The Ghost of the Ice: The Full Tale of SS Baychimo

The SS Baychimo had always been a hardworking ship — a sturdy, 1,322-ton cargo vessel launched in 1914 from Gothenburg, Sweden. Built strong enough to break through frigid northern waters, she had carried everything from tea to tobacco, furs to firearms, across the stormy Atlantic. By 1931, she had become the Hudson’s Bay Company’s pride, her steel hull tested by countless voyages between Scotland and Canada. Her crew trusted her. Some even swore she had a personality — loyal, but stubborn.

But on that fateful October, as winter descended early on the Alaskan coast, the Baychimo’s final true voyage began.

Chapter 1 – The Trapping

Captain Sydney Cornwell stood on the bridge, his pipe clenched tightly between his teeth as the wind howled across the ice. The sea was a solid white expanse. Baychimo was caught fast in pack ice, her hull groaning under the pressure.

“She’s holding,” Chief Mate Arthur Lorne said grimly beside him. “But she won’t hold forever. If the ice shifts…”

Cornwell nodded. He didn’t need the man to finish the sentence. If the ice shifted the wrong way, the Baychimo could be crushed like an egg.

The crew worked tirelessly, hacking at the ice and trying to keep a clear channel open, but the temperatures dropped to nearly -60°F. Frostbite claimed the fingers of one unlucky deckhand, Billy Grant, who would later be evacuated with the first group to Barrow, Alaska.

On October 15th, with no sign of the ice loosening, Captain Cornwell made a hard decision: he would evacuate most of the crew to safety and leave behind only a skeleton group of volunteers to watch over the ship until spring.

Arthur volunteered first, as did the ship’s carpenter Magnus Eriksson, radio operator Peter Hale, and two Inuit guides who knew the region well — Aqpaluk and Nukka. They were joined by two younger sailors, eager to prove themselves, James Murphy and Francis “Frankie” Doyle.

Cornwell shook each man’s hand. “Hold fast until spring. Keep her safe. She’s our livelihood.”

Chapter 2 – The Blizzard

For weeks, the skeleton crew endured brutal cold, snowstorms, and long stretches of eerie silence broken only by the groaning of the ice. By late November, the world turned upside down — literally. Temperatures spiked overnight, rising from -60°F to 0°F. It was a sudden, unnatural warmth, and with it came a blizzard so fierce that the men could barely leave their shelter.

For two days the storm raged. When at last it cleared, the world was unrecognizable — and so was the horizon.

“The ship…” James pointed toward where Baychimo had been locked in the ice.

There was nothing.

Arthur’s heart sank. “No… she can’t be gone.”

The men searched desperately, traveling miles across the broken ice floes, until they met an Inuit seal hunter who told them he had seen a ship floating free, 45 miles away, slowly drifting westward.

It was an eerie thought: the Baychimo, abandoned, alone, sliding through the empty Arctic like some ghost freed from her frozen tomb.

Chapter 3 – The Choice

A few days later, Cornwell himself arrived with a sled team. Against all odds, they found the Baychimo again, her hull scarred but intact, bobbing in the open water like a stubborn survivor.

Cornwell boarded her cautiously, walking her deck, checking her holds. She was still carrying her cargo of pelts and furs — worth a small fortune. But the ship had taken damage. Her hull had begun to twist.

“She won’t survive another freeze,” Magnus warned, running a hand along the warped steel plates.

Cornwell nodded reluctantly. “Then we take what we can, and leave the rest. She’s no longer safe.”

They spent the next 48 hours stripping the ship of valuables, furs, and equipment, ferrying them to the sleds.

Before they left, Arthur hesitated on the gangway.

“Captain,” he said, “it feels wrong leaving her like this. She’s still floating.”

Cornwell’s jaw tightened. “She’s finished, Arthur. If we try to sail her now, we’ll all die. Better to let her go to the sea.”

Arthur didn’t argue further, but as he stepped off the ship for what he thought would be the last time, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Baychimo was watching him, unwilling to be left behind.

Chapter 4 – The Sightings

The winter passed, and with spring came rumors. Inuit hunters reported seeing the Baychimo drifting miles from where she had been abandoned. In 1932, she was spotted 250 miles from the original site, still afloat, as though refusing to sink.

Over the years, she became a legend. Hunters spotted her caught in ice, then free again. In 1935, Captain Hugh Paulson tried to board her, only to be driven back by worsening weather. He claimed that when he saw her up close, she seemed “eerily well-kept for a ship abandoned for years — as if someone had been maintaining her.”

Some who managed to board briefly swore that her cabins were strangely warm despite the frigid air, and that fresh coffee still sat in the galley, as though the crew had just stepped away. These accounts were often dismissed as hallucinations brought on by the cold — but the sightings continued for nearly four decades.

Chapter 5 – The Final Encounter

It was 1969 when the Baychimo was seen for the last time, drifting silently in the Chukchi Sea. By then, she was more myth than ship — the “Arctic Ghost,” a steel specter haunting the northern waters.

But there is one final story, rarely told outside maritime circles.

A Canadian icebreaker, The CCGS Alexander Mackenzie, reportedly intercepted a radar contact that year and identified the drifting vessel as the Baychimo. Captain Robert Ellison led a small team aboard to inspect the derelict.

Ellison later described the experience in his private journal:

“There was no sound — no creak of metal, no slap of water against her hull. She felt… empty, but not abandoned. As we stepped onto her deck, a wind rose from nowhere, howling through the rigging. My men swore they heard footsteps below, though we were alone. We searched her bridge — everything was in order, logbooks open as if waiting for the next entry. When we left, the wind died. She seemed to watch us go.”

That was the last confirmed sighting.

Chapter 6 – The Legacy

Today, the Baychimo’s fate remains unknown. Some believe she eventually sank beneath the ice, entombed forever in the Arctic depths. Others believe she still drifts, crewless, a ghostly reminder of the men who left her behind.

Arthur Lorne never forgot her. He retired from the Hudson’s Bay Company a quiet man, often staring at the horizon as though expecting to see her again. On his deathbed in 1968, just one year before her final sighting, he reportedly whispered:

“She’s still out there. Waiting.”

The Inuit of Barrow tell stories of the Baychimo on stormy nights, saying that to glimpse her is an omen — a warning to turn back, lest the sea claim you too.

For historians, she is a marvel — a ship that defied nature, sailing nearly 40 years without a crew. For sailors, she is a ghost. For storytellers, she is proof that the sea never truly lets go of her secrets.

And somewhere, perhaps beneath a sheet of ice, perhaps riding the currents under a pale moon, the Baychimo sails on, the eternal phantom of the Arctic.

Themes & Resolution

This expanded version gives closure to the men who abandoned her — showing their guilt and the lifelong psychological weight they carried — while leaving the Baychimo’s ultimate fate ambiguous enough to preserve its ghostly legend. Each “character” (Cornwell, Arthur, Magnus, Paulson, and even the ship itself) gets an arc: Cornwell makes a pragmatic but painful choice, Arthur lives haunted by it, Paulson confirms the ghostly persistence, and Ellison’s final boarding gives the story a fittingly chilling climax before the ship disappears forever.