Antonio Gracio's ship fact or fiction. The most famous cases of missing ships in the Bermuda Triangle (7 photos)

The Bermuda Triangle - an area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded by Florida and Bermuda, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas - is famous for the mysterious, mystical disappearances of ships and aircraft. For many years, it has brought real horror to the world's population - after all, stories about inexplicable disasters and ghost ships are on everyone's lips.

Numerous researchers are trying to explain the Bermuda Triangle anomaly. These are mainly theories of ship abductions by aliens from outer space or inhabitants of Atlantis, movement through holes in time or faults in space and other paranormal reasons. None of these hypotheses have yet been confirmed.

Opponents of the “otherworldly” versions argue that reports of mysterious events in the Bermuda Triangle are greatly exaggerated. Ships and aircraft disappear in other areas of the globe, sometimes without a trace. A radio malfunction or the suddenness of the disaster may prevent the crew from transmitting a distress signal.

In addition, searching for debris at sea is a very difficult task. Also, the Bermuda Triangle area is very difficult to navigate: there are a large number of shoals, and cyclones and storms often form.

A hypothesis has been proposed to explain the sudden death of ships and aircraft by gas emissions - for example, as a result of the disintegration of methane hydrate at the bottom of the sea, when the density is so low that the ships cannot stay afloat. Some suggest that methane rising into the air could also cause plane crashes - for example, due to a decrease in air density.

It was suggested that the cause of the death of some ships, including in the Bermuda Triangle, could be so-called wandering waves, which can reach a height of 30 meters. It is also believed that infrasound may be generated at sea, which affects the crew of a ship or aircraft, causing panic, causing people to abandon the ship.

Let's consider the natural features of this region - truly extremely interesting and unusual.

The area of ​​the Bermuda Triangle is just over a million square kilometers. There are huge shallows and deep-sea trenches, a shelf with shallow banks, a continental slope, marginal and median plateaus, deep straits, abyssal plains, deep-sea trenches, a complex system of sea currents and intricate atmospheric circulation.

There are several seamounts and hills in the Bermuda Triangle. The mountains are covered with powerful coral reefs. Some seamounts rise alone on the ocean floor, while others form groups. In the Atlantic Ocean, by the way, there are significantly fewer of them than in the Pacific.

Here is the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean. Its depth is 8742 meters.

Under the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle there are mainly sedimentary rocks - limestones, sandstones, clays. The thickness of their layer ranges from 1-2 to 5-6 kilometers.

The smaller (southern) part of the triangle belongs to the tropical seas, the larger (northern) to the subtropical. The water temperature on the surface here ranges from 22 to 26 ° C, but in shallow water, and so

in bays and lagoons it can be significantly higher. The salinity of the waters is only slightly above average - except, again, in shallow waters, bays and lagoons, where salinity can increase. The waters here are noticeably warmer than in other parts of the ocean at the same latitudes, since this is where the warm Gulf Stream flows.

The current in the Bermuda Triangle is fast, complicating or slowing down the movement of ships sailing against it; it pulsates, changes speed and location, and the changes are absolutely impossible to predict; it creates irregular vortices that affect the weather, some of them of considerable strength. There is frequent fog at the border between its warm waters and the colder surrounding waters.

The trade winds blow over the triangle - constant winds blowing in the Northern Hemisphere in a south-westerly direction, at an altitude of up to 3 kilometers. At high altitudes, anti-trade winds blow in the opposite direction.

In the southern part of the triangle, roughly between Florida and the Bahamas, there are approximately 60 storm days per year. In fact, every fifth or sixth day there is a storm. If you move north, towards Bermuda, the number of stormy days per year increases, that is, there is a storm every fourth day. Destructive cyclones, hurricanes, and tornadoes are very frequent.

All this contributes to the fact that many ships and aircraft disappear in the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe the reason is not so mystical? But this cannot be said with certainty, since many unexplained mysteries remain.

A LOT of ships and even planes disappear in the Bermuda Triangle, although the weather is almost always good at the time of the disaster. Ships and planes die suddenly, crews do not report problems, and no distress signals are sent. The wreckage of aircraft and ships is usually not found, although intensive searches are carried out, with the involvement of all relevant services.

The Bermuda Triangle is often credited with disasters that actually happened far beyond its borders. We have selected the most famous confirmed victims of the Bermuda Triangle among ships.

"Rosalie"
In August 1840, near the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau, the French ship Rosalie was discovered drifting with sails raised without a crew. The ship had no damage and was quite seaworthy. It looked as if the team had left Rosalie hours ago.

"Atalanta"
On January 31, 1880, the British training sailing ship Atalanta departed from Bermuda, carrying 290 officers and cadets. On the way to England it disappeared, leaving no trace.


"Atalanta"

This case was in the center of public attention, the Times wrote about it daily, even many months after the disappearance of the sailboat.

The Times (London), April 20, 1880, p. 12: “The Avon gunboat arrived in Portsmouth yesterday.” The captain reported that near the Azores he noticed a huge amount of floating debris... The sea was literally teeming with them. The harbor of Faial Island was filled with ships that had lost their masts. And during the entire five days that the Avon remained in the Fayal roadstead, the wreckage became more and more numerous.

However, there was no evidence that any ship sank or was broken up by a storm... Some of the Avon's officers believe that the Atalanta may have struck an iceberg, but they categorically deny that the ship could have capsized."
Lawrence D. Cousche published in his book excerpts from newspaper articles, official reports from the British Admiralty, and even the testimony of two sailors, according to which the Atalanta was a very unstable ship and, with its 109 tons of water and 43 tons of ballast on board, could easily capsize and drown even during a mild storm.

It was rumored that there were only two more or less experienced officers in the crew, who were forced to remain in Barbados because they fell ill with yellow fever. Consequently, 288 inexperienced sailors sailed on the ship.

Analysis of meteorological data confirmed that severe storms had been raging in the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda and Europe since early February. Perhaps the ship sank somewhere very far from the Bermuda Triangle, since out of the 3,000 miles of travel that awaited it, only 500 passed through the “triangle.” And yet, Atalanta is considered one of the confirmed victims of the “triangle”.

Unidentified abandoned schooner
In 1881, the English ship Ellen Austin encountered an abandoned schooner in the open ocean, which had fully retained its seaworthiness and was only slightly damaged. Several sailors boarded the schooner, and both ships headed for St. John's, located on the island of Newfoundland.

Soon the fog fell and the ships lost sight of each other. A few days later they met again, and again there was not a single living soul on the schooner. The captain of the Ellen Austin wanted to land another small rescue crew on the schooner, but the sailors categorically refused, claiming that the schooner was cursed.

This story has two sequels with different versions. In the first version, the captain of the Ellen Austin tried to transfer another rescue crew onto the schooner, but the sailors did not want to take any more risks, and the schooner was left in the ocean.

According to another version, the second rescue crew was nevertheless transferred to the schooner, but then a squall hit, the ships dispersed a considerable distance from each other, and neither the schooner nor its second crew was ever seen again.

Joshua Slocum and his yacht
Joshua Slocum, who was the first in the history of mankind to sail around the globe alone, disappeared without a trace in November 1909, making a relatively short journey from the island of Martha's Vineyard to the shores of South America - through the Bermuda Triangle.

Sailing yacht "Spray"

On November 14, 1909, he left the island of Martha's Vineyard and from that day there was no news of him. In the opinion of those who knew Captain Slocum, he was too good a sailor, and the Spray too good a yacht, for them to be unable to cope with any of the usual difficulties that the ocean can throw at them.

No one knows for sure what happened to him, although there was no shortage of guesses and versions. There are “reliable” testimonies of some sailors who, even after the fateful date, saw Slocum alive and unharmed in various ports of the world.

Over the years, many hypotheses have been proposed to explain its disappearance. After all, there might have been a hurricane so powerful that it sank his yacht. The "spray" could burn. He could go down if he collided with some ship at night.

In coastal waters, a collision between a small boat and a large ship is not that uncommon. The lights on a sailing yacht are usually quite dim, sometimes not visible due to its own sails. A large vessel could easily shatter a 37-foot floor without anyone even feeling a shock.

Edward Rowe Snow, in his book “Mysterious Events Off the Coast of New England,” claims that a mail steamer with a displacement of about 500 tons ran into the yacht. Even the court, which examined a variety of evidence, was involved in Slocum’s “case.” According to the testimony of Victor Slocum's son, his father was in excellent shape, and the yacht was practically unsinkable.

It was even suggested, unconditionally accepted by some “experts,” that Joshua Slocum was allegedly not happy in his marriage and therefore staged a disaster in order to hide and spend the rest of his days in solitude.

March 1918 "Cyclops"
On March 4, 1918, the cargo ship Cyclops with a displacement of 19,600 tons departed from the island of Barbados, carrying 309 people and a cargo of manganese ore. The ship was 180 meters long and was one of the largest in the US Navy.

"Cyclops" on the Hudson River, 1911

It was headed to Baltimore, but never arrived there. It never sent an SOS signal and left no trace. At first it was assumed that the ship could have been torpedoed by a German submarine, but at that time there were no German submarines there. According to another version, the ship hit a mine. However, there were no minefields here either.

The US Department of the Navy, after a thorough investigation, released a statement: “The disappearance of the Cyclops is one of the largest and most intractable cases in the annals of the Navy. Even the exact location of the disaster has not been established, the causes of the disaster are unknown, and not the slightest trace of the ship has been found.

None of the proposed versions of the disaster provides a satisfactory explanation of the circumstances under which it disappeared.” President Woodrow Wilson said that “only God and the sea know what happened to the ship.” And one magazine wrote an article about how a huge squid emerged from the sea waters and carried the ship into the depths of the sea.

In 1968, Navy diver Dean Haves, part of a team searching for the missing nuclear submarine Scorpion, discovered the wreck of a ship at a depth of 60 meters, 100 kilometers east of Norfolk. Later looking at a photograph of the Cyclops, he assured that it was this ship that lay at the bottom.

“Cyclops” still appears on the pages of print and not only as one of the characters in the Legend of the Bermuda Triangle. It was the first major ship equipped with a radio transmitter to disappear without sending an SOS signal, and the largest US Navy vessel to disappear without leaving any trace.

Every year, in March, when the next anniversary of his disappearance is celebrated, articles about this mysterious event are written again, old theories are updated and new theories are put forward, and, probably for the hundredth time, the already famous photograph of the “Cyclops” is published. His disappearance continues to this day, not without reason, to be called “the most insoluble mystery in the annals of the navy.”

"Carroll A. Deering"
The five-masted schooner Carroll A. Deering was discovered in January 1921 on Diamond Shoals. She had no damage, the sails were raised, there was food on the tables, but there was not a single living soul on board, except for two cats.

The Deering crew consisted of 12 people. None of them were found, and it is still unknown what happened to them. On June 21, 1921, a bottle with a note was caught in the sea, which presumably could have been thrown by one of the crew members:

“We are prisoners, we are in the hold and handcuffed. Report this to the company board as soon as possible.”
Passions flared up even more when the captain's wife allegedly recognized the handwriting of the ship's mechanic Henry Bates, and graphologists confirmed the identity of the handwriting on the note and on his papers. But after some time it was discovered that the note was forged, and the author himself even admitted this.

The forensic investigation, however, revealed important facts: on January 29, the schooner passed the lighthouse at Cape Lookout, North Carolina, and gave signals that it was in a dangerous position, having lost both ship's anchors.

Then the schooner was seen north of the lighthouse from another ship, and it behaved rather strangely. Weather reports for early February indicate a severe storm off the coast of North Carolina with winds reaching 80 mph.

"Cotopaxi"
On November 29, 1925, the Cotopaxi left Charleston with a cargo of coal and headed for Havana. Passing through the center of the Bermuda Triangle, it disappeared without leaving the slightest trace and without having time to send an SOS signal. Neither the wreckage of the ship nor the crew were found.

"Suduffco"
The cargo ship "Suduffco" left Port Newark, New Jersey, and, heading south, disappeared without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle. A company spokesman said it disappeared as if swallowed by a giant sea monster.

The ship sailed from Port Newark on March 13, 1926, heading for the Panama Canal. His port of destination was Los Angeles. It carried a crew of 29 and a cargo weighing approximately 4,000 tons, including a large shipment of steel pipes.

The ship moved along the coast, but already on the second day after sailing, contact with it was lost. The search for the vessel continued for a month, but not the slightest trace was found. True, meteorological reports and testimony from the captain of the Aquitaine liner, which was heading the same course towards the Suduffco, confirm that a tropical cyclone passed through this area on March 14-15.

"John & Mary"
In April 1932, 50 miles south of Bermuda, the Greek schooner Embyrkos discovered the two-masted ship John and Mary. The ship was abandoned, its crew mysteriously disappeared.

"Proteus" and "Nereus"
"Proteus"

At the end of November 1941, the Proteus sailed from the Virgin Islands, followed by the Nereus a few weeks later. Both ships were heading to Norfolk, but neither of them arrived at their destination, both disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The US was preoccupied with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war on Japan, so the disappearance of the ships did not cause a response. A post-war study of the German naval archives showed that the Proteus and Nereus could not have been sunk by submarines.

"Rubicon"
On October 22, 1944, a ship without a crew was discovered off the coast of Florida. The only living creature on board was a dog. The ship was in excellent condition, except for the missing lifeboats and a broken tow rope hanging from the bow of the ship.

Personal belongings of the crew members also remained on board. The last entry in the ship's log was made on September 26, when the ship was still in the port of Havana. The Rubicon apparently sailed along the coast of Cuba.

"City Bell"
On December 5, 1946, a schooner without a crew was discovered at sea. She followed a course from the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau, to one of the islands of the archipelago - Grand Turk. Everything was in order on the ship, the lifeboats were in their places, only the crew disappeared without a trace.

"Sandra"
In June 1950, the 120-meter cargo ship Sandra, loaded with 300 tons of insecticides, left Savannah (Georgia) for Puerto Cabello (Venezuela) and disappeared without a trace. The search operation began only after it was established that he was six days late to his place of arrival.

By the way, an article about this case, written by journalist E. Jones and published on September 16, 1950, aroused great interest in the Bermuda Triangle. Jones noted that the Sandra is not the only ship that has disappeared here. The legend of the deadly triangle began to spread with incredible speed.

"Southern District"
In December 1954, the tank landing ship Southern District, converted into a cargo ship for transporting sulfur, disappeared in the Straits of Florida. No distress signals were detected either by ships at sea or by coastal stations. Only a life preserver was found.

The Southern District vessel, displacing 3,337 tons, was sailing from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, with a cargo of sulfur to Bucksport, Maine. The destination was Portland.

The captain made contact on December 3 and then on December 5, already off the coast of Florida. Everything was in order on the ship. On December 7 he was seen in storm surges off Charleston.

The investigative commission found that the ship apparently sank in a northeast wind. In the area where the Gulf Stream dominates, this wind has a bad reputation because it blows directly against the current, turning the Gulf Stream into a turbulent, bubbling current, and even large ships are in a hurry to get out of its path.

"Snow Boy"
In July 1963, a 20-meter fishing vessel disappeared while sailing from Kingston, Jamaica, to the Pedro Keys in clear weather. There were forty people on the ship, no one heard anything more about them. It was reported that wreckage of the ship and items belonging to crew members were found.

"Whichcraft"
A mysterious disappearance occurred during the Christmas holidays of 1967. Two people on a small yacht left Miami Beach for a walk along the coast. They say they wanted to admire the festive illumination of the city from the sea.

Soon they reported on the radio that they had encountered a reef and damaged the propeller, they were not in danger, but they asked to be towed to the pier, and indicated their coordinates: at buoy No. 7.

A rescue boat arrived at the site 15 minutes later but did not find anyone. An alarm was declared, but the search did not yield any results; neither people, nor the yacht, nor the wreckage were found - everything disappeared without a trace.

"El Carib"
On October 15, 1971, the captain of the cargo ship El Carib, sailing from Colombia to the Dominican Republic, announced that they would arrive at their destination port at 7 a.m. the next day. After this, the ship disappeared. It was a fairly large cargo ship, the flagship of the Dominican merchant fleet, its length was 113 meters.

The ship was heading to the port of Santo Domingo with a crew of thirty people. It was equipped with an automatic alarm system, which in the event of an accident automatically sends a distress signal over the air. Judging by the latest report, the ship was in the Caribbean Sea at the time of its disappearance, at a considerable distance from Santo Domingo.

The second most popular ghost ship after the Flying Dutchman - however, unlike it, it really existed. “Amazon” (as the ship was originally called) was notorious. The ship changed owners many times, the first captain died during the first voyage, then the ship ran aground during a storm, and finally it was bought by an enterprising American. He renamed the Amazon the Mary Celeste, believing that the new name would save the ship from trouble.

In 1872, a ship traveling from New York to Genoa with a cargo of alcohol on board was discovered by the Dei Grazia without a single person on board. All the personal belongings of the crew were in their places; in the captain’s cabin there was a box with his wife’s jewelry and her own sewing machine with unfinished sewing. True, the sextant and one of the boats disappeared, which suggests that the crew abandoned the ship.

"Lady Lovibond"

According to legend, the ship's captain, Simon Reed, contrary to naval beliefs, took a woman, his young wife, on board the ship. According to one version, his assistant was secretly in love with the young Mrs. Reed and at night steered the ship onto a sandbank. According to another, the crew members coveted the charms of the captain’s wife and, having hanged him, raped the woman and drank for three days. As a result, the ship crashed. One way or another, the woman was to blame.

Exactly fifty years after the sinking of the Lady Lovibond, several crews of merchant ships claimed to have seen the Lady at the wreck site. Boats were sent there, but rescuers were unable to find anyone.

"Octavius"

One of the first ghost ships. The Octavius ​​became such because its crew froze to death in 1762 (at least the last entry in the logbook is dated that year), and the ship drifted for another 13 years and ended its voyage with the dead on board. The captain tried to find a shortcut from China to England through the Northwest Passage (a sea route through the Arctic Ocean), but the ship was covered in ice.

"Beichimo"

The cargo ship was built in 1911 and transported hides to northwest Canada. In 1931, the ship got stuck in ice during its next voyage. Only a week later the ice broke under the weight of the ship, and the voyage continued. However, 8 days later, history repeated itself. The crew went ashore, planning to wait for the thaw. But the next day the ship disappeared. The crew decided that the ship had sunk, but the coast guard reported that they saw the “Baichimo” 60 kilometers from the coast in the ice. The owner company decided to abandon the ship, as it was badly damaged, but it again escaped from captivity in the ice and plied the Bering Strait for another 38 years. In 2006, the Alaska government launched a campaign to capture "Baychimo", but the search was unsuccessful.

"Carroll A. Dearing"

An American five-masted cargo schooner was abandoned by its crew under unknown circumstances off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina (USA). The ship was returning from Rio de Janeiro, where it was transporting coal.

On January 9, 1921, the schooner left Barbados, where it made an intermediate stop. After that, a few days later she was seen in the area of ​​the Bahamas, then in Cape Canaveral, and on January 31 she was found stranded off Cape Hatteral. There was not a single person on the ship. There were no rescue boats, but food was prepared in the galley. Rescuers also found a gray cat on the deck, which they took with them.

"Urang Medan"

In June 1947, the Silver Star received a distress signal from the Dutch ship Ourang Medan, which was in the Gulf of Malacca. Along with the signal, the message “Everyone is dead” was received. It will come for me soon." Inspired by this life-affirming message, Silver Star set out on a quest. The ship was found, but the entire crew, including the ship's dog, was dead. Despite the fact that death occurred about 8 hours ago, the corpses were still warm. There were no signs of violence on the bodies, but the arms of all the dead were extended forward, as if they were defending themselves.

It was decided to tow the ship to the port, but a fire started on it and then it exploded. As it later turned out, Ourang Medan was not assigned to any port. According to one version, the cause of death of the crew and the ship itself was the smuggling of nitroglycerin or nerve gas left over from the Second World War.

"Valencia"

The passenger liner Valencia sank off the coast of Vancouver in 1906. There were not enough rescue boats for everyone (it feels like we not only heard something similar, but even watched a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio...), and most of the passengers died. This, of course, led to the tragic story becoming overgrown with myths, and the Valencia is regularly seen by local sailors before a storm. And in 1970, a completely empty lifeboat from the Valencia washed ashore in excellent condition.

The Flying Dutchman - De Vliegende Hollander - a ghost sailing ship living in legends, which fell under the oath curse of its own captain, which is why the crew has not been able to return home for 300 years, doomed to forever wander among the waves.

Often, sailors see the appearance of the “Flying Dutchman” on the edge of the horizon, surrounded by the splendor of a luminous halo - seeing a ghost ship is an extremely bad omen.

According to long-established mythology, if the Flying Dutchman meets another ship, then its crew, living outside of time, tries to send a message through the sailors to their loved ones, who, of course, are no longer in the world of the living.

Marine superstitions recognize that a meeting with the Flying Dutchman is an extremely dangerous omen.

However, today we will not stir up well-known legends of the sea; now we will look at the fate of other mysteriously disappeared ships. These will not be stories about the “Flying Dutchman”, or “Mary Celeste” (“Mary Celeste”, “Mary of Heaven”) - which was found without a single person on board (and even the remains of people) in December 1872, 400 miles away from Gibraltar.

We will probably never know why people left an absolutely serviceable ship. Now a classic example of an unknown maritime anomaly, it provides a prime example of a ghost ship in action.

Many equally interesting stories were born about the terrible fate of ships that perished in the depths of the sea for seemingly no apparent reason. After all, the sea is an element that leads its own chronicle of history, sometimes building mysterious zigzags of fate.

Stories of missing ships: ghost ships.

The year is 1823. The story of the schooner Jenny tells of a lost ship frozen in the ice in Drake Passage in Antarctica. Seventeen years later, the missing schooner, already surrounded by legends by this time, was found by a whaling ship.

The whaler's crew even found the remains of the captain, preserved and frozen in the captain's chair with a feather clutched in his hand. The ship's log preserved the captain's last words about the chronology of the disaster: “May 4, 1823. No food for 71 days, I'm the only one left alive."

The year is 1909. The passenger steamer Waratah, considered a powerful ship, made a scheduled stop in Durban, South Africa, on her third voyage between Australia and England. Only one passenger got off the ship at this port.

Later, he explained his action by the incredibly difficult atmosphere on the ship. He also reported an anomalous vision of “a man with a long sword in strange clothes. The “ghost” held a sword in his hand, and his hand was covered in blood.”

Naturally, then no one paid much attention to these words, except to grin. Waratah continued on and sailed for Cape Town with 211 passengers and crew on board. The ship was spotted twice by other ships in the area, but the ship itself never reached its destination.

A huge disadvantage was that there was no ship's radio on board the Waratah, and it was impossible to transmit a distress signal in the event of a crash. Despite numerous attempts to find the ship (even as recently as 2004), no trace of the ship was ever found.

The only thing that can be said about this disappearance is the occasional sound of horns from the fog when it forms in the Cape Town roadstead - while the locators show a clear path.

The year is 1928. The five-masted Copenhagen barque was used as a naval training ship, and was the largest sailing ship in the world at that time. Its shipping history began back in 1913. On its last voyage, the bark left Buenos Aires for Melbourne, without any cargo on board.

The ship exchanged the “all is well” signal with another ship 8 days after sailing, but after that there was complete silence and communication was lost. Two years after the disappearance, a ghostly five-masted ship, very similar to the missing ship, was spotted in the Pacific Ocean.

Assuming that the ship might still be afloat, a thorough search began for the vessel. Wreckage with the inscription 'Kobenhavn' was even found on the west coast of Australia. And later, fragments of the sailor's supposed diary (preserved in a bottle) were discovered in the South Atlantic.

Judging by the recording, the ship collided with a large iceberg and sank. No other wreckage of the ship was ever found. Although in 1935, a boat with human remains was discovered on the coast of South-West Africa, which were buried there.

True, they never fully figured out whether they were related to the missing ship.
They say that sometimes off the coast of Australia, in Port Phillip Bay, from the foggy haze, five matches of a handsome military man loom... still working out the last task.

The year is 1955. The merchant ship Joyita set sail on a short 48-hour voyage between Samoa and Tokelau. 16 crew members and 9 passengers departed from the Samoa departure point. The cargo on board included medicines, wood, and food.

Rescuers found a strange sight on board the ship: the radio was tuned to the international distress signal frequency, the ship's engines were working, and among the medical supplies there was a mass of bandages soaked in blood. Even worse, more than four tons of cargo were missing, and there were no people or their remains on the ship.

Considering the missing cargo, most likely the ship was attacked by pirates, one version of the incident suggested. The crew probably decided to abandon ship because all the life rafts were missing. The ship was able to survive for a long time in the ocean thanks to the design of the vessel; its hull was equipped with a cork.

Joyita was salvaged and sold to new owners, but then acquired an ominous reputation as a cursed ship: her new owners went bankrupt or died, went to prison. As a result, the ship was abandoned, and later completely dismantled into pieces.

The year is 1978. The cargo ship MS München left the port of Bremerhaven in Germany on December 7, 1978, bound for Savannah, Georgia. On board was a cargo of steel products, as well as part of a nuclear reactor for Combustion Engineering, Inc.

Scattered Morse code signals were recorded in Belgium and Spain, which gave rise to an international search. The search operation lasted until December 20. Eventually, several empty lifeboats were discovered, showing signs of serious damage.

The remains of neither the ship nor the people were ever found. One version of the ship’s disappearance suggested that MS München was broken and then sunk by the enormous force of a “rogue wave.”
There are few rumors regarding the missing ship, but they say: sometimes sailors in these places receive strange radio signals from a ship that is not responding to requests “lost off course... there is dense fog around”...

In the Philippines, fishermen found the mummified body of a 59-year-old man who had been lying in a half-submerged yacht for several days. He writes about this on Tuesday The Independent.

According to the publication, a German boatmaster named Manfred Fritz Bayorath, who operated the yacht Sajo, died a non-violent death. According to the police, who conducted an examination, the cause of death was most likely a heart attack. The sailor's body was turned into a mummy due to the salty ocean air and dry weather.

The man was identified thanks to documents and numerous photographs that law enforcement officers found on board the yacht, which, according to the newspaper, drifted in the Pacific Ocean for several months before it was discovered by fishermen.

Let us note that situations have happened quite often in the world before and still happen today when ships without crews were found on the high seas. Such ships are usually called “ghost ships.” This term is most often used in legends and fiction, but it can also refer to a real ship that previously disappeared, and then after some time was discovered at sea without a crew or with a dead crew on board. In most cases, many encounters with such ships are fictional, however, real cases are known that are documented - thanks to entries in the logbook, for example. MIR 24 remembered the most famous “ghost ships” in the history of navigation.

(George Grieux. “Full Moon Rising.” From the “Ghost Ship” series.)

In 1775, a merchant ship from England called the Octavius ​​was discovered off the coast of Greenland, carrying dozens of frozen bodies of crew members. The ship's log showed that the ship was returning to the UK from China. The ship set sail in 1762 and attempted to navigate the rugged Northwest Passage, which was only successfully crossed in 1906. The ship and the frozen bodies of its crew drifted among the pack ice for 13 years.

Almost a century later, in 1850, a mysterious sailing ship called the Seabird, carrying timber and coffee from the island of Honduras, became stuck in shallow waters off the coast of Rhode Island. On board, in one of the cabins, only a dog was found shaking with fear. No people were found on the ship, despite the fact that aromatic coffee was boiling on the galley stove and there was a map and a logbook on the table. The last entry in it read: “We went abeam Brenton Reef.” Based on the results of the incident, a thorough investigation was carried out, which nevertheless could not answer the question of where the crew of the sailing ship had gone.

(Abandoned by the crew of the Mary Celeste)

On December 4, 1872, 400 miles from Gibraltar, the ship Dei Grazia discovered the brigantine Mary Celeste without a single crew member on board. The ship was quite good, strong, without damage, but, according to legend, during its entire voyage it very often found itself in unpleasant situations, which is why it received notoriety. The captain and his crew of 7 people, as well as his wife and daughter, who were also on the ship at the time of transportation of the cargo, which included, in particular, alcohol, disappeared without a trace.

Many “ghost ships” were found by sailors and fishermen in the last millennium. So, at the end of January 1921, the keeper of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse noticed the five-masted schooner Carroll A. Deering on the outer edge of the Diamond Shoals. All the sails of the ship were removed; there was no one on board except the ship's cat. Nobody touched the cargo, food and personal belongings of the crew members. The only things missing were lifeboats, a chronometer, sextants and a logbook. The schooner's steering did not function; in addition, the ship's compass and some navigational instruments were broken. It was never possible to find out why and where the Carroll A. Deering team disappeared.

(The SS Valencia in 1904)

In 1906, the passenger steamer SS Valencia sank off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. 27 years after the disaster, in 1933, sailors found a lifeboat from this ship floating in the area in good condition. Moreover, the sailors claimed that they observed the Valencia itself, following down the coast. But it turned out to be just a vision.

In February 1948, according to legend, merchant ships located in the Strait of Malacca near Sumatra received a radio signal from the Dutch motor ship Orang Medan: “SOS! Motor ship "Orang Medan". The ship continues to follow its course. Maybe all our crew members have already died.” This was followed by incoherent dots and dashes. At the end of the radiogram it said: “I am dying.” The ship was found by English sailors. The entire crew of the ship was dead. There was an expression of horror on the faces of the crew members. Suddenly, a fire broke out in the hold of the ship, and soon the ship exploded. A powerful explosion broke the ship in half, after which the Orang Medan sank. The most popular theory for the death of the crew is that the ship was carrying nitroglycerin without special packaging.

At the beginning of 1953, the cargo ship "Holchu" with a cargo of rice was discovered by sailors of the English ship "Raney". Due to the elements, the ship was significantly damaged, but the lifeboats were not touched. In addition, there was a full supply of fuel and water on board. Five crew members disappeared without a trace.

“Ghost ships” were also seen in the new century. Thus, in 2003, the Indonesian fishing schooner Hi Em 6 was found drifting without a crew near New Zealand. A large-scale search was organized, which, however, did not yield any results - 14 team members could not be found.

In 2007, a story happened in Australia with the ghost yacht Kaz II. The ship left Airlie Beach on April 15 and was discovered off the coast of Queensland a few days later. Rescuers got on board the yacht and saw the engine, radio, and GPS laptop working. In addition, lunch was prepared and the table was set, but the crew, which consisted of three people, was not on board. The sails of the yacht were in place, but badly damaged. No life jackets or other life-saving equipment were used. On April 25, it was decided to stop the search, since it was unlikely that anyone could survive during such a time period.

(Trawler Maru before sinking. Photo: U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Sara Francis)

The Japanese fishing vessel "Maru" ("Luck") drifted and crossed the Pacific Ocean after the devastating incident on March 11, 2011 occurred in the country. The ship was first discovered in late March 2012 by a Canadian Air Force patrol. The Japanese side, after receiving notification of the discovery of the trawler, managed to identify the shipowner. However, he did not express a desire to return the ship. There was a minimal amount of fuel and no cargo on board the Luck, as the ship was destined for scrapping before the earthquake in Japan. Nothing was reported about the fate of the Udachi crew. Due to the fact that the ship posed a threat to navigation, the US Coast Guard fired on it in April 2012, after which the trawler sank.

(The Russian ghost ship "Lyubov Orlova" is drifting in Irish waters, TASS)

On January 23, 2013, a double-deck cruise ship, built during Soviet times, left the Canadian port of St. John's to be towed for scrapping in the Dominican Republic. However, in the afternoon of the next day, the towing cable of the tugboat Charlene Hunt, which was pulling the ship, broke. As a result, the ship drifted. Attempts to take him back into tow were unsuccessful. Thus, since January 24, 2013, it has been freely drifting in the Atlantic Ocean without a crew or identification lights. In March, a report appeared in the Irish media that signals were recorded from the Lyubov Orlova emergency radio buoy 700 miles off the coast of Ireland. This may indicate that the ship has sunk, as the emergency beacon is activated when it enters the water. A search was undertaken in the area from which the signals were received, but nothing was found. At the beginning of 2014, rumors appeared that a drifting ship inhabited by cannibal rats could allegedly wash up on the coast of Ireland. However, there is still no reliable information about the fate of the vessel. Most likely, it sank back in February 2013.

Ivan Rakovich.

Ghost ship - what is it? Sea mirage? The quintessence of imagination and fear? Old sailor's tales? ...or is it reality?

To date, it is not known for sure whether these chimeras exist in the sea night. But in the end, it was not for nothing that this myth appeared in the first place? If there were no precedents for meeting the supernatural, then the rumor would not have spread... Therefore, firstly, arm yourself with courage when traveling by sea, ocean, and secondly, let's get to know the possible companions better.

1. "Octavius"

2. "Joita"