Nautical netherworld

Opinion

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This article was published 22/02/2020 (2028 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It may not rival the legendary Flying Dutchman, but the MV Alta is a ghost ship all the same.

The 77-metre “ghost” cargo ship made headlines around the world when it ran aground on rocks off Ireland’s south coast last weekend after drifting around the Atlantic for more than a year without crew or passengers on board.

The cargo vessel’s bizarre odyssey came to an end during high seas caused by Storm Dennis when it ran aground near Ballycotton, a fishing village in County Cork, overlooking the Celtic Sea.

Unlike the mythical ghost ships of ocean lore, there is no real mystery around why the Alta, built in 1976, was abandoned. The story began in September 2018 when it became disabled in the mid-Atlantic en route from Greece to Haiti.

The 10 crew members spent 20 days on board as it floated 2,220 kilometres southeast of Bermuda, before they were taken off by the crew of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. The coast guard said at the time it was working with the ship’s owner to arrange a tug back to shore but the ship’s subsequent movements are unknown.

It is believed the Alta was hijacked twice in the process of being salvaged and came on the radar again in August 2019 when a British Royal Navy ice-patrol ship found it drifting in the mid-Atlantic.

While definitely newsworthy, the abandoned ship’s voyage to Ireland is not entirely without precedent as we see from today’s spooky list of Five Real Life Ghost Ships:

5) The ghost ship: The Jian Seng

THE GHOST STORY: It’s not easy to tell the story of the ghost ship Jian Seng because almost nothing is known about this mysterious tanker vessel that was discovered drifting off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in March 2006.

The name Jian Seng was printed on the side, and it was found trailing a broken tow rope, but that’s about all anyone really knows.

“Investigations found no records of distress signals, no identifying documents or belongings, and no reports of a missing boat,” according to the website of Reader’s Digest magazine. “They couldn’t even figure out who it belonged to or where it came from. The most they can figure out is that it probably supplied food and fuel to fishing boats, but that didn’t answer why no one tried to save it when it broke off.”

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, there was no one on board when the 80-metre vessel was found. A large quantity of rice was found on board, but there was no indication of recent human activity on the ship and no evidence of human smuggling. It did not appear to have been abandoned in distress, the Morning Herald reported.

“It really is a bit of a mystery,” an Australian Customs Service spokesman told the paper. “It is difficult to determine the origins of the vessel because there was very little in the way of markings on the ship. There was no identification documentation of any sort on board. It appeared to have been stripped clean. The name of the vessel is its only identifying feature and that is not a lot to go on.”

Officials believed the ship had been abandoned for some time and may have been under tow when it broke free. They speculated it might have been used to supply fishing boasts with food and fuel. In the end, it was deemed a navigational hazard and it was scuttled in deep waters with its origins still a mystery.

 

4) The ghost ship: The Kaz II

The ghost story: When no one knows the truth, bizarre theories will abound. That was the case when the Kaz II, a 9.8-metre catamaran that was infamously dubbed the “ghost yacht,” was spotted drifting 163 kilometres off the northeastern coast of Australia in the vicinity of the Great Barrier Reef in April 2007.

It was believed the middle-aged, three-member crew was potentially in distress. When rescuers boarded the ship, however, the crew was nowhere to be found. The engine was idling, a half-empty cup of coffee and a laptop computer were sitting on a table, a newspaper was lying open with some pages strewn on the floor and clothing had been piled on a bench. The men went to sea with a large supply of food, three cases of beer, a .44-calibre rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition.

“There were suggestions the skipper, Des Batten, and brothers Peter and John Tunstead staged their own disappearance for insurance purposes or suffered at the hands of drug smugglers or pirates,” the Guardian newspaper reported.

“One of the wilder theories was that some kind of paranormal event had happened aboard their catamaran and inevitably, comparisons were made to the lost crew of another ‘ghost’ ship, the Mary Celeste.”

The trio, described as “typical Aussie blokes,” vanished after setting sail on April 15, 2007, on a planned two-month trip, bound for Western Australia where they all lived. Three days later, the “ghost yacht” was found adrift.

In 2008, coroner Michael Barnes said he could not be definitive, but proposed a scenario in which the trio, relatively inexperienced sailors, would have drowned only a few hours after setting sail. Basically, one of the brothers tried to free a fishing line wrapped around the yacht’s propeller when he fell overboard, and the other brother fell in trying to rescue him. The skipper tried to go back for his two friends, but the yacht’s boom swung and knocked him overboard.

“None of them was a good swimmer, the seas were choppy, they would have quickly become exhausted and sunk beneath the waves. Although I can’t exclude the possibility of a shark attacking them, drowning is a far more likely cause of death.” Some still insist it was an alien abduction.

 

3) The ghost ship: The SS Baychimo

The ghost story: What we are talking about here is one of the most mysterious ghost ships of modern times.

“Somewhere out there a phantom ship could well be drifting, having roamed the seas without a crew for decades,” according to a 2017 report in Britain’s The Daily Mail newspaper. “She was last seen in 1969, 38 years after she was abandoned in the Arctic — but since then no one has laid eyes on the SS Baychimo.”

The 1,322-ton steel-hulled cargo steamer was launched in 1914 in Sweden under the name SS Angermanelfven. After the First World War, it was handed over to the British as part of Germany’s war reparations and in 1921, having been acquired by the Hudson’s Bay Co., was renamed Baychimo. For 10 years, it powered up and down the northern coast of Canada, collecting and off-loading pelts. On Oct. 1, 1931, on a trip to Vancouver, it became stuck in pack ice near the Alaskan town of Barrow. The crew warmed up in Barrow for a couple of days, then returned to find her floating free from her sub-zero prison.

On Oct. 8, the Baychimo became trapped again and the Hudson’s Bay Co. decided to rescue its employees from the perilous ice. According to the Daily Mail, 15 sailors, including the captain, decided to stay for the winter, building a wooden shelter nearby. On Nov. 24, however, a punishing blizzard hit and the Baychimo vanished.

“The captain and the rest of the crew simply thought that she’d broken up and sunk in the storm,” the Mail reported. “But a week later a native Inuit seal hunter told the crew that he’d seen the ship about 45 miles away.” The crew tracked the ship down, but it was in such rough shape they simply left it to its fate. After that, the Arctic ghost ship was spotted another 12 times. “In March 1962 she was spotted drifting in the Beaufort Sea and seen stuck in ice in 1969, between Point Barrow and Icy Cape in the Chukchi Sea,” the Mail noted.

No human has seen it since, but no wreckage has ever been found, either.

 

2) The ghost ship: The Carroll A. Deering

The ghost story: Often called the “Ghost Ship of the Outer Banks,” the Carroll A. Deering is one of the most discussed and written-about maritime mysteries of the 20th century.

It’s enduring popularity has been fuelled by the complete uncertainty as to how the ship met its face. “When the Carroll A. Deering was discovered in 1921, its crew vanished and its hull run aground on the treacherous rocks of Diamond Shoals, speculation ran wild. That speculation continues to this day, and no satisfactory explanation for the crew’s disappearance has ever been proven,” according to the website of the U.S. National Park Foundation.

The five-masted commercial schooner was spotted on Jan. 29, 1921, bound for its home port after delivering a load of coal to Rio de Janeiro. “A lightship keeper in North Carolina said a crewman who didn’t seem very officer-like reported the ship had lost its anchors while the rest of the crew was ‘milling about’ suspiciously,” according to Reader’s Digest’s website. Two days later, on the morning of Jan. 31, the schooner was spotted run aground and helpless on Diamond Shoals, its sails still set and its lifeboats missing.

“When the seas calmed four days later and the Coast Guard was able to reach the ship, it was clear the vessel had been abandoned — the crew and their navigational equipment, belongings, documents and lifeboats were all gone, but interestingly dinner was on the stove and the captain’s cabin was a mess. A few months later, the ship was dynamited so it wouldn’t be a hazard to mariners in the area,” according to North Carolina’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The crew had disappeared like, well, ghosts, and no official explanation has ever been given. It’s possible they tried to row to shore but were swept out to sea and certain death in their small lifeboats. “The mysterious circumstances of the wreck became the subject of investigation which included a visit to Dare County by the FBI. Various explanations for the wreck surfaced, including pirates, mutiny, and the effects of the ship having travelled through the Bermuda Triangle. The cause remains a mystery,” Cultural Resources notes.

 

1) The ghost ship: The Mary Celeste

The ghost story: The 282-ton American brigantine Mary Celeste is easily the most famous real-life ghost ship in maritime history. The fate of her crew remains the most durable mystery in nautical lore.

It began on Dec. 5, 1872, when crew members on the British brig Dei Gratia spotted a ship adrift in the choppy seas off the Azores Islands. According to Smithsonian magazine, Capt. David Morehouse was taken aback to discover the unguided vessel was the Mary Celeste, which had left New York eight days before him and should have already arrived in Genoa, Italy. Morehouse changed course to offer help. But the boarding party found the ship’s 10-member crew had vanished into thin air.

“Belowdecks, the ship’s charts had been tossed about, and the crewmen’s belongings were still in their quarters. The ship’s only lifeboat was missing, and one of its two pumps had been disassembled. Three and a half feet of water was sloshing in the ship’s bottom, though the cargo of 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol was largely intact. There was a six-month supply of food and water — but not a soul to consume it,” Smithsonian magazine notes.

The ship was deemed seaworthy, so why would an experienced captain and sailors abandon a perfectly sound ship? Theories have included attacks by pirates or even a giant octopus. “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even weighed in with a short story published in 1884, in which the inhabitants of the ghost ship fell victim to an ex-slave seeking vengeance.

On the less-sensationalized end, an investigation chronicled in the 2007 documentary The True Story of the Mary Celeste was able to offer no definite conclusion, but did suggest a scenario in which a faulty chronometer, rough seas and a clogged on-board pump could have led (Capt. Benjamin) Briggs to order the ship abandoned shortly after sighting land on Nov. 25, 1872,” says history.com. The most likely answer is that we’ll never know for sure, which, when it comes to ghost stories, is about as good as it gets.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca