Incredible case with the ship starfish. The Incredible Case of the Indian Vessel "Starfish" Merchant Vessel Starfish
Ghost ships or phantoms that appear on the horizon and disappear, according to sailors, portend trouble. The same with the ships left by the crews. Mysterious circumstances and an unusual veil of eerie romance accompany these stories. The ocean hides its secrets, and we decided to recall all these legends - from the "Flying Dutchman" and "Mary Celeste", to lesser-known ghost ships. You may not have known about many of them.
The ocean is one of the largest and most unexplored regions of the Earth. In fact, the ocean covers up to 70% of the surface the globe. The ocean is so little known that, according to the Scientific American website, people have mapped less than 0.05% of the ocean floor.
In this scenario, all these stories do not seem so incredible. And there are a great many of them - stories about ships that are lost in the seas, and all these empty ships drifting without a purpose and a team on board ... They are called ghost ships. The crew who died in full force, or disappeared for unknown reasons ... there were many such finds. The mysterious circumstances of the death or disappearance of these teams, even today, with all the technological advances and research methods, remain mysterious. And the disappearance of people from the board still no one can explain. Why did the entire crew leave the ship, which is left to drift, and where did they all go? Storms, pirates, diseases...maybe sailed away on boats...somehow, many crews mysteriously disappeared without explanation. The sea knows how to keep secrets, and is reluctant to part with them. Many catastrophes that occurred in the open sea will remain a mystery to everyone.
15. "Ourang Medan" (Orang Medan, or Orange Medan)
This Dutch merchant ship became known as a ghost ship in the late 1940s. In 1947, the Orang Medan was shipwrecked in the Dutch East Indies, as an SOS signal was received by two American ships, the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star, sailing through the Strait of Malacca.
And the sailors of the two American ships received the SOS signal from the Orang Medan cargo ship. The signal was transmitted by a crew member who was extremely frightened and reported that the rest of his crew were dead. After that, the connection was interrupted. Arriving on the ship, the entire crew was found dead - the bodies of the sailors froze, as if in an attempt to defend themselves, but the source of the threat was never found.
An article written in the late 1960s by the US Coast Guard stated that no visible signs of damage were found on the bodies. The cargo ship was reportedly transporting sulfuric acid, which was packaged improperly. After the crew of the "Silver Star" quickly evacuated and the Americans left the ship, they expected to tow it to the shore. But a fire suddenly broke out on the ship, an explosion followed and the ship sank, which led to the final death of the merchant ship. The widow of one of the sailors who died on Ourang Medan has a photograph of the ship and crew.
14. "Copenhagen"
One of the maritime mysteries is the disappearance of one of the newest and most reliable ships of the 20th century, the five-masted Copenhagen, without a trace. In the entire history of the sailing fleet, only six ships similar to the Copenhagen were built, and she was the third largest in the world in the year of construction - in 1921. She was built for the Danish East Asiatic Company in Scotland - at the shipyard of Romaij and Fergusson in small town of Leith near Aberdeen. The hull was made of high-quality steel, there was a ship's own power station on board, all deck winches were equipped with electric drives, which significantly saved time on sailing, and even a ship's radio station. The double-deck steel "Copenhagen" was a training and production vessel that made regular voyages and carried cargo. The last radio communication session with Copenhagen took place on December 21, 1928. There was no reliable information about the fate of the huge sailboat and 61 people on board.
A reward was announced for anyone who could point to the location of the missing ship. Requests were sent to all ports: to report possible contacts with Copenhagen. But the captains of only two ships, the Norwegian and English ships, responded to this call. Both said that, passing the southern part of the Atlantic, they got in touch with the Danes, and that everything was in order. The East Asian Company sent out the Ducalien ship to search for the missing ship (but it returned empty-handed), and then the Mexico, which also found nothing. In 1929, in Copenhagen, a commission investigating the disappearance of the ship concluded that “a training sailing ship, the five-masted barque Copenhagen, with 61 people on board, died due to the action of irresistible forces of nature ... the ship was in distress so quickly that its crew was unable to broadcast the SOS distress signal or launch any lifeboats or rafts.”
At the end of 1932, in southwestern Africa, in the Namib Desert, one of the British expeditions discovered seven withered skeletons dressed in torn sea jackets. According to the structure of the skulls, the researchers determined that they were Europeans. According to the pattern on the copper buttons of the pea jackets, experts have established that they belong to the uniform of the cadets of the Danish merchant fleet. However, this time the owners of the East Asian Company had no doubts, because until 1932 only one Danish training ship, the Copenhagen, had crashed. And 25 years later, on October 8, 1959, the captain of the Straat Magelhes cargo ship from the Netherlands, Pete Agler, while near the southern coast of Africa, saw a sailing ship with five masts. It appeared out of nowhere, as if it had surfaced from the abyss of the ocean, and went straight at the Dutch with full sail... The crew managed to prevent a collision, after which the sailboat disappeared, but the crew managed to read the inscription on board the ghost ship - "København".
13. "Baychimo" ("Baychimo")
Baychimo was built in Sweden in 1911 by order of a German trading company. After the First World War, it was taken over by Great Britain and transported furs for the next fourteen years. In early October 1931, the weather deteriorated sharply, and a few miles from the coast near the city of Barrow, the ship got stuck in the ice. The team temporarily left the ship and found shelter on the mainland. A week later, the weather cleared up, the sailors returned on board and continued sailing, but already on October 15, Baychimo again fell into an ice trap.
This time it was impossible to get to the nearest city - the crew had to arrange a temporary shelter on the shore, far from the ship, and here they were forced to spend a whole month. In mid-November, a snowstorm broke out that lasted several days. And when the weather cleared up on November 24, Baychimo was not in the same place. The sailors thought the ship was lost in a storm, but a few days later a local seal hunter reported seeing Baychimo about 45 miles from their camp. The team found the ship, removed the precious cargo from it and left it forever.
The story of Baychimo did not end there. For the next 40 years, he was occasionally seen drifting along the northern coast of Canada. Attempts were made to get on board the ship, some were quite successful, but due to weather conditions and the poor condition of the hull, the ship was abandoned again. Baychimo was last seen in 1969, that is, 38 years after the crew left it - at that time the frozen ship was part of the ice massif. In 2006, the government of Alaska made an attempt to locate the "Ghost Ship of the Arctic", but in vain. Where is Baychimo now - whether it lies at the bottom or is unrecognizably overgrown with ice - a mystery.
12. Valencia
Valencia was built in 1882 by William Cramp and Sons. The steamboat was most often used on the California-Alaska route. In 1906, the Valencia sailed from San Francisco to Seattle. terrible disaster occurred on the night of January 21-22, 1906, when the Valencia was near Vancouver. The ship ran into reefs and received large holes through which water began to flow. The captain decided to run the ship aground. 6 out of 7 boats were launched, but they became victims of a powerful storm; only a few people managed to get to the shore and report the catastrophe. The rescue operation was unsuccessful and most of the crew and passengers died. According to official information, 136 people became victims of the shipwreck, according to unofficial information, even more - 181. 37 people survived.
In 1933 boat #5 was found near Barkley. Her condition was good, the boat retained most of its original paint. The lifeboat was found 27 years after the disaster! After that, local fishermen began to talk about the appearance of a ghost ship, which resembled the Valencia in outline.
11. Yacht SAYO; Manfred Fritz Bayorath
Drifting 40 miles from Barobo, the 12-meter yacht SAYO, which disappeared seven years ago, was discovered by Filipino fishermen. The boat's mast was broken, most of the saloon was filled with water. Climbing aboard, they saw a mummified body at the radiotelephone. From the photographs and documents found on board, it was quickly possible to establish the identity of the deceased. It turned out to be the owner of the yacht, a yachtsman from Germany, Manfred Fritz Bayorat. The mummification of Bayorat's body occurred under the influence of salt and high temperatures.
A drifting ship with the mummy of the captain, discovered off the coast of the Philippines, surprised many. German traveler Manfred Fritz Bayorath was an experienced sailor who traveled on this yacht for 20 years. Judging by the position in which the captain's mummy froze, in the last hours of his life he tried to contact the rescuers. The cause of his death is still a mystery.
10. Sleepwalker
In 2007, 70-year-old Jure Sterk from Slovenia went on a trip around the world in his Lunatic. To communicate with the shore, he used a radio assembled by himself, but on January 1, 2009, he stopped communicating. A month later, his boat washed up on the coast of Australia, but there was no one on board.
Those who saw the ship believe that it was about 1,000 nautical miles from the coast.
The sailboat was in excellent shape and appeared undamaged. There was no sign of Sterk being there. No note, no journal entry about the reasons for his disappearance. Although the last entry in the log is dated January 2, 2009. And at the end of April 2019, the Lunatic was spotted at sea by the crew of the Roger Revelle research vessel. It drifted about 500 miles off the coast of Australia. Its exact coordinates at that time were Latitude 32-18.0S, Longitude 091-07.0E.
9. "Flying Dutchman"
"Flying Dutchmen" refers to several different ghost ships from different centuries. One of them is the real owner of the brand. The one with whom trouble happened at the Cape of Good Hope.
This is a legendary sailing ghost ship that cannot land on the shore and is doomed to sail the seas forever. Usually people observe such a ship from afar, sometimes surrounded by a luminous halo. According to legend, when the Flying Dutchman meets with another ship, its crew tries to send messages to the shore for people who are no longer alive. In maritime beliefs, meeting with the "Flying Dutchman" was considered a bad omen.
Legend has it that in the 1700s, the Dutch captain Philip van Straaten was returning from the East Indies carrying a young couple on board. The captain liked the girl; he killed her betrothed, and made her an offer to become his wife, but the girl jumped overboard. When trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope, the ship got into a strong storm. The navigator offered to wait out the bad weather in some bay, but the captain shot him and several disgruntled ones, and then swore to his mother that none of the team would go ashore until they rounded the cape, even if it took forever. The captain, a foul-mouthed and blasphemer, brought a curse upon his ship. Now he, immortal, invulnerable, but unable to go ashore, is doomed to plow the waves of the oceans until the second coming.
The first printed mention of the "Flying Dutchman" appeared in 1795 in the book "Journey to Botany Bay".
8. "HiM 6"
This ghost ship was reported to have left a port in southern Taiwan on October 31, 2002. Subsequently, on January 8, 2003, this Indonesian fishing schooner Hi AM 6 was found drifting without a crew near New Zealand. Despite extensive searches, no trace of the 14 team members could be found. The captain reportedly last contacted the shipowner, Cai Huan Chue-er, in late 2002.
Oddly enough, the only crew member who showed up later reported that the captain had been killed. Whether there was a rebellion and its causes is unclear. Initially, the entire crew went missing, and when the ship was located, no one was found. According to the results of the investigation, there were no signs of distress or fire on the ship. However, it was said that this ship could carry illegal immigrants. Which doesn't explain anything either...
7 Ghost Galleon
The legends about this ship began in the late 1800s when it was built. The ship was going to be built from wood. Once at sea, among the ice, the wooden ship froze into part of the iceberg. In the end, the water began to warm up, the weather changed, it got warmer, and the iceberg sank the ship. The White Fleet searched for their ship throughout the winter, each time returning to port with nothing, under cover of fog. At some point, it got so warm that the ship thawed and separated from the iceberg, and rose to the surface, where it was discovered by the crew of the White Fleet. Unfortunately, the crew of the galleon died; the remains of the ship were towed to port.
6. "Octavius"
One of the first ghost ships, the Octavius became one because its crew froze to death in 1762, and the ship drifted for another 13 years with the dead on board. The captain tried to find a short way from China to England through the Northwest Passage (sea route through the Arctic Ocean), but the ship was covered with ice. Octavius left England for America in 1761. Trying to save time, the captain decided to follow the then unknown Northwest Passage, which was first successfully passed only in 1906. The ship is stuck in arctic ice, the unprepared team froze to death - the discovered remains say that this happened quickly enough. It is assumed that some time later, Octavius freed himself from the ice and with a dead crew drifted in the open sea. After an encounter with whalers in 1775, the ship was never seen again.
The English merchant ship Octavius was found drifting west of Greenland on October 11, 1775. A crew from the whaler Whaler Herald boarded and found the entire crew frozen to death. The captain's body was in his cabin, death caught at the time of writing in the logbook, he remained sitting at the table with a pen in his hand. There were three more stiff bodies in the cabin: a woman, a child wrapped in a blanket, and a sailor. The whaler's boarding party left Octavius in a hurry, taking only the logbook with them. Unfortunately, the document was so damaged by cold and water that only the first and last pages. The journal ended with an entry in 1762. This meant that the ship had been drifting with the dead on board for 13 years.
5. Corsair "Duc de Dantzig" (Duc de Dantzig)
This ship was launched in the early 1800s in Nantes, France, and soon became a corsair. Corsairs are private individuals who, with permission supreme power of the belligerent state used an armed ship to capture the merchant ships of the enemy, and sometimes even neutral powers. The same title is applied to the members of their teams. The concept of "corsair" in the narrow sense is used to characterize French and Ottoman captains and ships.
The corsair captured several ships, some were plundered, some were set free. After the capture of small ships, most often the corsair left the captured ships, sometimes setting fire to them. This ship mysteriously disappeared in 1812. Since then, he has become a legend. It is believed that shortly after the mysterious disappearance, this corsair could have been a cruiser in the Atlantic Ocean or possibly in the Caribbean. Rumor has it that a British frigate may have taken it. The Napoleonic "Gallego" reported the discovery of this ship, drifting at sea completely aimlessly, with the deck covered in blood and strewn with the corpses of the crew. However, there were no outward signs of damage to the vessel. The crew of the frigate allegedly found and took away the logbook, covered in the blood of the captain, and then set fire to this ship.
4. Schooner "Jenny"
The schooner Jenny, originally an English schooner, is said to have left port on the Isle of Wight in 1822 for the Antarctic regatta. The voyage was supposed to pass along the ice barrier in 1823, then it was planned to enter the ice in the southern waters, and reach the Drake Passage.
But a British schooner got stuck in the ice of the Drake Passage in 1823. And they discovered it only after 17 years: in 1840, a whaling ship called Hope stumbled upon it. The bodies of the members of the "Jenny" team were well preserved due to the low temperatures. The ship took its place in the history of ghost ships, and in 1862 was included in the list of Globus, a popular German geographical magazine of those times.
3. "Sea Bird" (Sea Bird)
Most of the "encounters" with ghost ships are pure fiction, but there were quite real stories. Losing a ship or a ship in the infinity of the oceans is not so difficult. And it's even easier to lose people.
In the 1750s Sea Bird was a trading brig commanded by John Huxham. A merchant ship ran aground in the Rhode Island area of Easton Beach. The crew disappeared to no one knows where - the ship was abandoned by them without any explanation, and the lifeboats were missing. It was reported that the ship was returning from a voyage from Honduras, carrying goods from the southern hemisphere to the northern, and was expected to arrive in the city of Newport. Upon further investigation, coffee was found boiling on the stove on the derelict ship... The only living creatures that were found on board were a cat and a dog. The crew mysteriously disappeared. A recount of the ship's history was recorded in Wilmington, Delaware and made the news of the Sunday Morning Star in 1885.
2. "Mary Celeste" (or Celeste)
The second most popular ghost ship after the Flying Dutchman is, however, unlike it, it really existed. "Amazon" (as the ship was first called) was notorious. The ship changed owners many times, the first captain died during the first voyage, then the ship was thrown aground during a storm, and finally, an enterprising American bought it. He renamed the "Amazon" to "Mary Celeste", believing that the new name would save the ship from trouble.
When the ship left the port of New York on November 7, 1872, there were 13 people on board: Captain Briggs, his wife, their daughter and 10 sailors. In 1872, a ship en route from New York to Genoa with a cargo of alcohol on board was discovered by the ship "Dei Grazia" without a single person on board. All the personal belongings of the crew were in their places, in the captain's cabin was his wife's jewelry box and her own sewing machine with unfinished sewing. True, the sextant and one of the boats disappeared, which suggests that the crew left the ship. The ship was in good condition, the holds were full of food, the cargo (the ship was carrying alcohol) was intact, but no trace of the crew was found. The fate of all crew members and passengers is completely shrouded in darkness. Subsequently, several impostors appeared and were exposed, posing as crew members and trying to cash in on the tragedy. Most often, the impostor pretended to be the cook of the ship.
The British Admiralty conducted a thorough investigation with a detailed examination of the vessel (including below the waterline, by divers) and a thorough interview of eyewitnesses. It is the materials of this investigation that are the main and most reliable source of information. Plausible explanations for what happened come down to the fact that the crew and passengers left the ship of their own free will, differing only in the interpretation of the reasons that prompted them to such a decision. There are many hypotheses, but they are all just assumptions.
1. Cruiser USS Salem (CA-139)
The cruiser USS Salem was laid down in July 1945 at Bethlehem Steel Company's Quincy Yard, launched in March 1947, and entered service on May 14, 1949. For ten years, the ship served as the flagship of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, and the Second Fleet in The USS Salem was decommissioned in 1959. She was retired from the Navy in 1990 and opened as a museum to the public in 1995. The USS Salem is now docked in Boston, Massachusetts at Quincy Harbor.
In Boston, one of the oldest cities in the United States, several frightening historic ships and buildings are on display. This ship, being an old warship, is a bunch of stories - from the dark sights of the war to the loss of life, if you get the opportunity to get there on a tour, you can experience the thrill and chills from all the ghosts of this ship. He's been nicknamed the "Sea Witch" and rumor has it that he's so creepy that you can feel the cold just by looking at pictures of him online.
On October 16, 1992, the Indian ship Starfish left Bombay heading for Malaysia. There were 10 tourists and 39 crew members on board. At first everything went well, but on the fifth day of the journey, a violent storm suddenly broke out. Radio communication was interrupted, and the last message from the ship was: “SOS! Drowning!" And soon the ship disappeared from all radars approaching the place of distress of the ships.When the storm subsided, five boats of the Indian Coast Guard went in search of the Starfish. For several days they examined the disaster area in detail, but they did not find any traces of the ship. In all official reports, it was noted that the "Starfish" tragically sank and all passengers and crew members died.
Exactly three years later, to the day - October 16, 1995, in the same place in front of the surprised fishermen, a ship appeared from nowhere. The nearby ships received a signal from him: “Everything is in order! SOS is cancelled! The storm has suddenly stopped!”
But no one heard any distress signal, and there were no storms in these places for more than a year!
The astonishment of the Coast Guard guards knew no bounds when they learned that the mysteriously materialized ship was the missing Starfish. On board, the passengers held a celebration in honor of their salvation. At first, they did not believe that their ship had been officially declared dead for three years. The captain considered the statement to be an inappropriate joke. According to him, they sent the last distress call no more than three hours ago, and the rest of the time they heroically fought the storm. One can imagine the horror of the members of the Starfish team when they finally realized that they had been deleted from life for three whole years!
Perhaps the incident described will seem unrealistic to some, but several other such cases are known. According to the magazine "Skeptical Inquirer", in 1995, under inexplicable circumstances, the Frenchwoman Louise Dupin, who lives in a small provincial town, disappeared. It was not possible to find her, and her relatives assumed the worst. But a year later, to the day, Louise unexpectedly returned. It took quite a long time to convince the unlucky "traveler" that her walk lasted a whole year.
It turned out that on that ill-fated day, Louise went shopping. It seemed a little strange to her that not a single person met along the way. Suddenly the sky was covered with clouds, a strong wind rose. The young woman became ill for a while, and then she discovered that she had lost her way. After wandering for about an hour, she finally went to the local shop, sincerely wondering why all the neighbors were looking at her so frightened...
Reports periodically appear in the press about people who mysteriously disappeared for one or another long period of time, and then appeared in the same place. Scientists have repeatedly made attempts to study these anomalous phenomena, but so far none of the research results have been published. Meanwhile, in various parts of the world, people continue to disappear in this way. There is even some regularity. Usually, before disappearing, people observed a sharp deterioration in the weather. Suddenly, a storm or hurricane began, heavy rain, it suddenly became very cold. Most of the missing felt a aching pain in their temples, their eyes darkened sharply. Apparently, it was at this moment that a fantastic time shift took place.
According to the calculations of the missing people, only two, maximum three hours passed.
Then they again found themselves in the same place where they were suddenly overtaken by a storm. One more nuance strikes. If a person believed that he wandered for an hour, then he was found a year later, and when the disappeared had two hours at his disposal, he was announced in real life two years later. It is noteworthy that the victims never met on their way, and their wrist or pocket watches stopped at the moment of disappearance and return, and then started walking again.
There are several hypotheses regarding these strange phenomena. According to one of them, people are abducted by aliens, who then explore them for a long time. But this version does not seem convincing ... Firstly, the "travelers" themselves do not remember anything about such experiments, and secondly, the similarity of such cases casts doubt on this.
More interesting, though controversial, is another point of view. Perhaps, in some places on the planet, powerful cosmic energy accumulates, sometimes breaking space-time relationships. A person who accidentally gets there at this moment finds himself, as it were, in a trap, out of time. But how he manages to return back is still not clear. Probably, the clue should be sought in the phenomenon of teleportation. In some ways, these two phenomena are identical.
Specialists dealing with the problem of the strange disappearance of people consider it necessary not only to study in detail the territories where such phenomena occurred, but also to examine the disappeared themselves. However, now this is hardly possible, because most scientists, despite eyewitness accounts, still do not believe in the gap in time...
In addition to the strange disappearances of people, there were cases of objects falling into invisible holes from which they could no longer be removed. Sometimes such an object appeared later in another part of the world. In his book Strange Mysteries of Time and Space, Harold T. Wilkins describes a case in which a man at sea accidentally dropped a knife overboard. At the same moment, his wife (who was at home) was horrified to see that the same knife fell from the ceiling in the kitchen and stuck into the table.
Items fall into holes between dimensions, but they also seem to come back out of them. Almost every object imaginable fell through holes: pieces of red meat, live fish, cookies, even alligators. A strange substance called "angel hair" is often spotted in places where UFOs have been. It is a thin, white fibrous material that falls from the sky in areas where flying saucers have been seen. Such objects simply arise from a clear, cloudless sky, when not even an aircraft is visible, which could be blamed for what happened.
Several mysterious regions are known on Earth, which seem to be in another world. In these areas the laws of nature have almost no effect.
One such place is Magnetic Hill near Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada. Cars, rubber balls, even water - everything rolls with ease ... up in this strange place. The forces acting on objects are not magnetic, because non-ferrous objects behave in the same way as those made of this metal. On Magnetic Hill, the forces of gravity act, as it were, exactly the opposite.
Another strange place where things are behaving differently than usual is the Oregon sinkhole along Sardine Creek near Grant Gorge in Oregon. The Oregon sinkhole has a diameter of about 55 meters. Strange forces pull people and other bodies into the center of the funnel, so you have to deviate from the center to keep your balance. Objects even roll uphill on an inclined plane towards the center of the funnel.
Scientific instruments confirm the presence of the force, but scientists have not yet been able to explain its origin.
The strange forces at work on Magnetic Hill and in the Oregon sinkhole can be witnessed by anyone. However, there may be similar strange places on Earth that affect only some susceptible people. For example, American researcher Brad Steiger in Mysterious Disappearances describes a person with the supernatural ability to pass through doors to other dimensions. Some of these doors lead to gloomy, lifeless places, without sound and movement, others - to the past or future of our world.
If such holes in time and space really exist, then a person cannot reconcile himself and just watch how objects disappear into them. Let us hope that our knowledge will someday advance to such an extent that it will be possible to understand the nature of these phenomena.
However, it suddenly turned out that one of the members of the Leichardt expedition, Adolf Klassen, lives near the Mulligan River. This was told by Andre Hum, who wandered from place to place and once met Klassen. But Hum knew nothing about the missing expedition and did not question Klassen about it. With the support of public organizations Hum decided to visit those places again, but at that time there was a severe drought, and the tramp died. Many years passed before Huma's words were confirmed. It turned out that Klassen really lived for more than 30 years near the Mulligan River in the village of dark-skinned aborigines. They killed Klassen while trying to escape, he wanted to join a group of white people who were nearby. Thus disappeared the last opportunity to learn anything about the fate of Leichardt and his companions.
In the 20th century, already 150 years after the disappearance of the expedition, Matthias Zack, a forester, arrived in Darwin and reported that he had found several rock paintings in one of the caves. They depicted a white man and an animal. The drawings were made by a native. Matthias photographed what he saw. It was decided to go to this cave. However, shortly before the departure of the expedition, the forester suddenly disappeared.
The fate of Ludwig Leichardt's expedition remains a mystery to this day.
Missing Starfish
The ship "Starfish", sailing under the Indian flag, on October 16, 1992 followed the course from Bombay to Malaysia. It carried 49 people: 10 passengers and 39 sailors. For five days, the Starfish sailed safely to its destination. Then suddenly a storm arose, and SOS signals followed from the ship. Vessels that were nearby began to approach the ship giving distress signals. But after a while, the radars stopped detecting the signals of the Starfish. When the storm subsided, a search was organized for the ship. Rescue boats conducted a thorough search for several days. But there were no traces of the Starfish, not a single piece of debris, not a single object from the missing ship was found. The search was stopped. It was officially announced that the entire crew, along with the ship, died during the storm.
3 years later, on the same day - October 16 - "Starfish" appeared in the same place from which it disappeared. This time the sea was calm and there were fishing boats in it. Amazed fishermen and coast guards saw the inscription on the ship: "Starfish". Immediately, a signal followed from the ship: “We are all right! The storm is over!" However, the last storm in this place was observed more than a year ago, and no one heard the SOS signal. And the people on the Starfish were already celebrating their salvation. When they were informed that they had been considered dead for 3 years already, the crew took it as a joke. According to them, they were in the storm zone all this time. And the captain of the ship sent a distress signal only 3 hours ago. People were horrified when they realized that they had been in non-existence for 3 years.
Similar cases of disappearance, and then the appearance, however, of individuals occurred both before and after the story with the Starfish.
Attempts have been made to explain this mystical time shift. The most common was the version of the abduction of people by space aliens. Another version of the explanation boiled down to the fact that in certain places on the globe there are certain forces that break the spatio-temporal patterns. People (as well as objects) entering such areas fall out of real time. They seem to move into another world, and then reappear in the present time. At the same time, if a person was absent in our dimension for 3 years, then only 3 hours have passed for him; if the year, then, respectively, the hour. In such anomalous places, for example, in Magnetic Hill in New Brunswick, Canada, or in the Oregon sinkhole near Grant Gorge, the presence of such forces was recorded using scientific instruments. However, no one has yet been able to explain their nature.
Norfolk Regiment
The Norfolk Regiment, one of the divisions of the British Army, traces its history back to 1881. Then it included militias and volunteers. Even earlier, in 1685, the regiment was known as the 9th Infantry. It was commanded by Colonel Henry Cornwell. During the First World War, the regiment consisted of 6 battalions: 2 regular, one reserve and 3 battalions belonged to the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.
The Norfolk Regiment attacked the Turkish positions on the Gallipoli peninsula. On August 7, 1915, the 1/4 and 1/5 battalions of the regiment, commanded by Captain Montgomery and Colonel Sir Horace Bosch, first landed in Suvla Bay, and then began to advance on the village of Anafarta. Their opponent was the military units of the 36th Turkish division, commanded by Major Munib-Bey.
Several days passed in intense fighting. On August 12, the 1/5 Battalion Volunteer Company was ordered to take Hill 60. 267 men took part in this battle under the command of Colonel Bosham and Captain Frank Reginald Beck. What happened next is shrouded in mystery. Those who watched what was happening said that when the soldiers of the Norfolk regiment walked along the dell, a cloud appeared that looked like fog. For some time it hid the Norfolk, and when the cloud moved a little further, the soldiers disappeared.
Eyewitnesses of those events claim that the cloud that swallowed the soldiers was not like the usual one. It seemed to be made of solid matter. In addition, there were 6 or more of the same clouds next to it. Shortly after the soldiers disappeared, all the clouds began to move towards Bulgaria, and then disappeared from view.
In 1918, the British government accused Turkey of the death of their regiment. The Turkish government, in turn, stated that they had not even heard of the existence of Norfolk. Then several hypotheses arose as to how the Norfolk Regiment disappeared. It has been suggested that the cloud that covered the soldiers was actually nothing more than alien ship. It was they who were kidnapped by English soldiers. Other explanations are based on the assumption that the British somehow ended up in another time or space dimension.
There is also a realistic version. On it, the soldiers of the Norfolk Regiment were killed by the Turks. This fact has been confirmed. So, in 1918, after the end of the First World War, an investigation was carried out. A military headgear worn by the Norfolk was found on the battlefield. It turned out that the owner of the farm, located just in the place where the battle was going on, returned to find many corpses of British soldiers. Many of them showed signs of decay, and he threw the Norfolks into a gorge near the farm.
Vessel "Starfish" At the beginning of 1996, Indian newspapers published a message about the appearance in the Indian Ocean of the "Starfish", which disappeared without a trace here about three years ago. In 1992, on October 16, a large ship "Starfish", owned by the Indian fleet, left the port of Bombay for Malaysia. On board were 39 crew members and 10 tourists. The journey passed without incident, but on the fifth day of the journey a storm broke out. Radio communication with the Sea Star was interrupted, but before this happened, an SOS signal was broadcast from her board. The ships that immediately went to the rescue did not find those in distress, the Starfish disappeared from their radar installations. After the storm subsided, five coast guard boats were sent to search for the ship, which methodically combed the water area of the alleged tragedy for three days, but it ended to no avail.
No traces of the catastrophe were found. Since then, all official documents have stated: "Starfish" died, not a single person on board was saved. Three years later, on October 16, 1995, in the same area, out of nowhere, in front of the astonished fishermen from a small boat, a ship appeared. It broadcast: "It's all right!
SOS is cancelled. The storm suddenly died down. "The radio operators who received this message were discouraged - there was no storm and no distress signals in the area. Everything cleared up after representatives of the coast guard boarded an unknown vessel.
It turned out to be the missing Starfish. Her crew and tourists were very excited and rejoiced at the rescue from the hurricane. Coast Guard officials told those aboard the Starfish about the disappearance of their ship three years ago. However, this message was taken as a joke.
"What three years? We broadcast the distress signal two hours ago," the captain was amazed. Then the people, who miraculously got out of the trap, began, excitedly, to tell the military sailors about how their ship resisted the hurricane for more than two hours, and then everything suddenly calmed down. The Starfish was then escorted to Bombay to investigate an incredible incident. The results have not been published yet...
