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Ghost ships, or phantom ships, make up a big part of the seafaring lore that
has been passed down by sailors and fisherman throughout the years. The ships
are said to be spectral apparitions that materialize on the horizon before
quickly disappearing, and they are believed to be a sign of bad things to come.
The term is also used to describe abandoned vessels that are found adrift with
no crew or passengers, often under frightening and mysterious circumstances.
Whether real stories of these derelict ships or legends about phantom craft
trawling the seas, the following are the ten most famous ghost ships that
continue to provoke speculation and mystery in the nautical world.
10. The Caleuche
One of the most well known legends of the Chilota mythology of southern Chile
describes the Caleuche, a ghost ship that appears every night near the island of
Chiloe.
According to local legend, the ship is a kind of conscious being that
sails the waters around the area, carrying with it the spirits of all the people
who have drowned at sea. When spotted, the Caleuche is said to be strikingly
beautiful and bright, and is always accompanied by the sounds of party music and
people laughing. After appearing for a few moments, the ship is then said to
disappear or submerge itself under the water. According to Chilota mythology,
the spirits of the drowned are summoned to the ship by the Sirena Chilota, the
Pincoya, and the Picoy, three Chilota “water spirits” who resemble mermaids.
Once aboard the phantom ship, the drowned are said to be able to resume their
life as it was before they died.
9. The SS Valencia
The SS Valencia was steamer ship that sank off the coast of Vancouver, British
Columbia in 1906. The ship had encountered bad weather near Cape Mendocino, and
after drifting off course, struck a reef and began taking on water. The crew
quickly began lowering lifeboats holding the ship’s 108 passengers into the
water, but several of these capsized, and one simply disappeared. The Valencia
eventually sank, and only 37 of the roughly 180 people on board survived. Five
months later, a fisherman claimed he had found a life raft with 8 skeletons in
it in a nearby cave. A search was launched, but it found nothing. Thanks to its
dramatic end, the Valencia eventually became the source of numerous ghost ship
stories. Sailors would often claim they could see the specter of the steamer
drifting near the reef in Pachena Point, and to this day the ship is the source
of frequent wild theories and ghost ship sightings. In a bizarre twist, 27 years
after the sinking of the Valencia, one of its life rafts was found floating
peacefully in nearby Barkley Sound. The “ghost raft” was said to be in
remarkable condition, and even still had most of its original coat of paint.
8. The Ourang Medan
The story of the Ourang Medan begins in 1947, when two American ships received a
distress call while navigating the Strait of Malacca, off the coast of Malaysia.
The caller identified himself as a member of the crew of the Ourang Medan, a
Dutch vessel, and supposedly claimed that the ship’s captain and crew were all
dead or dying. The messages became jumbled and bizarre before trailing off and
ending with the words: “I die.” The ships quickly raced to the scene to help.
When they arrived, they found that the Ourang Medan was undamaged, but that the
entire crew—even the ship’s dog— was dead, their bodies and faces locked in
terrified poses and expressions, and many pointing at something that was not
there. Before the rescuers could investigate further, the ship mysteriously
caught on fire, and they had to evacuate. Soon after, the Ourang Medan is said
to have exploded and then sank. While the details and the overall veracity of
the Ourang Medan story are still widely debated, there have been a number of
theories proposed about what might have caused the death of the crew. The most
popular of these is that the ship was illegally transporting nitroglycerin or
some kind of illegal nerve agent, which was not properly secured and seeped out
into the air. Others, meanwhile, have claimed the ship was a victim of a UFO
attack or some other kind of paranormal event.
7. The Carroll A. Deering
Perhaps the most famous ghost ship of the Eastern Seaboard is the Carroll A.
Deering, a schooner that ran aground near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in 1921.
The ship had just returned from a commercial voyage to deliver coal in South
America, and had last been spotted just south of Hatteras by a lightship near
Cape Lookout. It ran aground in the notorious Diamond Shoals, an area famous for
causing shipwrecks, and sat there for several days before any help was able to
reach it. When they did arrive, the Coast Guard found that the ship was
completely abandoned. The navigation equipment and logbook were missing, as were
the two lifeboats, but otherwise there were no signs of any kind of foul play. A
massive investigation by the U.S. government followed, which discovered that
several other ships had disappeared under mysterious circumstances around the
same time. Several theories were eventually put forth, the most popular being
that the ship fell victim to pirates or rumrunners. Others suggested that mutiny
might have been the cause, as the Deering’s first mate was known to bear some
animosity toward its Captain, but no definitive proof has even been discovered.
The mystery surrounding the ghost ship has encouraged wild speculation, and many
have argued that paranormal activity might have been responsible, citing the
ship’s passage through the infamous Bermuda triangle as proof that some kind of
otherworldly phenomena might be to blame.
6. The Baychimo
One of the most amazing cases of a real-life ghost ship concerns the Baychimo, a
cargo steamer that was abandoned and left to drift the seas near Alaska for
nearly forty years. The ship was owned by the Hudson Bay Company, and was
launched in the early 1920s and used to trade pelts and furs with the Inuit in
northern Canada. But in 1931, the Baychimo became trapped in pack ice near
Alaska, and after many attempts to break it free, its crew were eventually
airlifted out of the area to safety. After a heavy blizzard, the ship managed to
break free of the ice, but it was badly damaged and was abandoned by the Hudson
Bay Company, who assumed it would not last the winter. Amazingly, the Baychimo
managed to stay afloat, and for the next 38 years, it remained adrift in the
waters off Alaska. The ship became something of a local legend, and was
frequently sighted aimlessly floating near the frozen ice packs by Eskimos and
other vessels. It was boarded several times, but weather conditions always made
salvaging it nearly impossible. The Baychimo was last sighted in 1969, again
frozen in the ice off of Alaska, but it has since disappeared. The ship is
believed to have sunk in the intervening years, but recently a number of
expeditions have been launched in search of now nearly 80-year-old ghost ship.
5. The Octavius
Although it is now considered more legend than anything, the story of the
Octavius remains one of the most famous of all ghost ship stories. The tale
dates back to 1775, when it is said that a whaling ship called the Herald
stumbled across the Octavius floating aimlessly off the coast of Greenland.
Crewmembers from the Herald boarded the Octavius, where they discovered the
bodies of the crew and passengers all frozen solid by the arctic cold. Most
notably, the crew found the ship’s captain still sitting at his desk, midway
through finishing a log entry from 1762, which meant the Octavius had been
adrift for 13 years. According to the legend, it was eventually discovered that
the captain had gambled on making a quick return to England from the Orient via
the Northwest Passage, but that the ship had become trapped in the ice. If true,
this would mean the Octavius had completed its passage to the Atlantic as a
ghost ship, its crew and captain long dead from exposure to the elements.
4. The Joyita
The Joyita was a fishing and charter boat that was found abandoned in the South
Pacific in 1955. The ship, along with its 25 passengers and crew, were en route
to the Tokelau Islands when something happened, and it was not until hours later
that the Joyita was reported overdue and a rescue attempt launched. A massive
air search was undertaken, but it failed to find the missing ship, and it was
not until five weeks later that a merchant ship stumbled upon the Joyita
drifting some 600 miles off its original course. There was no sign of any of the
passengers, crew, cargo, or life rafts, and the ship was damaged and listing
quite badly to one side. Further inspection by authorities found that the ship’s
radio was tuned to the universal distress signal, and a search of the deck
uncovered a doctor’s bag and several bloody bandages. None of the crew or
passengers was ever seen again, and the mystery of what happened has never been
revealed. The most popular theory is that pirates killed the passengers and
threw their bodies overboard, but other claims have included everything from
mutiny and kidnapping to insurance fraud.
3. The Lady Lovibond
The UK has a long tradition of legends about ghost ships, and of these the Lady
Lovibond is perhaps the most famous. As the story goes, the Lady Lovibond’s
captain, Simon Peel, had just gotten married, and decided to take his ship out
on a cruise to celebrate. He brought his new bride along—going against a
longstanding seafaring belief that bringing a woman on board a boat is bad
luck—and set sail on Feb. 13, 1748. Unfortunately for Peel, his first mate was
also in love with his new wife, and after watching the celebrations, the man
became overwhelmed with rage and jealousy and intentionally steered the boat
into the deadly Goodwind Sands, a sand bar notorious for causing ship wrecks.
The Lady Lovibond sank, killing all those aboard. As the legend goes, ever since
the wreck the Lady Lovibond can be seen sailing the waters around Kent every 50
years. It was sighted in 1798 by a few different ship captains, as well as in
1848 and 1898, when it supposedly appeared to be so real that some boats,
thinking it a vessel in distress, actually sent out life rafts to help it. The
Lady Lovibond was again seen in 1948, and while there were no confirmed
sightings on its most recent anniversary in 1998, it continues to be one of the
most well-known ghost ship legends in Europe.
2. The Mary Celeste
Undoubtedly the most famous of all the real-life ghost ships, the Mary Celeste
was a merchant ship that was found derelict and adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in
1872. The ship was in a seaworthy condition, with all its sails still up and a
full store of food in its cargo hold, but its life boat, captain’s log book and,
more importantly, the entire crew, had mysteriously vanished. There was no sign
of a struggle, and the personal belongings of the crew and cargo of over 1500
barrels of alcohol were untouched, seemingly ruling out piracy as a possible
explanation. In the years since its bizarre discovery, a number of theories have
been proposed regarding the possible fate of the Mary Celeste’s crew. These
include that those aboard were killed by a waterspout, that the crew mutinied,
or even that eating flour contaminated with fungus led all the passengers to
hallucinate and go mad. The most probable theory remains that a storm or some
kind of technical issue led the crew to prematurely abandon the ship in the
lifeboat, and that they later died at sea. Still, the mystery surrounding the
Mary Celeste has led to much wild speculation, and others have proposed
everything from ghosts to sea monsters and alien abduction as possible
explanations.
1. The Flying Dutchman
In maritime folklore, no ghost ship is more famous than the Flying Dutchman,
which has inspired numerous paintings, horror stories, films, and even an opera.
The ship was first mentioned in the late 1700s in George Barrington’s seafaring
book Voyage to Botany Bay, and since then its legend has continued to grow,
thanks to numerous sightings of it by fisherman and sailors. As the story goes,
the Flying Dutchman was a vessel out of Amsterdam that was captained by a man
named Van der Decken. The ship was making its way toward the East Indies when it
encountered dangerous weather near the Cape of Good Hope. Determined to make the
crossing, Van der Decken supposedly went mad, murdered his first mate, and vowed
that he would cross the Cape, “even if God would let me sail to Judgment Day!”
Despite his best efforts, the ship sank in the storm, and as the legend goes,
Van der Decken and his ghost ship are now cursed to sail the oceans for all
eternity. To this day, the Flying Dutchman continues to be one of the
most-sighted of all ghost ships, and people from deep-sea fishermen to the
Prince of Wales have all claimed to have spotted it making its never-ending
voyage across the oceans
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