The voyage started just like any other. The cargo ship SS Kotapaci is making
another journey to Havana, Cuba to deliver coal. It’s November 29th,
1925 for Captain Meyer and his crew, leaving Charleston Port, South Carolina.
It will be the last trip the ship ever makes. Its route ran through the Bermuda
Triangle. 2 days into the trip, the Cottoaxi sent out a distress signal. It
had got caught up in a strong tropical storm and turned over on its side. The
wind was very strong and there was powerful lightning as well. Rain gradually filled the ship’s hold. Then
there was a bright white flash and the ship disappeared without a trace. Later,
its wreckage was found in the Gobi Desert, which is in a completely different part of the world. All 32 crew
members, including the captain, were missing. Of course, the part about the
Gobi Desert is fictional. For one of his movies, Steven Spielberg came up with the idea that the ship was moved there
by aliens. Still, in real life, the ship was never found, and its crew really did
disappear. It was officially declared missing a month afterward, and nobody
could find the wreck. It seems like a classic case of mysterious things going on in the
Bermuda Triangle, but most mysteries are solved sooner or later. In 2020, the
Kodapaxi was found. A man named Michael Barnett had moved to Florida to study
shipwrecks off the coast. One wreck in particular really caught his attention.
It was much larger than the others, and the locals called it the bear wreck. It was about 40 mi from St. Augustine in
northern Florida, but no one had ever managed to identify the rusty hole. So,
Michael started to do some detective work. He measured the size of the shipwreck and started working through
all the information he could find. He researched hundreds of old newspapers, leaf through insurance records, and
looked at artifacts found on the wreck. After hundreds of hours of hard work,
Michael was sure it was the Kotapaci. But a few years before, there had been a
rumor that the same ship had been found off the coast of Cuba. The Coast Guard found the wreck of a cargo ship about
the same size that looked a lot like the one lost in 1925. Michael was sure they were wrong.
So, he teamed up with some science journalists and kept investigating. Soon, they discovered
something that seemed to confirm Michael’s belief. Divers found brass valves with the letters SV on them in
the wreckage of the ship. Michael suggested these initials referred to Scott Valve manufacturing company. The
headquarters of this company was in Michigan, not far from where the Kodapaxi had been built. The company had
probably supplied parts for the Kodapaxi. So, the puzzle seemed to be solved. The bear wreck was really the
missing cargo ship. But Michael still needed to work out why the ship had sunk. Did something mysterious really
happen to the Kodapaxi in the Bermuda Triangle. Later, Michael found the
testimony of the ship’s carpenter among some old papers. The carpenter claimed that the hatches covering the coal on
the ship had been in a terrible condition before it sank. Repair work on the covers wasn’t finished before the
crew got the order to sail to Cuba. So if the hatch covers were still broken during the trip, water could have easily
gotten on board, this water probably flooded the hole during the tropical storm. This was the real reason why the
Kotapaci went down. There was really nothing mysterious about it. It was just
a mistake made by ordinary people. But this is just one example out of dozens
or even hundreds where ships and planes have gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle. We still can’t explain some of
these incidents. It seems like there really is something weird going on
there. One of these strange events happened in 1948. A passenger jet was
headed for Miami from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It disappeared in the same area as
the Kodapaxi. The 32 people on board vanished without a trace. The weather
was clear throughout the flight, but experts think that when the plane was about 50 mi from the coast, it could
have been hit by a strong wind that knocked it off course. Years later, a similar plane was found in the area of
the Bermuda Triangle. But because no one could work out the registration, it was impossible to say for sure if it was the
same one. Something even stranger occurred not long before in 1945.
Five planes went missing all at the same time. Some trainee pilots were practicing their navigation skills, but
when they’d finished, it seems they couldn’t find their way back home and disappeared. Many people assumed they
just ran out of fuel. This seems likely, but still, the circumstances were really
strange. The trainees were being supervised by an experienced pilot who had 2,500 hours of flight time. He would
never have let a group of newbie pilots get that far away from their base. Even now, people still debate what could have
happened. Some insist the pilots ran into something supernatural out there in the Bermuda Triangle. But who
knows? And here’s another freaky thing that happened there which no expert has been able to explain. Time travel. In
1970, Bruce Gernon was flying a plane from Andros Island to the Florida coast.
When he was at 11,500 ft, a giant cloud appeared in front of him. It kept
getting bigger and bigger, and he had no choice but to fly through it. As soon as
he did, the plane was surrounded by darkness. It was as if the day had turned to night in a split second.
Suddenly, Bruce began to see white flashes of light around him. They were so bright that they lit up the entire
sky, but they weren’t lightning bolts, although he couldn’t really explain what they were. The plane continued through
the strange cloud for almost a half an hour. Bruce noticed that the cloud changed shape during this time. The
space around the plane turned into a tunnel. Then the tunnel started narrowing. Bruce became really tense as
he tried to cope with the plane’s controls. All his instruments and navigation equipment were going crazy
and the electronics stopped working. Then a white light appeared at the end
of the tunnel. Just like in the movies, the plane escaped the closing cloud tunnel at the very last second.
Everything was fine, but now Bruce found himself in some white fog. He had no
idea where he was. Then he managed to contact ground control. He was shocked
when he learned that his plane was already in the airspace above Miami. It seemed that something
impossible had happened. Bruce was meant to cover a distance of about 250 mi
during the flight. This usually took 1 and 1/2 hours, but he had managed it in
just 47 minutes, almost two times faster than normal. When Bruce landed, he went
to check the amount of fuel left in the tank. It turned out he’d used up a lot less than the normal amount of fuel as
well. Could there be a logical explanation for the timetraveling plane?
Well, records show that a large number of sunspots were detected on the surface of the sun that day and there was a
strong solar wind. This could easily have made the electronics and devices on the plane go crazy. But what about the
mysterious cloud? The Florida coast is a place where two large air currents meet.
One has a high pressure and the other is a low pressure one. This causes a lot of storm clouds in the area. But people
still debate how Bruce was able to cover the distance so quickly. Some people say
that some kind of mysterious dark energy was involved. Others say it was a
gravitational anomaly that curves space and time. Others think that Bruce is
just a fraud. We still don’t know the truth. So, is there really something
supernatural about the Bermuda Triangle? Or is it all just coincidences and
madeup stories? The truth is that no more planes and ships disappear in the
Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else in the world. The moon shines brightly and
illuminates the black water of the ocean. Thick fog descends on it in
ominous silence. Then it’s suddenly broken by the creaking of wooden boards,
followed by a rippling of the waves. Through the fog, you see the outline of
an old large ship. Its hull is rusty, and a strange cold is coming from it.
But the most unsettling thing is that there’s no one on the deck. The ship
sails without a crew. No, this isn’t a mythical Flying Dutchman, but a very
real ghost ship. September 2nd, 2019, the British Royal
Navy’s Ice Patrol ship, called the HMS Protector, sails through the calm waters
of the Atlantic Ocean. The time is 11 p.m. Some of the ship’s crew are on deck
while others are sleeping in their cabins. The captain steers the ship and looks straight at the horizon. The sky
is lit up by an orange twilight and clouds float in the distance. Suddenly,
against this beautiful landscape, one of the sailors notices the black silhouette
of an unknown ship. The captain slows down and steers the ship a little closer
to the mysterious vessel. This is an old cargo ship 250 ft long. Attempts to
contact the crew members lead to nothing. It seems the unknown boat is
floating in the ocean by itself. There’s no one on board. At least no one
alive. The deck of the ship caks from rocking on the waves. The sun sinks
below the horizon and it gets dark. The ship looks terrifying. British sailors
don’t dare to climb on that strange deck. They take a photo, post it on the
internet, and sail away. Many people on the internet will assume the sailors met
a real ghost ship. 5 months later, we’re in the village of
Bali Cotton in County Cork, Ireland. A local leaves the house early in the
morning to go for a daily run. Music in his headphones, fresh, cool air, and a
scenic route are ideal conditions for a good workout. The jogger runs along the
road on the coast of the Celtic Sea. There was a strong storm last night, and now the sea looks calm. The man runs
along the top of a low cliff and notices a huge vessel. An old rusty cargo ship
250 ft long lies on the beach right among the rocks. No people on board. It
seems the ship has been here for ages. But the local is sure this vessel wasn’t
here yesterday. A little later, it turns out this is the same ship that the
sailors from the HMS Protector saw 5 months ago. thousands of miles from this
place. The cargo ship called the Alta was built in
1976. Nobody knows who used it all this time and for what purposes. It’s only
known that in 2017 the ship was purchased by a new owner and marked with
the flag of Tanzania. It’s important to say that almost all cargo ships are
equipped with AIS, automatic identification system, which is needed to track ship movements in the ocean.
Since 2015, something strange started happening with the Alta’s AIS. The ship
disappeared from the satellites, then reappeared again. Over the past few
years, this ship had changed several names and flags. It’s not surprising that its AIS shut off and turned on
numerous times. It’s said that some of those who disable AIS on their ships do
so to hide outlaw activities. The ship’s captain, whoever it was, clearly didn’t
want to show the Alta’s movements. As AIS showed in 2017, the ship had sailed
near Greek port cities. The Alta made 12 stops in three such cities in different
parts of Greece. Then the AIS signal disappeared. And 10 months later, the
Alta reappeared near the northern coast of Africa, 1,200 m from Greece. In
September of 2018, the ship was sailing about 1,400 m southeast of Bermuda. And
at that time, the crew members started having problems. There were 10 people on
board the Alta. On September 19th, the ship’s engine failed right in the middle
of the Atlantic Ocean. The nearest shore was very far away. The ship began to
drift. As days passed, the crew couldn’t fix the vessel. Food supplies were
running low. The crew started to panic and tried to contact someone. The situation got worse as a strong
hurricane was approaching the place where the ship broke down. Crew members contacted the US Coast Guard. On October
2nd, a helicopter headed towards the ship. Food and water were unloaded on
the Alta. This was enough for the crew to b their time for several days. About
a week later, a rescue boat sailed about 1,500 m to reach the Alta and help the
stranded sailors. Shortly before the start of the hurricane, American rescuers succeeded. The entire crew of
the wrecked ship was taken to Puerto Rico. The Alta remained drifting in the
ocean. After a while, another ship arrived to tow it to the coast of Gana.
Then something went wrong again. The ship was hijacked. Who did it and why
remains a mystery to this day, but then for some unknown reason, the thieves decided to abandon the ship and left it
to drift in the ocean. For almost a year, the ship’s location couldn’t be tracked. Then in September 2019, the
vessel was found by the British Royal Navy. How the Alta was able to cover the distance across the Atlantic and wash up
on the coast of Ireland is unknown. An investigation has been launched in Ireland. It’s necessary to identify the
owner of the vessel and find a responsible person to take on the task of towing it, but no one has since been
found. Once an unknown person called the Irish authorities and introduced themselves as the owner of the ship, but
didn’t provide any evidence. Several barrels of oil were found on board the Alta. To dismantle
the ship, the Irish authorities will need to spend about €10 million. Local residents are annoyed by
the wreck, too. Corroding metal is bad for the environment and kids have already snuck on board and posted a
video on the internet from inside the abandoned ship. The further fate of the Alta remains unresolved. It’s still
lying there. That ship sailed in the ocean for just 2 years now. Imagine if
some other managed to drift for 38. In all that time, no one could catch this
ship and people still seek it. That vessel is called the SS BIMO. It was a
merchant ship owned by a Canadian trading company. In 1931, the ship got
stuck in ice off the coast of Alaska. A strong snowstorm began. The team waited
a week for it to end, but the storm only intensified. One day, the weather
improved a bit, and part of the team was evacuated to the nearest city. Another part of the crew with the captain set up
camp near the ship. The storm started again and didn’t stop for a long time.
The blizzard was so heavy that the ship’s captain couldn’t see beyond his arms reach. Finally, when the storm was
over, the captain saw that the ship simply vanished. He decided the Bimo
sank during the storm. A week later, the ship was found drifting near the place
where it was lost. The hull of the ship was damaged so badly that it was unsafe
to sail on it. The captain decided to abandon the ship. However, it didn’t
sink. For the next 38 years, it was drifting at various points along the
Alaskan coast. Several times, people climbed on the ship, including Native Alaskan residents and a group of
researchers. Attempts to save the vessel from the sea ended in failure. The
salvage operations were hampered by drifting ice and bad weather. The last time it was seen was in
1969. The ship was frozen and blocked by the ice. In 2006, the government created
a special project to find the Bimo. However, in all these years, the ship
still hasn’t been found. Its fate is unknown. It’s likely that the ship has
finally found peace and is now lying on the seabed of the Chuckchi
Sea. There’s a ship drifting somewhere in the ocean without a
crew. The last time someone saw it was over 50 years ago.
Its story reminds of that of the Flying Dutchman, a ship that’s bound to sail forever and bring disaster to whoever
sees it at sea. At least the legend says so. Unlike the Flying Dutchman, the SS
Bay Chimo was definitely real and built for a German company in Hamburgg and began as an ordinary cargo ship. It was
trading supplies between Hamburgg and Sweden in the Baltic Sea starting from 1914. It had a strong steam engine and a
hull made of steel. A few years later, it became British property. Then in the
1920s, a Canadian company purchased it for around $18,000, a huge amount of money back
then. The new owner, the Hudson’s Bay Company, was actively using the ship for
several years. They would often send it on voyages from its home port in Scotland to Siberia, Alaska, the Yukon,
and the Northwest Territories. It also passed through the Panama Canal and even the Suez Canal with fur pelts for sale
on board. Sometimes it would also transport passengers. It had completed nine successful voyages before this
strip of good luck came to an end. Starting from the 1930s, SS Beimo
would have trouble with ice and storms. When it first got trapped in ice in October of 1931, some of the crew
managed to escape to Alaska. 15 of 22 sailors decided to stay with their
vessel and try to save it. They had furs and other valuable cargo worth around
$58,000 aboard. The company set them supplies to survive the winter. They set
camp near the ship out of the hatches, tarplands, and other materials and offloaded the cargo. At the end of
November, a blizzard rushed through the area, and it seemed like it had taken the ship with it. The ice platform had
survived, but the ship broke free. Some of the crew members were sure it had sunk, but soon after they heard from one
of the locals who had spotted their ship around 45 mi away from their
camp. The crew moved on with their lives, and the ship started its journey as a runaway vessel. People would spot
SS Beimo once a year or so, all the way until 1965.
It was mostly spotted off the coast of Alaska. A man going to gnome with his sled dog along with prospectors,
explorers, and treasure hunters all claimed to have seen SS Beimo. Someone
tried to board it and take it to port, but ended up stranded on it for days because of horrible weather. Others got
luckier and managed to take a whale boat, some furniture, and other valuables from the vessel. Those who got
close to the ship saw that it was damaged and missing the propeller. Still, it stayed afloat without a crew
for at least 38 years and became the longest sailing ghost ship in history.
In 2006, the Alaskan authorities started a project to solve the mystery of this
ghost ship of the Arctic and finally find SS Bachimo, either still above or
below the water. So far, the project has not been a success. SS Beimo remains one of the
estimated 4,000 ships that have disappeared off Alaskan shores. If the legend of the 17th
century isn’t lying, this ghost ship could be sailing somewhere along the Flying Dutchman. It belonged to the
Dutch East India Company. Its captain managed to do the impossible for that time and sailed from Holland to
Indonesia in only 3 months. They said he was flying over the sea and some evil
tongues explained that he had made a deal with evil forces to achieve that. Once the ship was sailing back home, its
captain and crew disappeared without a trace. There are many versions of what happened to it. One of the first ones
said it had tried to enter port at the Cape of Good Hope, got in a terrible storm, and sank as there was no captain
to save it. Another legend says the captain had refused to obey the skies to let the ship sink during the storm. A
scary life form then struck the boat and the crew and it was condemned to forever wander without
rest. Many sailors claimed to have spotted the wandering Dutchman. The Duke of York, who is to become king of
England, mentioned having seen it in Australian waters. Right after spotting the ship, the man who saw it first fell
from the top of the mast and didn’t survive. There were more encounters with this legendary ship up to the middle of
the 20th century. Ships would nearly collide with it as the Flying Dutchman jumped out of the blue. Scientists have
a more logical explanation for this mystery. Fa Morgana, not to be confused
with Akuna Matata. Now, when you’re out at sea on a hot day and the air is all wavy, it
feels like when you look at the road on a scorching summer day. That’s because of something called atmospheric
refraction. When light passes through different layers of air with different temperatures and densities, it bends and
twists. Sometimes under certain conditions, this bending of light can create really bizarre optical illusions
over the ocean, like sightings of the Flying Dutchman. The Fat Morgana phenomenon can make distant objects
appear distorted, stretched, or even lifted above the horizon. So you can see
a ship far away, but because of the way the light is bending, it will look like it’s floating above the water or even
disappearing and reappearing. A Fatamorgana is most commonly seen in polar regions, especially over large
sheets of ice that have a uniform low temperature, but you can see it anywhere, even in deserts and over lakes
on hot days. The first stories about ghost ships go all the way back to ancient
Greek and Roman mythology. One of the most famous ghost ships in history is the Mary Celeste. This brigantine was
traveling from New York City to Genua and was fully stocked with provisions, but missing a crew when it was
discovered in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872. The crew’s personal belongings
were also there completely undisturbed. The final entry in your log was made 10
days earlier. We still don’t know what happened to its crew, and the ship has inspired many spooky stories and
legends. The Lady Lavabond was another legendary
schooner that is believed to have been wrecked off the coast of Kent in the middle of the 18th century. The story
tells that the ship’s captain, Simon Reed, had just got married and took his bride on board for a celebratory cruise
despite the superstition that it could bring bad luck. They were on their way to Portugal when the first mate, who is
also in love with the captain’s new wife, went mad because of jealousy, attacked another crew member and then
took over the wheel and steered the ship straight into the dreaded Goodwin Sands. No one aboard survived, and the schooner
is said to reappear as a ghost vessel every 50 years. In present times, many vessels
become abandoned and turned into ghost ships intentionally. There are thousands of them floating in US rivers, lakes,
channels, and coastal waters. Some people lose their boats in storms and other extreme weather. Others have to
abandon their boats because maintaining them can cost 10% of the boat’s price.
Plus, docking a vessel can add up to several thousand every year. Most boats
have been made of fiberglass, so an owner can’t just recycle them as scrap metal. So once they want to get rid of
it, they often tie it to a dock and sneak away or leave it floating far away from the shore or just try to sink it.
When ghost ships sink in shallow waters, they can cause damage to coral reefs, mangroves, marshlands, oyster habitats,
and wetlands. Plus, they can collide with unsuspecting regular ships and cause real trouble. So don’t do that.
Enough said. [Music]
No matter what happens, don’t stop. We almost got it. Two treasure seekers are
digging frozen ground in a cornfield at night. It’s raining hard, lightning is flashing, but these two guys keep
working. And now the shovel hits something solid. No way. A treasure
chest. They start digging faster and find a piece of a ship’s engine. What the? Far from the seas and lakes,
somewhere under the fields of Kansas City, they found a giant sunken ship. How is this possible? Now you’ll
see. Some people spend their lives searching for shipwrecks with treasures underground. One of them is explorer
David Holly. He’s been looking for such ships far from the seas, rivers, and oceans for many years. He does this
because he likes the feeling of adventure. The holds of these ships may contain chests of gold, antiques, and
artifacts, and you can get a lot of money for them. David says you don’t have to go into the ocean to find a
sunken ship. They may be lying in your backyard. But why do ships end up buried
underground among fields, farms, and planes? Let’s find out using the example
of steamboat Great White Arabia. According to old records, the newspaper clippings, this ship had been carrying
about 200 tons of treasure before it sank in 1856.
Many rumors and local legends said the ship was lying underground a few miles northeast of Kansas City. It was there
because people deliberately altered the riverbed and channels of the Missouri River in the second half of the 19th
century. They artificially brought the shores closer to each other. They narrowed the river to increase the
flow’s speed so boats could sail much faster. In the 19th century, steamboats
were the most popular means of transporting passengers and goods. Before railroads, they extended the
western border across the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and brought supplies to people. That’s why it was so
important to increase the speed of their movement. So on September 5th, 1856,
Arabia was sailing along such an estuary. It came across a snag sticking out of the water. A piece of log quickly
flooded the ship. Fortunately, all passengers were evacuated. But the steamer and its precious cargo reached
the silt bottom of the Missouri River in a few minutes. Several years had passed.
Everyone forgot about the vessel. During this time, the course of the Missouri River had changed. But Arabia remained
under the wet, muddy bottom. The soil level above it was getting higher and the ground was losing moisture.
Eventually, many decades later, a cornfield formed above the sunken ship.
In the 1980s, one farmer owned this area, and he had no idea what was hidden
in his territory. David Holly carefully studied the history of the sunken ships
of the USA. He knew that hundreds of steamers had gone underwater all over Missouri, but most of all, he was
interested in Arabia, as there were rumors that it was filled with gold and other valuable things. The territory of
cornfields in Kansas was vast, but David Holly knew how to search properly. In
1987, he started working. First, together with his brother and father, they collected all the clippings from
old newspapers they could find. They were looking not only for information about the steamer, but also for maps of
the Missouri River. They tracked its historical changes, checked the dates, and identified a large area where the
steamer sank. Next, they used electromagnetic testing and other geological stuff to study the
soil and find the right place. They searched for differences in ground moisture and density. Then they went
through the territory with powerful metal detectors. And so by the fall of
1988, they had determined the location of the steamer. A radio was the size of a football field. This gigantic vessel
lay 45 ft underground, four stories down. But before they started
excavating, they had to ask the owner of the cornfield for permission. For the farmer, this news was a big surprise. He
agreed on the condition that the excavations would be completed by spring so that he could sew a new crop. Digging
a giant ship in winter is much more difficult and expensive than at other times. It includes additional equipment,
electricity, and heating costs. The team works day and night. They finance the
excavations out of their own pocket. each invested more than $10,000 and took
out a bank loan. Finally, they noticed the first details of the ship. The shovels hit the huge engine boilers and
the deck. The goal had been achieved. Most of the cargo lying inside the sunken ships is covered with rust,
shells, mud, and is badly damaged. The contents of Arabia were in excellent
condition considering that the ship had sunk 130 years prior.
Unfortunately, they didn’t find the chests of gold. Still, they got several tons of other valuable cargo, household
items of people who lived in the middle of the 19th century. It was a time capsule. The ship was carrying supplies
for hundreds and thousands of people, and all these things were perfectly preserved. For example, they could
clearly see the brand stamp Goodyear Rubber Company on one rubber shoe.
The longer the excavations continued, the more things David and his team found. In the barrels, they found plates
from the 19th century. They were intact and usable. Also, there were clean
clothes, thousands of pairs of shoes, harpoons, frying pans, and umbrellas. The ship was carrying cargo
to supply about 16 small towns. Yes, it’s not gold, but such
artifacts are also precious. The contents of the ship could be worth millions. However, the crew wasn’t going
to sell these things. They made a museum on the site of a former fruit market in
Kansas City. If you go there, you will immediately feel like you’re in a department store of the 19th century.
There are thousands of items in good condition. Even the matches here are dry enough to light
up. It took David many years to present the entire collection from the steamship. He values each of the items
and doesn’t want to sell them. Anyone can come here, pay for a ticket, and find themselves in the
past. Who knows, maybe there’s an old ship hidden in your backyard,
too. Geologists found an older vessel in the hot desert of Namibia in 2008. This
ship sailed back in the days when pirates scared sailors on the seas, and now it’s inside a dried up lagoon. The
ship sailed from Lisbon in 1533 and disappeared with the crew near a small
diamond mining town. After almost 500 years, the hull had been badly damaged. Only the carcass
of the ship remained, but the treasure hidden inside the vessel stayed intact. They carefully studied the boat for a
long time, trying not to ruin anything. And then 5 days later, they found a big
old chest in the hold. Carefully opening it, they found gold coins there. Thus,
the cost of the ship was estimated at about $10 million. The exact cause of the
shipwreck is unknown, but experts believe the ship was destroyed by heavy cargo and bad weather. It went to the
bottom of a lagoon that later became a desert. Some find an airplane in their
backyard. Others discover a ship. And one man found a passage to an ancient
secret city in his house. This happened in Turkey in 1963. The owners of the
building decided to make repairs. He went to his basement and knocked down the wall to turn this place into a
living room. And so, behind one wall, he found a tunnel leading underground. The man thought it was some
kind of a secret chamber. He went down there and realized it was something much more than that. It was an ancient city
18 floors deep. People built it in the years 780 to 1180 as a refuge from
weather disasters and the invasion of enemies. This place also includes many underground tunnels that stretch for
several miles in different directions. People could get to the town from different points using secret passages
leading to these roads. The city can accommodate about 20,000 residents,
livestock, and tons of food supplies. Archaeologists have also found a chapel,
schools, stables, and public kitchens
there. Thick fog is rising over the ocean as the sun is slowly sinking towards the horizon. It’s hard to see
further away than a few dozen feet, but that’s enough to notice a hulking skeletal shape in the distance. As your
ship approaches the figure, your heart beats faster, and then you make out the details of another vessel abandoned by
the looks of it. Ghost ships do exist and their mysteries
aren’t always solved. Take MV Hoya for example. It was a wooden vessel built in
1931 as a luxury yacht. It had served well to various people over 20 years
before it was bought by a Samoan sailor and became a merchant ship. In 1955 though, Hoita’s service
came to an abrupt and mysterious end. On October 3rd, it set sail for another
trading voyage that should have taken no more than 48 hours. Delays happened in the sea. So when Hoita didn’t arrive on
October 5th as scheduled, there was little worry yet. But then it failed to
come on the following day too. There was no distress signal or any other sign of Hoitta’s presence anywhere between its
departure and arrival points. A search and rescue party was dispatched to find
the ship, and for 6 days, they were scouting the area of nearly 100,000 square miles. On October 12th, the
mission returned to the base empty-handed. Hoya vanished without a
trace. It was only a month later that another merchant ship, Toualoo, noticed the missing vessel far away from its
route, drifting in the open sea and listing heavily. The sailors boarded the
ship and found that all of its crew and passengers, 25 people total, were missing along with all the cargo the
vessel had been carrying. The radio was tuned to the International Distress Channel, meaning
that the crew had been trying to ask for help, but they couldn’t reach anyone because the radio cable had been damaged, limiting the range to 2
m. The lifeboats were missing as well, indicating that people on board must have left the ship. Unfortunately, they
seem to have taken the log book with them, leaving the rescue team clueless as to what had
happened. Even today, the mystery of MV Hoya hasn’t been solved yet. No one
knows where the crew and passengers had gone and what had caused them to leave. SV Carol A. Dearing wasn’t a
ghost ship in the usual sense of the word. There were no sightings of it in the open sea. Instead, it was found on
the shore, but the circumstances of it running around are a puzzle shrouded in
mystery. Carol A. Dearing was built in 1919 in Maine, and it was a large vessel
made for commercial voyages. Unfortunately, despite its large cost of construction, it had only served for a
year before its last trip. July 19th, 1920. The ship was
traveling from Puerto Rico to Rio di Janeiro via Newport News to deliver a cargo of coal. It was almost halfway to
the final destination when the captain fell seriously ill and the crew turned back to drop him and his son off and
replace the captain. The voyage went without incident, but when it came to Barbados
in December to resupply, there were strange moods among the crew. The first
mate didn’t seem to be happy with the new captain. No one paid much attention to it back then when they probably
should have. The last sighting of Carol A. Daring at sea was on January 28th, 1921
when a light ship noticed it off the coast of North Carolina. There was some commotion on the quarter deck of the
ship where the crew were normally not allowed. Then another vessel cited it, but there was already no one on the
decks. On January 31st, the merchant ship was found hard of ground in the Diamond Shoes, a site notorious for
numerous shipwrecks that had been occupying there for centuries. When the search and rescue
party boarded the ship, they found it abandoned, the log and personal belongings of the crew gone along with
the two lifeboats. There is still no answer to what happened on board of Carol A during
that January. Although the most popular version was mutiny. Maybe we’ll never
find out the truth though. SS Beimo is perhaps one of the most notable ghost ships in history.
This large cargo steamer was built in 1914 in Sweden and plotted its way
dutifully over 16 years trading provisions for pelts with native tribes
of Alaska and Canada. But then on October 1st, 1931, Beimo got caught in
pack ice. At first, it seemed the crew would be able to wait it out and continue on their route because the ship
broke free in a couple of days. But in less than a week, it became caught again. This time for
good. In another week, a rescue party was sent to fetch 22 of the Beismo’s
crew, while another 15 remained behind to wait through the winter if necessary and get the ship back. But a month
later, after a powerful blizzard struck their camp, the sailors went out of their shelters only to find the ship
gone. Luckily, a few days later, a native hunter told the Bimo hadn’t been
lost yet. He’d seen it about 45 mi from where they had been stationed. They
managed to track it down, but decided the ship wouldn’t survive the winter, so they took the most valuable cargo from
its hold and abandoned it. They were wrong, though. SSBIMO did survive that
winter and many more that followed. When the ice broke, it sailed away on its own, drifting listlessly along the
shores of Canada and Alaska. There were numerous sightings of the ghost ship, sometimes a drift in the open sea, and
at other times stuck in the pack ice again. People attempted to board and salvage it, but weather conditions or
lack of equipment always prevented them. SS Bachima was last cited by Native
Alaskans in 1969, 38 years after its abandonment. What became of it later
remains unknown. The story of SS Orang Maidan is
one of the most puzzling and harrowing ghost ship stories of the 20th century.
No one even knows for sure if the ship even existed in the first place. It wasn’t recorded in Lloyd’s shipping, the
International Register of Ships, which makes it either a tall tale or a vessel that avoided being officially recognized
for some shady reasons. In any case, the accounts as to what happened to the
Maidan vary. According to most reports, it was carrying some unknown cargo in the Indonesian waters when a distress
call was received by another ship in the vicinity. The officers on duty heard an SOS message, but its contents are
different depending on the accounts. The message did not repeat, and the crew of Maidan didn’t answer to
any attempts to contact it back. The ship that received the distress call hurried to the rescue, but they only
reached the vessel the following day when it was already drifting and slightly lifting. When the rescuers boarded the
ship, they found that none of the crew had survived. However, one lifeboat was
missing, which implied that there was at least one crew member who managed to escape. What happened to the rest of the
people on board remains a mystery to this day. Still, there are no hard facts
about this story, so we might never find out whether SS Orangan was actually a
ship and not a thing of fiction. SV Zabrina was a threemasted sailing
barge built in 1873 for river trade ships in South America. She served for
well over four decades, proving to be a sturdy and reliable ship. It was later
transferred to Europe where it continued serving its purpose well. But then in October
1917, Zabrina set sail on a regular voyage only to be found ashore several
days later. Mysteriously, although the ship was perfectly intact, the entire
crew of five and the captain were gone. There is no direct evidence or
hard facts as to what really happened that day. The most convincing theory is that the crew were washed away from the
deck because of an underwater explosion. And then the ship sailed ahead without them. But the truth, as
always, remains unknown. It’s 2018. You get up early in the
morning to go ashore and catch some fish. You come to the spot you were yesterday. Throw the hook into the sea
and wait. The float is twitching. You’ve caught some fish. But hey, hello. Why
aren’t you doing anything? Right now, you don’t care about the fish. You’re looking at something in the distance.
You open your mouth in surprise since you see a huge ship stuck on a shaw. It
wasn’t here yesterday, so it got here at night. Okay, it’ll probably sail away
sooner or later. You fish for a few more hours. During this time, you observe the ship and notice no movement there. Is it
empty? Boats and the coastal service are sailing from the shore to the vessel. You decide to check it out, too. You get
in your old boat and go there. The mist descends to the water, making the ship
look creepy. The colossal vessel is rusty and empty. But where is the whole
crew? And how did it get there? The Coast Guard comes on board. They search
the hold, the cabins, and the upper deck. There’s someone’s stuff, some remnants of food supplies, notebooks,
and clothes. Everything suggests the crew has disappeared for some reason. Fishers who noticed the vessel
first didn’t see anyone coming down from the board. No radio signals were sent to the port, and no one reported about the
ship. It appeared here from nowhere. The only chance to get any information is to
look at the number and name of the vessel. This is Sam Ratulongi
PB160. The Coast Guard checks the information, studies the data of all the country ships, and no way, one company
built the boat in 2001 in Indonesia. People used it to transport heavy loads
across the seas around Asia. The ship had been properly operating for 8 years. People were delivering industrial goods
to different points in the region, but something went wrong. In 2009, Sam Ratulangi was
sailing near the coast of Taiwan, and that’s it. There were no further records about it. There were no reports in any
port. Everyone thought it must have drowned. So, no one had been looking for it for years.
And then 9 years later, it appears here, big and rusty, off the coast of Myanmar,
without sailors, without fuel. An investigation starts. City services are
trying to find out the names of all the sailors working on the ship and find clues that would lead to solving this
mystery. They also hope the ship owner will appear soon. They find two tow ropes on board. This means that some
other ship towed Samatalongi to this place. Then they identify and find 13 crew
members. These people say they wanted to reach the factory in Bangladesh to repair Sam Ratalongi. Another vessel
helped tow the ship, but then two cables tore off and a storm began. No one
wanted to stay on board during such weather, so the crew members left it. No
one knows what the ship has been doing for the last 9 years and how it was possible without people on board.
And here is another much more mysterious ship story. On February 16th, 2020, locals
found a large cargo ship stuck on a rocky shore off the coast of an Irish village. The boat looked rusty with
holes in the hull and rotten parts. People hadn’t seen this vessel the day before, so it appeared there at night.
The last time people saw the Alta cargo ship was a few months earlier, thousands of miles off the coast of Ireland. That
day, the Alta was sailing in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Another ship, the MS Protector, noticed it. MS Protector
crew members tried to contact the ship, but received no response. The people on board realized that they were facing an
empty vessel, and then 5 months later, it appeared near the coast of Ireland.
There are more questions than answers in this story, but we managed to find something out. In 2015, the Alta
appeared and disappeared from the radar several times. Any ship has an internal tracking system so people can track its
route using satellites, but Alta crew members often disabled this system.
Perhaps they were engaged in some illegal activity. Anyway, in 2017, the
ship often sailed between the ports of Greek islands. Then the tracking signal disappeared and appeared only 10 months
later off the coast of North Africa. During this time, the ship changed several
flags. In September 2018, the Alta was southeast of Bermuda and headed for
Haiti. Then the crew started facing problems. First, the main engine failed
right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The ship began to drift. Several days passed, but the crew members
weren’t able to repair it. They began to run out of food and water supplies. The situation got even worse when they found
out that a hurricane was approaching the place. Fortunately, they managed to
contact the US Coast Guard. A helicopter flew to the Alta on October 2nd to bring
them some supplies. There was enough food for several days. Then, a rescue boat sailed to the ship. It evacuated
all the sailors and delivered them to Puerto Rico before the hurricane. The Alta had to drift alone in the
ocean. After a while, another ship approached the Alta to tow it to the shores of Gana. But at this moment,
everything went wrong. Someone stole the boat, disabled the tracking system, and sailed away in an unknown
direction. After almost a year, the MS Protector found the empty Alta in the
waters of the Atlantic Ocean. And then nine months later, the ship without a crew sailed to the shores of Ireland.
How did it manage to travel across the Atlantic and get to the coast of Ireland? It’s still a mystery. Maybe it
was just luck. No one else saw the ship all this time. It was just covering huge
distances, surviving storms. Who’s the captain? What happened to the thieves?
Who owns the ship now? One day, someone called the village administration and introduced themselves as the vessel
owner, but that unknown person didn’t provide any evidence. They found several
barrels of oil on the ship, which they took away by helicopter. The Alta was rusting.
Corrosion of metal could damage the environment. The vessel had no commercial value, yet it would have
taken millions to get rid of it. There were three options for what to do. Leave the ship where it was, tow it
into the sea and let it sink, or disassemble it for scrap. But nature had
its own plans. Storms and strong waves split the hull into two
parts. The Alta was drifting without a crew in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean for about 2 years. But this is nothing
compared to a ship that was traveling for 38 years. The record belongs to the
SS Beimo. It was a merchant vessel owned by some trading company. In 1931, the
ship found itself on the ice off the coast of Alaska. Its movement slowed down. A thick layer of ice blocked the
ship, and a strong storm only made the situation worse. The blizzard was so
intense that the crew members couldn’t see anything but a white veil in front of their eyes. Sailing any further was
impossible. The team had to wait for the storm to end. They waited for a day, 2,
3 days. A week had passed, but the snowstorm was only getting stronger. Then one day, it grew weaker.
The crew members split into two teams. The first team went to the nearest city. The second group, along with the
captain, stayed on board. They set up camp next to the ship and waited for the blizzard, which had started again, to
end. There was zero visibility. And finally, one day, the
storm was over. Great. And now, uh, wait a minute. But where is the ship? The SS
Bimo just disappeared during the blizzard. The captain was sure that the
ship had sunk, so he left along with the crew. Then a week later, they saw the
vessel drifting near the area where they had lost it. The hull was damaged so severely that it was unsafe to sail on
it. repairing the ship would be pointless and expensive, so the captain decided to abandon it. He was sure that
it would go underwater sooner or later, but it stayed afloat for the next few days, the next few months, and a few
years. People had reported seeing it at various points along the coast of Alaska for 38 years. The last record of the SS
Bachimo is dated 1969. Those who saw it claimed the ship was completely frozen,
almost merged with the ice. Some people planned to start an expedition to find the ship, but all
attempts were unsuccessful. The vessel is probably lying somewhere on the deep sea
floor. They said it was the most technologically advanced ship. They said it was unsinkable. and when it sank,
they made a movie about it. These were the main reasons why the Titanic disaster became world famous. But
unfortunately, this is not the only large-scale shipwreck. And sadly, there
have been cases much worse than the tragedy of the
Titanic. One of them occurred on April 27th, 1865. The Sultana steamboat carried
passengers and cargo daily between St. Lewis and New Orleans. It was a pretty large wooden boat with three decks and
was 260 ft long and 70 ft wide, almost twice the size of a basketball
court. The ship could carry about 350 passengers. But on that unfortunate day,
more than 2,000 people were on it. On April 23rd, she was making a routine
voyage from New Orleans when it broke down. Something was wrong with the boiler. So, the vessel docked in
Vixsburg for repairs. At the port, the ship’s captain, James Cass Mason, found out
about an excellent opportunity to earn a lot of money. All he needed to do was to transfer a large group of former
prisoners to the north. The captain agreed to do it, but the problem was that the boiler required a lot of time
to repair. Mason was afraid that his competitors would take the job, so he decided to sail. Despite the malfunction
the ship had, he patched up the holes in the boiler instead of a big repair and
invited all the ex- prisoners on board. So there was a broken boiler, an
excess number of passengers, a lack of lifeboats, and not the best river conditions. Also, the captain refused to
send the ex- prisoners to the hold. So they were all with ordinary passengers. There were strong chances for a
shipwreck, but the greedy desire to earn more money was stronger. The Sultana went on a voyage
and sailed up the river for 2 days. At this time, one of the biggest Mississippi floods in history began. The
river overflowed shores because of the flood. With the water level rising several feet, all the trees on the shore
disappeared and only the tops were sticking out of the water. The ship sailed opposite this powerful
current, making the boiler work too hard. On the evening of April 26th, the
Sultana arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, and they loaded even more, 120 tons of
sugar and 200 passengers. She got incredibly heavy. Around midnight, the
ship continued its dangerous journey. The captain sailed to barges to load a shipment of coal.
At 1:00 a.m., the vessel left the barge. At 2:00 a.m., the broken boiler, unable
to withstand the load, suddenly exploded. The Sultana was just 7 mi
north of Memphis. Few people survived that day. The problem was that
passengers trying to escape from the fire jumped into a cold river with a strong current.
The Sultana disaster is considered the most tragic shipwreck in the history of the United States. The exact number of
those who didn’t survive is still unknown. According to various sources, this number was from 961 to 1,800
people. Don’t be surprised that almost no one knows this story. There were many more survivors in the Titanic tragedy,
and everybody heard about it. But the Sultana sank during one high-profile event. 12 days before the shipwreck, the
country lost Abraham Lincoln. People hadn’t yet recovered from this news, so
no one paid much attention to the tragedy of the Sultana. Many catastrophes happened
quite recently by historical standards. One of them occurred in 2002. The ferry
Lejula was a Sangal vessel. The ferry sailed twice a week, mainly
along the coast of Dar, carrying passengers who traded mango and palm oil. It made daily voyages and never
faced severe problems thanks to modern rescue equipment and good repair
service. But one day, the ship’s crew discovered a malfunction and sent the
boat to port. For almost a year, Legoula was in a non-working condition, awaiting
repairs. But it didn’t get highquality service. After poor maintenance, the
ferry set off on its last voyage. On September 26th, 2002, Legoula
sailed between southern Sagal and Dar and at 11 p.m. headed toward Gambia
where a strong storm began. The wind raised high waves, but this wasn’t critical for the large passenger ship,
unless the number of people on board didn’t exceed the established norm. Legoula was supposed to carry about 500
passengers, but had many more people that day. Too many passengers, poor repairs,
and a strong storm caused severe problems for the ship. But the main factor in the shipwreck was that Legoula
was only built for sailing in coastal waters. But that day, it sailed far from
the shore. Big waves started rocking the boat. And at some point, it just turned
upside down. The ship’s deck went underwater and its lower part stuck above the surface like an iceberg. All
the passengers sitting in cabins fell on the ceiling and lost their orientation in space.
There were no holes or damage in the ship’s hull, and water flooded the lower decks for a long time. The vessel stood
in a twisted position for several hours. Then the boat began to sink when the
water seeped through the deck and hold. The ocean was warm, but no one
came to save the passengers. People had to wait almost 4 days to be rescued.
Unfortunately, only a few managed to survive. The Philippines is a very dangerous area
for ships. This place consists of several thousand islands and a vast area
with shallow water. Ships can run ground and damage the hull with reefs and pitfalls. On September 20th, 1987, one
of the most terrible disasters in navigation history occurred there. A Philippine passenger ferry called Dona
Paz left one of the islands and sailed toward Manila. The sun was shining, the ocean was calm, and the visibility was
good. But for some reason, the crew members didn’t notice how the tanker Vector was approaching
them. The two ships collided at low speed. The collision wasn’t strong, but
the problem was that the Vector had tons of oil on board, and the Donap crashed
into the cargo hold where that oil was stored. So, it spilled all over the
ocean and then a spark slipped through. Not only did the two ships catch fire,
but also filled with water. Both ships sank in a matter of seconds. Only a few
dozen people survived that disaster. On September 27th, 1854, the
passenger ship Arctic sailed from Liverpool to New York. The fog came rolling down and visibility got really
bad. Another boat appeared out of the thick white haze, the French steamer Vesta. The ships were close enough to
each other that a collision was inevitable. The French vessel was smaller, so it seemed to the Arctic’s
captain that Vesta had received a lot of damage. And while he was staring at the other ship, his boat got quickly filled
with water. The captain gave the order to sail to the shore as fast as possible,
but the ship’s engines stopped working because of the flood. Then the ship’s crew started to lower lifeboats with
women and kids. Still, when rescuers found lifeboats with people, it turned out that only 87 out of 400 people
survived. 65 crew members and 22 passengers. Surprisingly, there were
only grown men among them. The ship’s captain survived by clinging to the wreckage.
All newspapers wrote about this story as one of the most terrible and shameful tragedies in navigation history.
Survivors were criticized because they didn’t save women and kids. And the crew members were accused of violating the
law since the safety of passengers should be higher than the safety of sailors. But despite this, none of them
were brought to responsibility. Unfortunately, shipwrecks still occur to this day. But
fortunately, there are fewer of them than before thanks to modern navigation systems and radar. But no technology can
guarantee there won’t be a super strong storm or any other emergency that no one can foresee.