Legends about mysterious ghost ships have thrilled seasoned sailors and residents of coastal cities for centuries. Vessels with missing crews still travel the seas and oceans today.
Flying Dutchman
Legendary ghost sailing ship that cannot land on the shore and is doomed to sail the seas until the Second Coming. Meeting him is considered a bad omen. The ghost sailboat is often seen near the Cape of Good Hope.
There are many versions of the legend about him. According to one of them, the ship, driven by Captain Philip Van Der Decken, was returning from the East Indies in 1641. A young couple traveled on board, the captain liked the girl, he proposed to her to become his wife, but the girl refused and Van Der Decken killed her lover. After that, the girl threw herself overboard. While trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope, the ship was caught in a storm. A riot broke out among the sailors, the navigator suggested waiting out the storm in one of the bays. Needless to say, the navigator was also killed after that. The captain swore by the bones of his mother that no one would go ashore until they rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Van Der Decken kept his word: the ghost ship is still maneuvering at the cape. The first written mention of him appears in 1795.
Octavius
British merchant ship. In 1775 it was returning from China. Found drifting off the coast of Greenland. The whole team froze and died. The ship's log showed that the crew was trying to navigate the Northwest Passage, which would be successfully overcome only at the beginning of the 20th century, in 1906. The ship with the frozen crew has been drifting among the pack ice for 13 years.
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Maria Celeste
Merchant ship. For some unknown reason, it was abandoned by the crew. Found 400 miles from Gibraltar on December 4, 1872. The ship was in good condition, the holds were filled with food, the cargo (the ship was carrying alcohol) was intact, and no trace of the crew was found. On November 7, 1872, the ship left the port of New York. There were 13 people on board: Captain Briggs, his wife, their daughter and 10 sailors.
The ship was launched in 1860. Over the course of 10 years, he changed owners, and a bad reputation stuck to him. In the end, he changed his name too - he was "Amazon", and became "Mary Celeste" - Mary of Heaven. The last owner changed his name, hoping to end the string of failures. Did not help.
The ship was missing the logbook and boats, which were discovered in 1873 off the coast of Spain. They contained a body wrapped in an American flag, and five more difficult to identify corpses. The woman and the child were not among them.
Baichimo
It was built in 1911 in Sweden. A merchant ship carried skins. The main course is Northwest Canada. In 1931, during the voyage, the ship got stuck in the ice, a week later the ice cracked under the ship, and the sailors were able to continue their journey. But after 8 days the ship got stuck in the ice again. The team went ashore, deciding to wait for the thaw. A month later, the sailors returned to the place where their ship was imprisoned, but "Baichimo" disappeared. And the crew decided that the ship sank. However, a week later, the Coast Guard reported that the ship was 45 miles from the crew's camp and was back in the ice. The Hudson Bay Company - the owner of the Baichimo - decided to leave it, as the ship was badly damaged. But "Baichimo" again freed from captivity and plowed the waters of the Bering Strait for another 38 years. The ship has been seen many times. The last meeting with him took place in 1969, near Alaska. In 2006, the Alaskan government launched a campaign to capture the vessel, but it was not crowned with success.
Orang Medan
Cargo ship. The course to follow is the Strait of Malacca. In 1948, two American ships immediately received the SOS signal. A man who identified himself as a member of the Orange Medan team asked for help - "everyone is dead, it will come for me" - that was the message. Then a strange noise appeared and the signal stopped. The ships moved to help. The crew was found on board: all in defensive postures, with expressions of horror on their faces. The temperature of the bodies was significantly increased, the team died 6-8 hours ago. While trying to tow the ship, a fire suddenly started on it, it cracked in half, an explosion thundered, and the ship sank.
A theory has been put forward that no Orang Medan exists, and that this is all a hoax, since such a ship was not listed in the Lloyd company, but there is a lot of evidence from relatives of the missing sailors that they were hired on this ship and disappeared … There is only one photograph left of the Orange Medan, taken by the wife of one of the crew members.
Lyubov Orlova
Soviet cruise ship built in 1976. Until 1999, it belonged to the Far Eastern Shipping Company, after which it was sold to the American cruise company Quark Expeditions, which in 2010 sold the ship for scrap for debts. As of February 22 of the year before last, the ship was in free drift in the Atlantic Ocean, without a crew and side lights. In January 2014, it was reported that a ship inhabited by cannibal rats could be washed off the coast of Ireland or Great Britain.
KZ-II
Australian catamaran yacht, crew went missing in mid-April 2007. The incident generated huge media interest, which compared the disappearance of the team to that of "Maria Celeste." There were 3 people on board. On April 18, 2007, a yacht freely sailing near the Great Barrier Reef was accidentally spotted by a coastal patrol flying over it. No crew members were found on the yacht. The yacht was fully operational, the engine was in working order, dining utensils were placed on the table, a laptop was working, all life jackets were in their places, the anchor was raised. There are three main versions of what happened: falling overboard due to a storm (the yacht slightly deviated from the original course and got into a bad weather strip), abduction on another unidentified vessel, the yacht ran aground, the crew went down,to push her, but she was blown away by a gust of wind.