Mystical disappearances of ships. Mysterious disappearances. Bermuda Triangle. Disappearance of the planes of the Avenger flight
Have you ever heard of mysterious cases during which passengers of planes and ships went missing? At best, people were found after a few days, and at worst, news of their fate never appeared again. No remains, no debris...
Sometimes a long-awaited vacation seems like a real fairy tale, from which you really don’t want to return home and to work, but be careful in your desires, because sometimes they turn into real disasters. Here is a list of the 10 most mysterious cases of mass disappearance of people.
10. Airplane Amelia Earhart (Amelia Earhart)
Our first point focuses on one of the most high-profile disappearance cases in American aviation history. In 1937, the brave Amelia Earhart set out to do something unimaginable - to circle the globe in her Lockheed Electra aircraft, starting from sunny Florida, and planning to follow the equator. In such a long and dangerous journey, the girl went with a partner - Fred Noonan (Fred Noonan). The ship disappeared, flying somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. All searches for the aircraft were unsuccessful, which gave rise to many different theories about what exactly happened to the brave couple of pilots.
In 2017, a version appeared that Amelia and Fred actually survived, but were captured by the Japanese military in the Marshall Islands. This assumption appeared thanks to an old photograph taken in 1937. The photograph showed a barge towing an unidentified aircraft. The frame also included a man of European appearance, reminiscent of Fred, and someone's female figure from the back. This version has not been confirmed in any way, but the most surprising thing is that even after almost 80 years, people are still trying to find an answer to the question of the fate of the travelers who disappeared so long ago and absolutely without a trace.
9. Ship "Madagascar"
In 1853, the Madagascar set off on its regular voyage from Melbourne to London. It was an ordinary ship carrying passengers and cargo. The ship disappeared without a trace, it was never seen again, and not even the wreckage was found! Like any other missing ship, Madagascar also attracted public attention. There are many theories about what exactly happened to this ship, but there is something special in this story - the events that took place right before the departure of the flight from the Australian port are of interest.
Before the disappearance of the ship, 110 passengers boarded it, and containers of rice and wool were loaded. However, the most valuable cargo was as much as 2 tons of gold. Three passengers were arrested just before sailing, and this incident led experts to believe that there could be many more criminals on board the ship than the police could have imagined. Perhaps at sea, the attackers decided to rob the Madagascar and killed all the passengers so as not to leave witnesses. However, this does not explain why investigators were never able to find the ship itself.
8. Stardust plane
In 1947, the Stardust, a British South American Airways aircraft, took off on schedule, flying across the famous Argentine Andes. A few minutes before disappearing from the radar, the pilot of the aircraft sent a strange message, encrypted in Morse code. The message read: "STENDEC". The disappearance of the plane and the mysterious code greatly puzzled the experts. The people even spread rumors about abduction by aliens. After 53 years, the mystery of the missing Stardust flight was finally solved.
In 2000, climbers discovered the wreckage of a plane and the bodies of several passengers on a remote peak of the freezing Andes at an altitude of almost 6565 meters. Investigators believe that the plane crash could have provoked a powerful avalanche that covered the body of the colossus and hid the traces of the rest of the victims, which is why they were never found. As for the mysterious word STENDEC, the most likely version is considered to be an error in the STR DEC code set, which means a common abbreviation for the phrase “starting descent” (I’m starting to descend).
7. Steam yacht "SY Aurora"
The history of the ship "SY Aurora" clearly demonstrates the power of such ships, but its ending still turned out to be rather tragic. A steam yacht is considered to be a sailboat with an additional primary or secondary steam engine. This yacht was originally built for whaling, but later it began to be used for scientific trips to Antarctica. A total of 5 such expeditions were made, and each time the vessel proved to be a reliable vehicle capable of withstanding the most severe weather and successfully protecting crew members from northern frosts. Nothing could break his power.
In 1917, "SY Aurora" disappeared while en route to the coast of Chile. The ship was carrying coal to South America, but it never managed to complete its mission and deliver the cargo to its destination. Historians believe that the yacht could have been a victim of the First World War. The wreckage of the ship was never found, so experts can only guess about the true reasons for the disappearance of the ship.
6. Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
Unlike several previous stories, this plane did not just crash and sink into oblivion ... Several crew members survived and went through a real nightmare until they were found by rescuers. In 1972, Flight 571 was en route from Argentina to Chile, carrying 40 passengers and 5 crew members. The charter was supposed to deliver a team of athletes, their relatives and sponsors to the city of Santiago. The aircraft disappeared from radar somewhere in the Argentine Andes. During the crash, 12 passengers died immediately, and the rest had to fight for survival for another 72 days in the most severe conditions, which are practically incompatible with life without special equipment. Although it would be more accurate to say that 72 days for most of them turned out to be too long ...
It is impossible to imagine how frightened all these people were. In the first days of the disaster, another 5 people died from cold and severe injuries. On one of the following days, a powerful avalanche covered a group of survivors, killing 8 more people. The freezing passengers were carrying a faulty walkie-talkie. She allowed to listen to the conversations of the rescuers, but could not transmit messages from the victims. So the people who survived after the plane crash found out that their search had been stopped, and the victims themselves were recognized as dead in absentia. This deprived them of almost their last hope, although the thirst for life is almost impossible to kill. Desperate and exhausted athletes and pilots were forced to eat the frozen bodies of their friends, and as a result, out of 45 people, only 16 survived. For 2 and a half months, these people were in real ice hell!
5. Submarine "USS Capelin"
This time we are not talking about a plane or a ship, but about a submarine. The submarine "USS Capelin" was on the account of the American army during the Second World War. On its first military voyage, the submarine sank a Japanese cargo ship, after which it was sent to the Australian coast for repairs and maintenance before the second mission. On November 17, 1943, the submarine left for its second mission and has not been seen since.
As far as experts know, the route of the ship ran through a real sea minefield, so the most likely version is connected with the explosion of a submarine. However, the wreckage of the USS Capelin was never found, so the version with mines will remain just a guess. When the warship set off on its last mission, it had 76 crew members on board, whose fate their relatives never learned about.
4. Flying Tiger Line Flight 739
In 1963, a Lockheed Constellation passenger aircraft was flying Flight 739. There were 96 passengers and 11 crew on board, all bound for the Philippines. Flying Tiger Line was the first American cargo and passenger airline to operate scheduled flights. After 2 hours of flight, communication with the pilots of the vessel was interrupted, and nothing more was heard from them. Probably, the crew did not have time to transmit any message, because the incident was too sudden, and the pilots simply did not have time to send a distress signal.
In the same area, a tanker of the American Oil Corporation was sailing that day. The crew of this ship claimed that its members saw a flash in the sky, and they immediately decided that it was an explosion. According to one theory, there was sabotage on board the disappeared plane, or they tried to hijack it, which led to the most tragic consequences. However, the wreckage has never been found, leaving investigators to wonder what really happened to Flying Tiger Line Flight 739.
3. The ship "SS Arctic"
In 1854, the American ship SS Arctic collided with a French steamship. After the impact, both ships remained afloat, but the incident still ended rather sadly. During this accident, almost 350 people died, and for some reason only men survived on board the American ship, and all the women and children died during the collision. In addition, the stricken SS Arctic continued on its way to shore but never made it.
As it turned out, the American ship was still too damaged to continue sailing safely, and it was because of this that it sank on the way to land. A monument was subsequently erected in Brooklyn in honor of those who died that day.
2. Malaysian Airlines Flight 370
In 2014, a Malaysian Airlines plane took off for Beijing with 239 people on board. An hour after takeoff, communication with this aircraft was lost, but no distress signal had been received before. Before the disappearance of Flight 370, the radar showed that the plane had strayed from its course - for some reason it was heading west instead of northeast.
After the airliner disappeared, numerous rescue teams were sent to search for it, which carefully combed the alleged crash site in the Indian Ocean. Only a small fragment was found. The search was also resumed in 2018, but again to no avail, despite all the efforts and funds expended. What exactly happened to this flight is still a big mystery.
1. Steamboat "SS Waratah"
Since November 2008, the steamer SS Waratah has started to carry out regular flights from England to Australia via South Africa. The ship could take on board up to 700 passengers and had a hundred first-class cabins. In July 2009, on the way back to Europe, the liner disappeared without a trace, and no one else saw it.
The last port in which the ship stood was in Durban, South Africa. After this stop, the ship was supposed to sail for Cape Town, but it never appeared there. Experts have found that the weather deteriorated during the journey from Durban to Cape Town, and they suggest that it was the storm that caused the alleged crash and mysterious disappearance of the SS Waratah.
The Bermuda Triangle is a large area of the Atlantic Ocean over one million square kilometers. Its borders are marked by Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico. Mysterious stories about this part of the ocean went back to the time of the Great geographical discoveries, when Columbus first reached the island archipelagos near America. For the past one hundred and fifty years, scientists have not taken their eyes off bermuda triangle, writing about all the strange events associated with him. Already more than two hundred ships and planes have disappeared near Bermuda, and every year their number increases. Today we will talk about some of the most unusual and mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle…
The disappearance of the Cyclops
The last radio signals from the USS Cyclops were heard from the Barbados area, where the ship was forced to stop unscheduled. Its final destination is Norfolk, but the Cyclops was not destined to sail there. After reports from the radio room, the ship simply disappeared without leaving a single trace. On board the ship were more than ten thousand tons of manganese ore, which, when the sinking of the Cyclops would definitely leave a mark in the sea.
Several ships were sent in search of the warship, but they could not find a single trace along the path of the Cyclops. For a long time there was an opinion that one of the German boats sank the ship, but no evidence was ever found. Among other things, not a single German military archive from the First World War has confirmed this hypothesis. Aggravated everything and that in a day the disappearance of the Cyclops there was complete calm and the warship simply could not go to the bottom on its own due to the "whims" of nature.
Already in 1969, a theory appeared according to which the ship sank due to improper loading, which the very next day was refuted by data from the archives of the port in Rio de Janeiro. To date the disappearance of the Cyclops still remains one of the most difficult mysteries in the history of the US Air Force. Even the top command recognized that it was easier to write everything off as the secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, since no one could find a single logical explanation.
The mystery of the frigate "Atlanta"
At the end of January 1880, the frigate Atlanta, in the service of the British Navy, was in the Bermuda region. There were almost three hundred sailors on board the ship, most of whom were just starting their service. The final destination of the Atlanta was Portsmouth, but the ship did not arrive at the port at the appointed time. After waiting a bit, the media began to sound the alarm, albeit discreetly, indicating that there were enough supplies in the holds of the ship for several more months of sailing. In the end, everyone understood that frigate "Atlanta" lost. For three months, the ships of the British fleet searched for the frigate, the place of its flooding, or some traces of a crew of three hundred people, but the search yielded no results.
Soon, however, "Atlanta" appeared in the port of Falmouth, but it was a completely different ship. On June 10, 1880, it was officially announced that the ship and all its crew were missing in the waters of the Bermuda Triangle, where eyewitnesses saw it for the last time. In the same day Frigate "Atlanta" was deleted from the lists of the British Navy.
Loss of US Navy Squadron 19
In 1945, on December 5, a squadron of five bombers of the " Evenge r", owned by the US Navy, flew as part of a training mission to the region over the Atlantic Ocean. The flight took off from Fort Lauderdale. Five planes, fourteen pilots. In one link, they went to the Bahamas at about three o'clock in the afternoon local time, but soon sent a message in which they claimed that the instruments had failed and that they had lost orientation - they did not know how to return to the coast. Latest signals from 19th Squadron, US Navy controllers were able to catch about nineteen hours, after which all traces of the aircraft disappeared.
More than forty ships and planes participated in the search mission, combing the huge perimeter from the plane's takeoff site to all possible crash sites based on weather conditions and the amount of fuel in the aircraft's tanks. However, nothing could be found. Moreover, during the rescue operation in bermuda triangle disappeared seaplane " Martin Mariner”, on board of which there were thirteen crew members.
The dead "Scorpio"
Atomic submarine "Scorpion"- one of the best American boats of that time with a crew of one hundred people disappeared in the spring of 1968 near the Azores. More than 3100 tons of displacement - a powerful submarine, which was considered almost invulnerable, simply disappeared at a depth of three kilometers. The submarine "Scorpion" did not return to the base in time, after which all the ships of the Atlantic Fleet were thrown in search.
The search was on for ten days, but submarine "Scorpion" was never found. The command declared her "presumably sunk" and withdrew the entire rescue mission. Six months later, a mangled hull of a submarine was found a hundred miles from where the Scorpion went missing. It was not possible to establish the causes of the accident or even the weapons that destroyed the submarine.
Ghost ships in the waters of the Bermuda Triangle
Often, it was not the ships themselves that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, but only their crew. These disappearances are even more mysterious, because the reasons for the loss of the team could not be explained in any of the cases.
In 1840, a drifting ship was found near the island of Nassau. ship "Rosalie". None of the crew was on board, except for the ship's living mascot, the canary. All supplies of water and food were safe and sound. Not a single lifeboat was launched.
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 earth's surface. The ocean is so little known that, according to Scientific American, less than 0.05% of the ocean floor has been mapped.
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. A crew that died in its entirety, 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 spaces of the 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 vessel. Requests were sent to all ports: to report possible contacts with Copenhagen. But the captains of only two ships responded to this call - the Norwegian and English ships. Both said that, while 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 vessel (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. A 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. The 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
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 was stuck in the Arctic ice, the unprepared crew froze to death - the discovered remains say that this happened quite quickly. It is assumed that some time later, Octavius was freed from the ice and drifted on the open sea with a dead crew. After an encounter with whalers in 1775, the ship was never seen again.
The English merchant ship Octavius was discovered 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 could be read. 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 the permission of the supreme authority of the belligerent state, used an armed vessel to capture enemy merchant ships, 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 also 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 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 ship (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.
There have been many cases in history when large and reliable ships disappeared into the seas and oceans without a trace. They simply disappeared without a trace and were never found again. Is it any wonder that a South Korean passenger liner just recently disappeared and no one can find it? Look how many ships have disappeared, even today no one knows where they all went.
Mysterious disappearances. Lost ships. Even today no one knows where they are now.
1. USS Wasp - the missing escort
In fact, there were several ships that were called USS Wasp, but the strangest was the Wasp, which disappeared in 1814. Built in 1813 for the war with England, the Wasp was a fast square-sail sloop with 22 guns and a crew of 170 men. Wasp participated in 13 successful operations. On September 22, 1814, the ship captured the British merchant brig Atalanta. As a rule, the Wasp crew simply burned enemy ships, but Atalanta was deemed too valuable to destroy. As a result, an order was received to escort Atalanta to the allied harbor, and Wasp set off towards the Caribbean Sea. He was never seen again.
2. SS Marine Sulfur Queen - a victim of the Bermuda Triangle
This vessel was a 160m tanker originally used to transport oil during World War II. The ship was later rebuilt to carry molten sulfur. Marine Sulfur Queen was in excellent condition. In February 1963, two days after leaving Texas with a cargo of sulfur, a conventional radio message was received from the ship saying that everything was in order. After that, the ship disappeared. Many assume that it just exploded, while others blame the "magic" of the Bermuda Triangle for the disappearance. The bodies of 39 crew members were not found, although a life jacket was found, and a piece of board with a piece of the inscription "arine SULPH".
3. USS Porpoise - killed in a typhoon
Built in the golden age of sailing, the Porpoise was originally known as the "hermaphrodite brig" because two different types of sail were used on its two masts. She was later converted to a traditional brigantine with square sails on both masts. At first, the ship was used to pursue pirates, and in 1838 it was sent on an exploratory expedition. The team managed to travel around the world and confirm the existence of Antarctica. After exploring a number of islands in the South Pacific, the Porpoise sailed from China in September 1854, after which no one heard from her. It is likely that the crew encountered a typhoon, but there is no evidence of this.
4. FV Andrea Gail - a victim of the "perfect storm"
The Andrea Gai fishing trawler was built in Florida in 1978 and subsequently acquired by a company in Massachusetts. With a crew of six, Andrea Gail sailed successfully for 13 years and disappeared on a voyage to Newfoundland. The Coast Guard launched a search, but could only find the ship's emergency beacon and a few pieces of wreckage. After a week of searching, the ship and its crew were declared missing. Andrea Gail is thought to have been doomed when a high-pressure front crashed into a massive area of low-pressure air, the nascent typhoon merged with the remnants of Hurricane Grace. This rare combination of three separate weather systems eventually became known as the "perfect storm". According to experts, Andrea Gail could collide with waves over 30 meters high.
5. SS Poet - the ship that did not send a distress signal
At first, this ship was called "Omar Bundy" and was used to transport troops during the Second World War. It was later used to transport steel. In 1979, the ship was purchased by the Hawaiian Eugenia Corporation of Hawaii, who named it "Poet". In 1979, a ship left Philadelphia for Port Said with a cargo of 13,500 tons of corn, but never made it to its destination. The last communication with the Poet happened just six hours after leaving the port of Philadelphia, when one of the crew members spoke to his wife. After that, the ship did not reach the scheduled 48-hour communication session, while the ship did not send a distress signal. Eugenia Corporation did not report the loss of the ship for six days, and the Coast Guard did not respond for another 5 days after that. No trace of the ship was ever found.
6. USS Conestoga - the missing minesweeper
USS Conestoga was built in 1917 as a minesweeper. After the end of the First World War, it was converted into a tugboat. In 1921, the ship was transferred to Samoa, where it was to become a floating station. March 25, 1921 the ship set sail, nothing more is known about it.
SourcePhoto 7Witchcraft - the pleasure boat that went missing at Christmas
In December 1967, Miami hotel owner Dan Burak decided to watch the city's Christmas lights from his personal luxury boat, the Witchcraft. Accompanied by his father Patrick Hogan, he went to sea for about 1.5 km. It is known that the boat was in perfect order. At about 9 pm, Burak requested a towing back to the pier by radio, saying that his boat had hit an unknown object. He confirmed his coordinates to the Coast Guard and specified that he would launch a flare. Rescuers got to the scene in 20 minutes, but Witchcraft disappeared. The Coast Guard combed over 3,100 square kilometers of the ocean, but neither Dan Burak, nor Patrick Hogan, nor Witchcraft were ever found.
8. USS Insurgent: the mysterious disappearance of a warship
The US Navy frigate "Insurgent" was captured by the Americans in a battle with the French in 1799. The ship served in the Caribbean, where it won many glorious victories. But on August 8, 1800, the ship sailed out of Virginia Hampton Roads and mysteriously disappeared.
9. SS Awahou: boats did not help
Built in 1912, the 44m Awahou cargo steamer went through many owners before eventually being bought by the Australian Carr Shipping & Trading Company. On September 8, 1952, the ship sailed from Sydney with a crew of 18 and sailed to the private island of Lord Howe. The ship was in good shape when it left Australia, but within 48 hours a fuzzy, "crunchy" radio signal was received from the ship. The speech was almost unintelligible, but it looked like Awahou was caught in bad weather. Although the ship had enough lifeboats for the entire crew, no signs of the wreck or bodies were found.
10. SS Baychimo - arctic ghost ship
Some call it a ghost ship, but the Baychimo was actually a real ship. Built in 1911, the Baychimo was a huge steam cargo ship owned by the Hudson's Bay Company. The ship was mainly used to transport fur from northern Canada. The first nine flights were relatively quiet. But during the last voyage of the ship, in 1931, winter came very early. Completely unprepared for bad weather, the ship was trapped in the ice. Most of the crew were rescued by plane, but the captain and a few Baychimo crew members decided to wait out the bad weather by camping on the ship. A severe snowstorm began, which completely hid the ship from sight. When the storm subsided, Baychimo disappeared. However, over the course of several decades, Baychimo has allegedly been seen drifting aimlessly in Arctic waters more than once.
Source
The mysterious Bermuda Triangle in the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico, is world famous for the disappearance of aircraft and ships in it. There are various hypotheses explaining these anomalies, up to the tricks of aliens and the inhabitants of Atlantis. Scientists, however, adhere to more prosaic explanations - for example, they point to the abundance of shallows in this area, as well as the frequent appearance of storms and cyclones, which causes problems with navigation.
For the first time, the Bermuda Triangle was talked about in the press in 1950, and it got its name from the filing of the writer Vincent Gaddis in 1964. Since then, there has been a fierce debate between skeptics and supporters of the existence of anomalous phenomena about the reasons for the disappearance of ships and aircraft in this region.
Research team from Southampton University in the UK found a new explanation for the disappearance of ships in the Bermuda Triangle. In their opinion, 30-meter "killer waves" are to blame for everything.
“There is no doubt that high waves are born in this area,” says oceanographer Simon Boxall, one of the team members. “They appear wherever there are several storms at the same time.”
Such waves are very steep and high, they look like a wall of water and appear unexpectedly, experts from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explain. For example, certain regions of South Africa are prone to them, where they are generated by storms coming from the Indian, Southern and Atlantic oceans. There have been similar disappearances of ships and planes over the years, Boxall said.
To test their guess, the researchers recreated models of some of the missing ships, and then simulated the movement of water in the Bermuda Triangle in a special container. It turned out that high waves are really capable of quickly sinking a ship, and the larger it is, the faster this happens. Small ships could get out on the crest of a wave, and large ones simply broke in two.
The researchers also commented on other hypotheses that could lead to the disappearance of ships, such as magnetic anomalies.
"They don't exist," Boxall explains briefly. Magnetic anomalies do exist and are associated with the movement of the Earth's mantle under the crust, but the nearest of them is more than 1500 km to the south, near Brazil.
Another theory is connected with accumulations of explosive gas hidden in air pockets under water. Due to the movement of water, it can rise up and flood the ship. However, according to Boxall, this has not yet been experimentally proven.
“Theoretically, this is possible, but there are many places in the world where this can happen,” he says. “Not just in the Bermuda Triangle.”
Boxall considers human error to be the most likely cause of the disappearance of ships and aircraft.
So, he cites the example of the disappearance of five American military aircraft in 1945 during a training mission - most likely, they simply ran out of fuel.
About a third of all registered and privately owned oceangoing vessels in the US are located in the states and islands near the Bermuda Triangle, he explains. At the same time, according to the Coast Guard, 82% of incidents in this territory occurred with people who did not have the skills to work in the ocean and did not undergo appropriate training.
“We take a third of all US ships and send them to the Bermuda Triangle - that's mystical disappearances for you,” Boxall throws up his hands.
In addition, not all ships have radios or navigation devices.
“Several times, while working at sea, we came across people who are guided by the road map. Some relied on their mobile phones for navigation and communication, but when you sail 50-60 kilometers from the coast, the signal is lost, ”says the scientist.
Changeable weather conditions also contribute - a sudden storm can confuse inexperienced sailors, or even completely flood the ship. Shoals represent an additional danger. So, being in the heart of a storm without the ability to align the course or call for help, unlucky sailors have every chance of dying.
“The Bermuda Triangle is expandable — it covers the entire globe,” says Boxall. “Waves are coming up everywhere, underwater pockets of dangerous gas are everywhere, and where amateurs with no experience are concentrated, we will get a lot of mysterious disappearances.”
