There’s a ship drifting somewhere in the ocean without a crew. The last time someone saw it was
over 50 years ago. It 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 Bayimo
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 sent them supplies to survive the winter. They set
camp near the ship out of the hatches, tarplins, 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
Bayimo 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 Bimo, either
still above or below the water. So far, the project has not been a success. SS Bimo 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 fat morana 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 Genoa
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 prison 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] Strange things occur in the cold waters
of Antarctica. One of these things happened to a ship called Jenny. It was a small schooner whose history began in
1822. The boat and its crew set sail and disappeared a year later. For 18 years,
the ship was considered sunk. People forgot about it. But in 1840, the vessel
reminded the world of itself. That year, the whailing ship Hope sailed
through the Drake Channel in Antarctica. The crew members noticed a ship among icebergs. It was the schooner Jenny. It
was floating slowly in the dark with no signs of life. The captain of the Hope,
Mr. Brighton, gave the order to approach the mysterious vessel. They thought it was some creepy ghost ship, but as they
came closer, they noticed crew members on the deck. The sailors of the Hope called out to
them, but received no answer. This time, it became clear that something terrible
had happened to the Jenny. When Brighton boarded, he realized that the Jenny crew
members weren’t missing. They were here. Frozen people stood like statues.
Brighton went down to the lower deck and found the captain. He was sitting frozen
at the table holding a pen. Brighton looked at the log book. The
last record was made on May 4th, 1823. The captain wrote that he was the
only living member of the crew. They spent 71 days without food. It seemed
that the ship got lost in the sea because its captain went off course or sailed into an iceberg, but no one knew
for sure. After that, nobody ever saw the Jenny again. According to rumors,
the crew of the Hope abandoned the frozen ship and left it to drift in the cold
waters. According to other rumors, this whole story is fiction. The story of the
Jenny was described in a German magazine in the middle of the 19th century. Still, there was no further evidence of
the ship’s existence. Already in our time, Cambridge University decided to
explore the case of the Jenny. The researchers discovered that one of the crew members of the Hope, who didn’t
disclose his name, told someone the legend of the frozen ship. Someone
shared the story with another guy, and it was published in a German magazine called Globus, and that’s all. There was
no other evidence. One of the most famous ghost ships was the Mary Celeste, and there’s
no doubt about its existence. The history of this vessel was documented in court. People wrote about it in
newspapers. But the most exciting thing is that the ship continued to be used
even after 10 people disappeared from its deck. The history of the Mary Celeste
began in Canada in 1861. When it was first built, the ship
was called the Amazon. It changed captains several times and it also hit
some rocks. The boat was sold, bought, then sold again, repaired, and sailed
under the name Mary Celeste. In 1872, it had a new captain, Benjamin
Briggs. He was a decent, brave man with a lot of experience in navigation. He
had a beloved wife, a daughter, and a son. When he went on his last voyage, he
took his wife and daughter with him, and his son stayed in America. In November of 1872, the Mary
Celeste sailed from the port to New York with 10 people on board and disappeared.
Eight days later, another ship, the De Gratia, also left New York and followed
the same route. De Gratia’s captain, David Mohouse, noticed the Mary Celeste
and immediately realized something was wrong. The ship was moving too freely,
as if no one was controlling it. The captain tried to contact the crew members, but no one answered him. Then,
together with other sailors, he climbed aboard the Mary Celeste. The ship was in good condition.
There was no damage. The hold was slightly filled with water, but it could be easily pumped out. Everything seemed
fine. But one lifeboat was missing. The crew members valuables were
in their cabins. The cargo was in the hold. The supplies of water and food
were untouched. Judging by the records in the log book, the ship was caught in
a storm, but it was not too strong. Other ships also sailed through this storm, but nothing bad happened to them.
The last record was dated November 25th, and it claimed that everything was
fine. The sails of the Mary Celeste were slightly damaged, but perhaps it
happened after the crew had disappeared. The whole ship was in excellent condition, but what made the people
leave it? Part of the crew of the De Gratia stayed on board the Mary Celeste
to bring it to dry land. Everything went well. They delivered the ship to the closest
port. Next, the captain of the Degratia appeared before the court and told about
what had happened. However, the prosecutor and the judge didn’t want to believe in the story of the Mary
Celeste. They were sure the captain got rid of the ship’s crew to get money for its cargo. According to the maritime
laws of that time, if you found a ghost ship with valuable cargo, then a
substantial part of this cargo belonged to you. So many people thought that
David Moore house decided to earn some money. This version seemed to be more
valid than the one about the mysterious disappearance of 10 people. Fortunately,
no one accused the captain of committing a crime. They thanked him for his service and gave him a monetary reward.
However, his reputation was damaged which greatly affected his career as
many believed he attacked the crew of the Mary Celeste. But even after this terrible
case, trial and investigation, the story was not over. The Mary Celeste was still
an expensive and efficient vessel. It sailed several times, but then one
captain crashed it into the reefs to get insurance. The court revealed this
deception and accused the captain of intentional property damage. The story of the Mary Celeste
became famous all over the world. People began to build their theories, realistic
and not. Someone believed the ship had sailed through the Bermuda Triangle, but
this version was quickly refuted as the route of the Mary Celeste passed thousands of miles away from the Bermuda
region. Did the Kraken or another giant monster attacked the ship? Nope. Since
the boat was found in almost perfect condition, there were no signs of a struggle. One of the most popular
versions was that the crew of the Mary Celeste stole some valuable cargo and
sailed to Spain on the rescue boat. However, those who knew Captain Benjamin
Briggs said he was a good, honest man. Besides, he had a son in New York, and
Briggs would never leave him. A more thorough investigation revealed that a series of accidental
circumstances could have caused the disappearance of the ship’s crew. Before its last voyage, the vessel delivered
coal. Perhaps the pump intended for pumping water got clogged with coal
after that. And when the ship got into a storm, the hold filled with water and the pump broke.
The captain couldn’t understand the amount of water because numerous barrels in the cargo hold blocked the view.
Benjamin Briggs assumed it was dangerous to stay on the ship during a storm. So, he evacuated with the passengers on a
lifeboat. Perhaps they were close to land and decided to sail there. But the storm intensified and overturned the
boat. Also, one record in the log journal said that the chronometer was
faulty. It was a device that helped to determine your location at sea using
longitude. Briggs got lost and didn’t know which way to sail. The storm was
strong and he couldn’t determine whether the ship would sink. Perhaps Briggs decided to leave the ship in a rescue
boat when he saw the coast of the Azors. The uniqueness of this ghost ship
case is that unlike many others, you can investigate it yourself. There’s a lot
of information about the Mary Celeste on the internet. There are documentaries and research articles. Perhaps you’ll be
able to notice something that others haven’t seen and solve the mystery of the disappearance of 10
[Music] people. 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 hull. 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 Cottoaxi had been built. The company had
probably supplied parts for the Cottoaxi. 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 Cottoaxi 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 11:00
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 Baly 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. 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 Hoyita 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, Hoya’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 Hoya’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, Touvalu, 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 mi. 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. Dering 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. Dearing 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 Shores, 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 them Beimo hadn’t been lost yet. He’d
seen it about 45 miles 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. SS Beimo 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 Beima 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 threemast 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. The year was 1854. And the SS
Arctic, the fastest passenger liner of its time, set out to cross the Atlantic.
As it sailed through the Misty Veil, it slowly disappeared into the
unknown. The Collins Line, an American shipping company, was started in 1818
and only began seriously trading in the transatlantic by 1835. Its steam ships
crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York within just 10 days. Doesn’t sound like a great speed today, I know,
but back then the same thing took other ships several weeks. Light on the water with their
wooden hulls powering through with a strong steam engine. Those steam ships were the favorite choice for many
high-profile people. What could go wrong with such an advanced ship? They thought
this reminds me of some other ship everyone believed to be unsinkable.
But anyway, back to the Collins line. It grew to be a serious contender on transatlantic routes with only one other
competitor, the Cunard’s line. It was a British company also aiming to be the main force through the Arctic
Passage. In 1835, the company received a new ship that traveled to Liverpool and
came back to New York with the largest cargo ever at that time. From then, the
Collins line was steadily growing. It seemed like there would only be future successes for
it. Unfortunately, their lavish ships became costly to run with the amount of
coal used. Massive power along with weak wooden hulls meant they needed many
repairs after each voyage. So, every trip ended up being
expensive. But since the ships were safe and had a great reputation, people were willing to pay the price. And the
company was definitely not in crisis. They had achieved something no one had managed to do before them. Like I told
you, their ships crossed the Atlantic in a whopping 10 days, and Edward Collins,
the owner, was very determined to maintain the pace. Their five ships easily outran the
Cunard’s line of only three. With this great praise, it provided more attention.
Though the Cunard’s ships were slower with their iron hulls, they believed there was still profit regardless of how
slowly they sailed. Among Cullen ships, the Arctic,
the third of them to be launched, was the largest, reaching 284 ft long with
two side lever steam engines, each with 1,000 horsepower. The paddle wheels made 16
revolutions a minute when at full speed. At the time of its launch, the press called it the most stupendous vessel
ever constructed in the United States. But glamour and fame couldn’t avoid what would come
next. On the 27th of September, the Arctic was on its journey from Liverpool
to New York, continuing a speed pace through the thick fog. It’s possible that by that moment, after 4 years of
record-breaking trips, the crew became overconfident with their sailing and the ship.
Going only 50 mi from Newf Finland, they carelessly continued through the fog with no radio contact, sonar, or any
other form of identifying objects, equipped only with Morse code. A smaller ship, the SS Vesta,
which operated as a fishing vessel, often worked around Newfoundland. It was passing through the same path as the
Arctic and crashed into its side. Shocked by the collision, the captain of
the Arctic offered help to the much smaller Vesta. But it was soon clear that the damage that seemed minor on the
Arctic was far worse. Beneath the water line, a hole
was letting water into the hull. The cost of the much faster wooden hull now seemed less valuable. They steered
toward land, trying to plug the holes, but they weren’t doing so well. And the seawater continued to pour in, filling
up higher and pushing the ship down. And finally, once the engine room
was full, it put out the boilers, taking away the massive power the Arctic was once legendary
for. They moved slowly until coming to a complete stop. The ship continued to
sink, and the order was to abandon it. At the time, maritime law allowed for
the Arctic to carry only six lifeboats, only capable of saving 180 people. The
crew and some of the passengers managed to push their way aboard and took most of the seats on those boats. Things were
pretty wild, and everyone forgot about their manners, not letting the ladies and the youngest ones board
first. It took 4 hours for the Arctic to sink. 150 crew and 250 passengers were
on board. Those that weren’t able to find a lifeboat made a desperate attempt to build their own rafts from parts of
the ship. Two days later, only three boats made it safely to the shore. The other
three were never found. Believe it or not, the rescue party also saved some
people that had been clinging to the wreckage for 2 days. Unlike the crew, the captain went
down with the Arctic, but amazingly survived. He would be only one of 85
people that made it out of the 400 on board. When the news arrived 2 weeks
later, the public responded with great sadness to the losses. Great anger soon
followed towards the poor safety measures in the crew. The press published demands to change the laws for
more lifeboats. It only made sense to have enough for every person on board a
ship. But they ignored those requests. This neglect would lead to more disasters in the future. Enough
lifeboats would only come into maritime law some 60 years later after the disaster of the
Titanic. Edward Collins wife and two children were also aboard the ship and
didn’t return. He was heartbroken but didn’t stop running his business.
The Collins line still had a reputation to uphold, the biggest, fastest, and most luxurious on the Atlantic. Edward
Collins would now build an even better ship than any other. It was named the Adriatic, and it
was the largest ship in the world, 354 ft long. with two alternating steam engines
that had never been built of this size. These steam engines at the time were at the height of engineering, though today
you can only see them in models and toys. With the new addition of two
masks, the Adriatic would also be able to sail if needed. Luckily, they made
some lessons from the disaster of the Arctic. But before their new ship, the Adriatic was built, another disaster had
occurred. The sister ship of the Arctic had also sunk. They believe this second ship was
desperate to stay in front of the Cunard’s line and hit an iceberg somewhere during the race. This weird
contest took the lives of 141 people. The desperation of Collins and
his weekly built hulls pushed the company towards bankruptcy in 1858. The
newly built Adriatic, costing over $1 million, had only made one voyage in the
end. And even that voyage was considered a disaster. The ship collided with a
tugboat. It still managed to finish its maiden voyage at a suitable
time. After the company had gone bankrupt, they had to sell the ship for only $50,000.
[Music] They removed the great giant engines, replacing them with only
sails. Although it was once the greatest ship on the high seas, it was only 30
years later until it was abandoned, labeled irreparable, and anchored in a
river. The other remaining ships were also sold and only used for parts.
Edward Collins left the industry altogether, seeking work on dry land instead.
As the Collins line was no longer in the mix, the Cunards would grow in strength.
Without competition, they would win the Blue Ribbon for the next 30 years. And
180 years later, after producing hundreds of ships, they still have a constant presence on the seas as they
provide transatlantic crossings, world voyages, and leisure cruises.
To this day, the Cunard line is the only one to run ships between Europe and America, and it’s great proof that it’s
not always the fastest that’s the
best. They say nothing is ever lost, and it’s true. Let’s discover ships frozen
in time. The first one is truly fascinating. Here, the Anticther shipwreck. It’s a Greek trading ship
from the 1st century BCE. It’s located on the east side of the Greek island of Anticther and at the merging point of
the Aian and Mediterranean seas. Around 2,000 years later in 1900, a group of
Greek sponge divers discovered the wreck. They were going to Tunisia. Yet, they were forced to find shelter from a
storm on a nearby island. Since they couldn’t go anywhere due to the storm, they decided to look for sponges until
the weather got calmer. One of the divers discovered the shipwreck at depths of around 130 ft. Imagine someone
going for a sponge hunt, but getting out to the surface with archaeological treasures. The captain of the spongeboat
talked to the Greek officials about what they had found. The officials sent two ships to the wreckage. The salvage
operation was successful, and discoveries are now in Greece’s National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The
findings included three life-sized marble horses, jewelry, coins, and
hundreds of works of art, including a 7-ft tall colossus statue of Hercules.
Among these treasures, Anticther Aphib, a bronze statue of a young man, caught more attention. Because the Aphib
doesn’t comply with any familiar iconographic model, and there are no known copies of his type, he held a
spherical object in his hand. Scholars have different theories of who that person could be, but they are not in a
consensus yet. More than 70 years later, Jacqu Eve Kustau and his team went to
the area and recovered hundreds more artifacts and the remains of four people. Interestingly, they discovered a
complex set of interlocking gears capable of predicting the movement of the sun, moon, and several planets. The
mechanism can also show the times of solar and lunar eclipses years into the future. Think of this anticothera
mechanism as an early computer calendar. You know, to plan significant events like agricultural activities, religious
rituals, and Olympic games. These artifacts found in the Anticther wreckage are some of the most important
findings in modern archaeology. Just the Anticther mechanism itself has changed our perception of the limits of ancient
technology. The mechanism has a sophisticated design and was made over a thousand years ago. After all these
amazing discoveries, experts believe that the wreckage site has remained largely unexplored and is mostly because
of its location and the landscape of the seafloor on which the ship rests. The wreck is too deep for scuba divers, but
too shallow to use something like a submersible. A survey made on the seafloor in 2012 showed evidence of a
second wreck about 800 ft to the south. It’s clear that this area has a lot to
offer humanity. What would happen if those sponge hunters didn’t go to the area? Scientists found a shipwreck in
Antarctica at the bottom of the Wedell Sea7 years after it sank. The name of
the ship was Endurance, and it was the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest
Shackleton. Scientists who laid eyes on it decades later say it is among the greatest undiscovered shipwrecks ever.
That is why they filmed the whole discovery. The video shows the remains of the Endurance and proves it is still
in remarkable condition. It has been sitting in 10,000 ft of water for over a century, yet it looks like it sank very
recently. So, the story goes like this. The ship was crushed by ice and sank in
1915. Shackleton and his crew mates had to escape by themselves in small lifeboats. From then on, it was all
about survival. Shackleton imagined to get his crew to safety. Then, the ship sank. Yes, this is a pretty impressive
story. But why did scientists prize this ship? Firstly, Shackleton’s Imperial
Trans Antarctic Expedition sailed to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. Yes, the crew was trapped in
ice, but the intention was important. Secondly, it’s about the challenge itself of finding the shipwreck. The
Wedell Sea is almost always covered in thick sea ice. You know, the same ice that made the Endurance sink. Getting
near the presumed sinking location is super hard, let alone being able to conduct research. Experts of the modern
expedition team foresaw the time when the lowest extent of Antarctic sea ice would come. Using satellite images, they
realized that the weather was in their favor to start an expedition. Dr. John Shears said that they have successfully
completed the world’s most difficult shipwreck search, fighting against constantly shifting sea ice, blizzards,
and temperatures decreasing to0.4° 4° F. Yesesh. I can’t imagine the worst
conditions in Antarctica if these conditions are in their favor. Lastly, look at this. It’s timbers. They’re very
much intact. Plus, you can read the ship’s name. It’s still visible. Marine
archaeologist Menson Bound says that this is the finest wooden shipwreck he has ever discovered. He has 50 years of
career experience. So, I believe the guy. So, how come the wood is not rotten? Dr. Michelle Taylor, a deep sea
polar biologist, said that there has been little wood deterioration because the wood munching animals are not in
this forest-free region of Antarctica. Workers of a coal mine in East Serbia discovered three shipwrecks
that had been there for at least 1,300 years. The largest shipwreck is an ancient Roman fleet. It’s around 50 ft
long with a flat bottom. It’s estimated that the ship could carry a crew of 30 to 35 people. Looking at its hull, you
can see the marks of repairs. Wow, this one had a lengthy career. You know, it gives us insight into more than a
thousand years ago. The two smaller vessels, on the other hand, match descriptions of boats used by Slavic
groups to attack the Roman frontier. These two have been discovered under mud and clay in an ancient riverbed.
Apparently, in those times, there was a Roman base in a place called Vimeium City. Interestingly, Vimenasium was a
provincial capital with an estimated 40,000 inhabitants in the 4th century CE. For comparison, it was even larger
than Pompei. The Costa Latch coal mine is a center of hidden gems. Archaeologists had found evidence of
ancient human and animal activity here before. For instance, in 2012, experts found bones of at least five woolly
mammoths, which went extinct about 10,000 years ago.
Canadian archaeologists found a ship 150 years after it went missing in the
Canadian Arctic waters. This merchant ship is called HMS Investigator. It was
purchased in 1848 to search for the explorer Sir John Franklin’s ship that
got lost in the Northwest Passage expedition. So HMS investigator left
Britain in 1850 for this rescue operation. The expedition crew captained
by Robert Mccclure sailed the investigator into the water. He realized that he was in the final leg of the
Northwest Passage. The sea route across North America. But before he could sail
into the Bufort Sea, the 122 ton ship itself got stuck in the thick ice. The
crew spent the winter over the Prince of Wales straight. The following summer, Mccclure tried again to sail to the end
of the passage, but the ice blocked his way once more. Here too, the crew was
forced to leave the ship. He steered the crew into the Bay of Mercy. There they were to remain until 1853 when the crew
of the HMS Resolute rescued them. Imagine a crew of 60 people who had to
spend three winters in the Arctic without even knowing if they would survive. Later on, the ship was found
sitting upright in about 36 ft of water. It was in very good condition. Arctic
water has prevented the outer deck of the vessel from deteriorating quickly. The outline of the ship and its timber
can be clearly seen. Plus, archaeologists have uncovered artifacts on land left by the sailors. They had
unloaded everything before abandoning the investigator. Three sailor graves and one British naval shipwreck had also
been discovered in the area. I wonder what else they could find there. Wow. It’s the only place where
one minute you’re learning 17 natural ways how to get rid of house flies and the next you’re taking an epic journey
straight into a black hole. More than 10 billion with a B views in total. That’s
47 billion minutes watched or more than 70,000 years. That’s all the way back to
the Ice Age. No, I wasn’t around then. 40,000 videos, hundreds of topics, and
most importantly, you. A whole 44 million of you, our viewers. We could populate an entire country if we wanted
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