the final resting place of the Baychimo is.
Carroll A Deering
The Carroll A. Deering was a five-masted American schooner sailing ship, built in Maine for
the G.G Deering Company.
This ship was doomed to a short life, operating as a cargo ship for only a year before it
was found with its entire crew missing, drifting into port in North Carolina.
In January 1921, the Carroll A. Deering was making a routine journey from Barbados to
Norfolk.
With 12 men on board and a short trip, it should have been a simple journey.
And sure, at first all things appeared to be going well.
On the 29th of January the ship passed by the Cape Lookout Lightship in North Carolina.
The men on board reported that they had lost their anchors, but didn’t mention any other
issues - losing an anchor was fairly common back in the day.
But just a few days later on the 31st , the ship was seen drifting off Cape Hatteras.
The sails were set and the ship appeared in good condition to the observers on the shore.
There was however, one strange detail.
There wasn’t a single person on board.
The ship soon wrecked itself against the rocks off the coast, and members of the Coast Guard
boarded it.
On board they found prepared food that had never been eaten, and the lifeboats missing.
The ship’s log and navigational equipment was gone, as were the crew’s personal belongings.
Rumours immediately spread through the region and conflicting theories emerged about what
exactly had happened to the crew.
Mutiny was chosen by the newspapers as the most likely scenario, but there was no reason
that a mutinous crew would abandon a perfectly good ship.
And why so close to their destination?
Another suggestion was that pirates had taken over the ship.
After all, another vessel, the Hewitt, had gone missing around the same time.
Might there be a connection between the two?
The mystery remained unanswered, and the wreckage stayed on the rocks offshore until, on the
4th of March, the Coast Guard loaded it with dynamite and blew it up, in order to prevent
the wreckage from becoming a danger to passing ships.
There were no further leads after this until April of that same year.
A message in a bottle was found by a passer-by on the beach, allegedly from the crew of the
Deering that told a compelling story.
It said; “Deering captured by oil burning vessel something like a chaser”.
Taking off everything and handcuffing the crew.
Crew hiding all over the ship, but no chance to escape”.
This was taken up by newspapers, and suddenly the Russian communists were on the table.
There was a great deal of paranoia at the time about Communist subversion of the United
States, and there were rumours that they were plotting to steal American ships and cargo
to sail them back to the newly formed Soviet Union.
It was discovered in September however, that the message in a bottle was actually a forgery
from the very same man who had found it.
He was attempting to get a job at the lighthouse; not sure why he thought the bottle would help
but anyway.
With that, communist pirates fell out of favour in terms of theories.
The most likely explanation is also the most boring.
Severe weather off the coast forced the ship near a sandbar, and the crew made the poor
decision to abandon ship rather than risk being stranded during a storm.
This would explain why the lifeboats were missing along with the crew.
The ship may have been freed by the waves and rode off on the currents without a crew.
To this day, the answer to what exactly happened to the crew of the Carroll A. Deering is unknown
because the ship’s boats and the bodies of the crew were never seen again.
The København
The København was a magnificent Danish five-masted sailing vessel launched in 1921.
It was used as a naval training ship, but also carried cargo such as wheat to help cover
costs.
When it was completed, the København was the largest sailing ship in the world, and
was quite famous for this.
She sailed the oceans for the next seven years circumnavigating the globe and remaining a
popular attraction in every port she sailed into.
Finally, in 1928, she set sail on what would be her last voyage.
On the 14th of December 1928, the København left Buenos Aires, sailing for my hometown
Melbourne, Australia on a voyage that was expected to take a little over a month and
a half.
The last time the ship, or anybody aboard was heard from was on the 22nd of December,
when the København radioed a nearby steamer, reporting their location and indicating all
was well.
Captain Anderson was in command of the vessel, and - being a bit of an old sea dog traditionalist
- was notorious for his sparse use of the wireless radio.
As the København was a sailing ship, there was also no guarantee that winds would be
suitable for a quick journey.
As such, there was not a great deal of concern when the ship hadn’t been heard from in
January.
By February, concerns were being raised, but there was no reason to panic just yet.
Finally in April, when it was clear that nobody had heard from the København since December
and that it was not going to be coming into port, the Danish government sent a ship out
to search for the missing vessel.
There were strange reports from the island of Trista da Cunha in the South Atlantic.
A school teacher had seen a ghostly sailing ship with a broken foremast sailing past the
island, with no crew on board.
He described it to The Times.
“The sea was rough for our boats and we could do nothing but watch her gradually crawl
past and run inside the reefs to the west of the island.
She was certainly in distress.
She was using only one small jib, and her stern was very low in the water”.
The ship had drifted within a few hundred metres of the shoreline, before being caught
by the wind and sailing further to the East until she was out of sight.
Days later, the inhabitants of the island would find boxes and an abandoned lifeboat
caught in a reef near the island.
Despite this lead, no sign of the ship or any of its seventy-nine-man crew were found
by the Danish government, and she was declared officially lost in 1930.
Sightings of the Kobenhavn would continue for years after she was declared lost, with
reports of abandoned sailing ships matching her description coming from as far abroad
as Chile.
The most common theory is that the København hit an iceberg and sank, and that the ship
sighted off Trista da Cunha was not the København at all, but rather a different sailing ship
that had been in the area on that same day.
But that doesn’t account for the poor condition described by the eyewitnesses.
Also there is compelling reason to believe that an ice-berg is responsible.
In 1934, a diary was found on Bouvet Island, apparently from a trainee on board the København,
that had written the ship was struck by an iceberg and the crew was forced to abandon
ship.
Meanwhile, in Australia, a Finnish ship claimed to have found the wreckage, seeing a ship
with København written on her stern.
Finally, in 1935, a lifeboat was found on the beach in what is now Namibia, about four-hundred
miles north of Swakopmund.
Seven skeletons were inside, dressed in Nordic uniforms.
Are these from the København?
And if so, how would a wrecked ship and its crew be found scattered thousands of miles
apart from one another on different continents?
The answer remains a mystery.
MV Joyita
The MV Joyita was a luxury yacht built for an American movie director, before being sold
to the navy during the second world war.
In 1948, she was sold to the Louis Brothers, who added a cork lining to the ship’s hull
and used her in Samoa as a charter vessel.
On the 3rd of October 1955, the Joyita pulled out of Apia and set sail for the Tokelau Islands
in New Zealand.
It was a journey of about 400 km or 248 miles and was expected to take two days.
One of Joyita’s two engines had actually failed before leaving, so the ship was already
in a bad state when it left the harbour.
Nevertheless it pressed on with 25 crew and passengers on board, including two children.
No one would ever see any of these people again.
On the 6th of October, the ship was reported overdue and rescue vessels searched the sea
between Samoa and the Tokelau Islands to no avail.
The ship was declared lost, until on the 10th of November, a merchant ship sighted the stricken
vessel listing heavily, partially underwater and devoid of any crew or passengers.
The Joyita was 600 miles off course, drifting off the coast of Fiji.
When a rescue team boarded the vessel, they found the radio was tuned to the international
marine distress signal.
Clearly they had tried to call for help.
The logbook, sextant and all three lifeboats were missing.
More concerningly, the ship’s bridge had been destroyed and the windows broken.
When the doctor’s bag was found, there were bloody bandages inside.
There was also more than four tonnes of cargo missing from the hold.
Barnacle growth on one side told salvagers that the ship had been listing onto its port
side for weeks.
The ship was towed into Suva and examined by an inquiry team.
From the amount of fuel left in the tank, the ship had probably not been more than 50
miles from its destination when the disaster had struck.
An inquiry found that a blocked drain in the bilges had caused the hull to fill with water,
causing the heavy listing.
The cork lining that had been installed a few years before however had kept enough buoyancy
in the ship to keep it afloat, even with the water it had taken on.
The radio was also broken, with a range that was limited to no more than 2 miles from the
ship.
There was never a chance of help reaching them, as nobody could receive their signals.
The inquiry did find however, that a single engine would not have been enough to steer
the ship after taking on that amount of water.
The ship had likely been struck by a storm, which filled the hull with water.
To the passengers and possibly even the crew, the list might have made the ship appear to
be sinking.
It’s possible that the captain ordered the ship abandoned, which would explain why the
lifeboats were missing.
Another possible explanation is that the captain had become incapacitated or killed, which
had caused a panic on board.
This would explain the bloody bandages and why the passengers and crew had abandoned
ship when the cork was still keeping it afloat - something the captain would have known about
and factored into his decision-making.
Some more outlandish theories include kidnapping from the Soviets - again with the Soviets!?-
, murder from Japanese army holdouts still active in the region, and pirates.
These answers would explain why the cargo was missing from the hull.
Another explanation is that the crew simply engaged in a mutiny against a captain they
felt was incompetent.
After the broken engine and radio, and leading the ship into a storm that caused the vessel
to list, the crew lost faith and took over the ship.
With only one engine the mutineers took everyone in the lifeboats and tried to reach a nearby
island, before being swept to sea.
To this day no one is sure what happened to the people on board.
The damage to the bridge and the bloody bandages remind me of the recovered lifeboat of the
lost ship MV Munchen, which showed evidence of a rogue wave.
If Joyita was in rough weather and a group of waves banded together to form one monstrous
wave it could have smashed with extreme force over the bow of the ship, crushing the bridge
and seriously wounding anybody inside.
With the captain and any senior crew killed or badly hurt, the survivors would have been
dazed and terrified as their ship rolled over.
They might have hurriedly filled a boat to escape and been lost at sea.
After being recovered, the Joyita was repaired and used as trading vessel, but she repeatedly
ran aground on reefs and became abandoned one final time.
She was stripped of valuable fittings and what remained of her simply disintegrated
in the sea.