By Staff Writer: Jerri Clewis
Although the word ‘ghost’ implies something more supernatural, a ghost ship usually refers to an unmanned vessel at sea. This can occur for any number of reasons, from abandonment to foul play, but these ships captivate audiences because of the strange encounters the ships provide for sailors.
A good example of a famous ghost ship is the Baychimo, a steamer once based in the Western Arctic that has haunted the seas for decades. Originally named the Angermanelfven, the ship launched in 1914 as a trading vessel for German owners around the Baltic Sea, but it was traded away as part of war reparations negotiated at the Treaty of Versailles in 1920. The Hudson’s Bay Company later bought and renamed the ship to Baychimo.
Things went well for Baychimo until a trip back from Vancouver in 1931 when a blizzard struck at the Seahorse Islands, near Alaska’s northern coast. The captain chose to anchor and overwinter in the Arctic, always keeping a crew at hand to clear the ice around the ship, but another storm passed through in November. By the time the storm cleared, the Baychimo was gone, and the crew figured it had sunk.
An Inuk hunter later informed the sailors that the Baychimo was still at sea, and the crew soon discovered the ship nearly a hundred km away from the previous location, according to the Manitoba Museum. The crew boarded their ship once more, but they took everything they could this time. They abandoned the Baychimo for good, believing the ship would certainly sink from unseen damage incurred during its uncrewed sailing.
They were wrong.
In 1932, the Baychimo was sighted about 480 km (~298 miles) away from its previous location and again near the shore of Alaska in March. Sightings continued every few years, and some crews managed to board the ship. Captain Hugh Polson had bigger plans when he found the Baychimo in 1939. He boarded the ship and tried to salvage it, but the ice intervened, forcing him to withdraw. The Baychimo escaped again.
The Baychimo was last reported to have been seen frozen in an ice pack in 1969. The ship is now believed to be at the bottom of the sea, but the Baychimo has a long history of proving sailors wrong. With no wreckage found, the ship could still be out there, drifting along the seas without a crew of its own.
That may sound impossible in the modern day, but ghost ships continue to escape notice for years.
The Hugo Boss, an 18-meter monohull racing yacht, was abandoned by Alex Thomson during the 2006-08 Velux 5 Oceans race, a round-the-world single-handed yacht race, after losing the keel. The yacht then traveled more than 10,000 nautical miles over ten years before washing up on a beach in Patagonia, South America, according to Boat International. The MV Alta also became a ghost ship in 2018 until it later re-appeared in Ireland after running aground in 2020, completing a solitary journey from as far as Africa.
Sources:
https://manitobamuseum.ca/archives/35611 https://www.iriitxaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41073818.html https://boatwatch.org/flotsam-jetsam/abandoned-hugo-boss-yacht-found-in-patagonia-after-10-years/#:~:text=The%2018%20metre%20monohull%20racing,on%20the%20beach%20in%20Patagonia.