Surely you have heard of ghost ships, sometimes called phantom ships. These are ships that set out once but never returned. They all have one thing in common - the ship is floating across the ocean, but there are no crew members on board.

For example, in the center of the Atlantic is a catamaran with no signs of life on board. Yet, there's freshly caught fish. Or a boat that was lost 100 years ago and had been floating ever since, for some reason.

Most "encounters" with ghost ships are pure fiction, but we can't deny the real encounters. After all, losing a ship in the infinity of the world's oceans is not so difficult.

1. Carroll A. Deering

The Carroll A. Deering five-mast ship was built in 1911. The vehicle was named after the son of the ship's owner. Deering performed cargo flights, the last of which began on December 2, 1920, in the port of Rio de Janeiro. Captain William Merritt and his son, who served as a chief comrade, had a crew of 10 Scandinavians. Merritt's father and son suddenly fell ill and hired a captain named WB Wormell to replace them.

Leaving Rio, Deering arrived in Barbados, where it stopped to replenish food supplies. The right-hand assistant McLennan got drunk and belittled Captain Wormell in front of the sailors, causing riots. When McLennan shouted that he would soon take over as captain, he was arrested. But Wormell forgave and redeemed him from prison.

Soon the ship sailed and was last seen on January 28, 1921. This was when a sailor from a floating lighthouse was greeted by a red-haired man standing aboard the passing schooner. The lighthouse worker said Deering lost the anchors, but he could not contact the ambulance because the radio was not working.

The Deering ghost ship was found stranded near Cape Hatteras three days later.

When rescuers arrived, the ship turned out to be completely devastated. No crew, no logs, no navigation equipment, no lifeboats. Unfortunately, the schooner was blown away with dynamite, and there was nothing more to explore. Deering's team is believed to have disappeared without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle.

2. Baychimo

The merchant ship Baychimo was built in 1911 in Sweden for the Germans and was designed to transport the skins of northern animals. After World War I, a German leather carrier crossed the British flag and cruised the polar coasts of Canada and the United States.

The last voyage of Baychimo (with a live crew and fur onboard) took place in the autumn of 1931. On October 1, the ship fell into an ice trap off the coast. The crew left the boat and went to seek shelter from the cold. Unable to find people, the sailors built an improvised shore, waiting for the cold to pass and continuing to sail when the ice melted.

On November 24, a storm broke out. When it calmed down, the sailors were stunned to see that the ghost ship was gone. It was presumed that the transport with the fur sank during the storm, but after a few days, the walrus hunter said he saw the Baychimo 45 miles from the camp.

The sailors decided to save the precious cargo and leave the steamer. The crew and fur were brought inland by plane, and the ghost ship Baychimo met with sea workers here and there, in the waters of Alaska, several times in the next 40 years.

This last fact was documented in 1969 when the Eskimos saw Baychimo frozen in Arctic ice in the Beaufort Sea. In 2006, the Alaska government announced an official search for the legendary ghost ship, but the operation was not crowned with success.

3. Eliza Battle

Eliza was launched in 1852 in Indiana. It was a luxury river steamer on which only the wealthy and statesmen rode with wives and children. On a cold night in February 1858, cotton palms caught fire on the ship's deck, kindled by a frosty solid wind. One hundred people died in the smoke and fire, and another 26 were listed as missing. The ship sank at a depth of 9 meters and to this day lies at the site of the crash.

Some say that during the spring floods, with a full moon at night, one could see a river steamer coming out of the bottom and floating. Music is playing on the ghost ship, and the fire is burning. The fire is so strong that it is easy to read the name of the boat - Eliza Battle.

4. Yacht Joyita

Joyita was a luxury "unsinkable" yacht, which belonged to Hollywood director Roland West from 1931 until the war, then was turned into a patrol boat, and until 1945 it served off the coast of Hawaii.

On October 3, 1955, Joyita sailed to Samoa with 25 passengers onboard and a flawed engine. The yacht was waiting in the Tokelau Islands, 270 miles from Samoa. The trip was supposed to last a maximum of two days, but Joyita did not arrive at the port on the third day. And no one gave an SOS signal. The planes were sent in search, but the pilots did not find anything.

The search lasted five weeks, and on November 10, the yacht was found. It was still sailing, but it's not clear why the engine was running at half power. Four tons of cargo were missing, as well as the crew and passengers. All clocks stopped at 10:25.

Even though the yacht was unsinkable, all the life rafts and life jackets disappeared from Joyita. The investigation established that the ship's hull was not damaged, but the fate of the crew and cargo remained unclear.

Someone came up with a beautiful version. For example, this is the work of surviving Japanese militarists who dug on a lonely island and carried out pirate raids.

Joyita was repaired, and the engine was replaced, but no one wanted to go out to sea in a ghost ship, and in the mid-1960s, the unsinkable ghost ship was torn to pieces.

5. Flying Dutchman

The most famous among spooky ghost ships is the Flying Dutchman, the eternal evil wanderer who was the inspiration behind the Pirates of the Caribbean. Before the Hollywood fairy tale, we met The Flying Dutchman on the pages of books, Wagner's music, and songs by Rammstein.

Not everyone knows that Flying Dutchman is not a nickname for the ghost ship itself but its captain.

Several different ghost ships from different centuries are called Flying Dutchmen. One of them is the actual owner of the brand. The one with whom the trouble happened on the Cape of Good Hope.

According to the legend, the ship's captain, Hendrik van der Decken, bypassed the Cape of Good Hope on the way to Amsterdam. It was challenging to get around the cape because of the monstrous winds, but Hendrik vowed to do so (yes-yes-yes!), even if it was necessary to fight until Judgment Day. The team asked to protect themselves from the storm and bring the ship back. Nightmare-sized waves rode the boat, and the brave captain sang obscene songs, drank and smoked weed.

Realizing that the captain could not be convinced, part of the team rebelled. The captain shot the leading rebel and threw his body into the sea. Then the sky opened, and the captain heard the voice, "You are too stubborn a person," to which he replied, "I have never asked for easy ways, and I have asked for nothing, so dry yourself before I shoot you too!" He tried to shoot into the sky, but the gun exploded in his hand.

A voice from heaven continued, "Cursed be you, and you will forever sail across the ocean with a ghostly crew of the dead, bringing death to all who see your ghost ship. You won't be able to enter any port, and you won't know the rest for a moment. Bile will be your wine, and a red hot iron will be meat. "

In 1941, on a beach in Cape Town, a crowd of people saw a sailboat heading straight for the rocks but disappeared into the air when the wreck was about to occur.

6. Young Teazer

This revolving corner schooner was built in 1813 with the sole purpose of robbing British Empire merchant ships sailing to the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the time, what we call Canada belonged to the British, who were outraged after the United Kingdom and the United States in 1812.

The ship brought good trophies from Nova Scotia. In June 1813, the corsairs of the British administration hunted the schooner, but the Young Teazer managed to hide in a magically thickening fog. A few days later, the schooner was cornered by the British warships La Hogue and Orpheus with 74 cannons. It was decided to board the Young Teazer.

As soon as the five boarding boats approached the ship, the Teazer exploded. Seven Britons survived and said that one sailor ran to the schooner's arsenal with a burning piece of wood and looked crazy.

Soon, one by one, eyewitnesses of strange phenomena began to appear. They reportedly saw Young Teaser sailing. In the summer of the following year, curious locals organized a boat trip to the schooner's death site to take a closer look at the ghost ship. And a spirit the size of a ship, allowing itself to be admired, disappeared in clouds of fire and smoke.

Since then, tourists from all over the country have come to Mahone Bay every year. And Young Teazer explodes in their eyes over and over again. The ghost ship especially likes to appear on foggy nights with a full moon.

7. Octavius

Whalers are believed to have discovered the ghost ship, Octavius, ​​off the west coast of Greenland in October 1775. Octavius ​​had a dead crew on board, and every sailor appeared to be frozen at the time of his death. The captain froze with a pencil in his hand across a magazine. Next to him stood a frozen woman, a boy wrapped in a blanket, and a sailor with a barrel of gunpowder in his hands.

The terrified Whalers took the ghost ship diary and discovered that the last entry dates back to 1762. That is, Octavius ​​was frozen for 13 years.

In 1761, the ship sailed from England to South Asia. To save time, the captain decided not to go to Africa but to lay a short but dangerous Arctic route along the northern coast of America. Recall, that during the project, there were no Suez or Panama Canals. It was evident that the ghost ship was frozen in ice in the waters of the north and was the first to dare to sail the northwest route long before the appearance of icebreakers.

8. Lady Lovibond

In February 1748, Captain Simon Reed took his young wife Annetta aboard the Lady Lovibond to spend their honeymoon in Portugal. At the time, the presence of a woman on board was considered a bad omen.

The captain did not know that his chief officer John Rivers was in love with his wife and had gone mad with jealousy. Rivers wandered back and forth across the deck in a fit of rage, then grabbed a club-like pin and killed the helmsman. He then took the helm and drove the schooner to Goodwin Sands, in the southeast of England, on the coast of Kent. Lady Lovibond ran aground, killing the entire crew and the schooner passengers. The verdict of the investigation was an "accident."

Fifty years later, a phantom sailboat was seen from two different ships sailing along the shoals of Goodwin Sands. In February 1848, local fishermen observed the remains of the shipwreck and even sent rescue boats, but returned without anything. In 1948, the spirit of Lady Lovibond in green glow caught the public attention again.

This ghost ship appears every 50 years. So, if you do not have special plans for February 13, 2048, you can write them down in your calendar.

9. Mary Celeste

Mary Celeste is the greatest mystery in the history of navigation. To this day, there are disputes about the reasons for the mysterious disappearance of 8 crew members and two passengers from the ghost ship.

In November 1872, the brigantine Mary Celeste sailed with a load of alcohol from New York to Genoa under Captain Briggs. 4 weeks later, the ship was discovered near Gibraltar by the captain of the ship "Dei Grazia," ​​who was friends with Briggs. Approaching the Mary Celeste and boarding the brigantines, Captain Morehouse found the boat abandoned. There were no living or dead people on it. The cargo of alcohol was intact, and the brigantine did not fall into a strong storm but was on the surface.

There were no traces of any crime or violence. It is unclear what could have caused the emergency evacuation of the gallant Captain Briggs.

The ship was transferred to Gibraltar and repaired. After the repair, Mary Celeste worked for another 12 years and crashed into a reef in the Caribbean.

Versions of the sudden destruction of the brigantine are different, and there are many. For example, an explosion of alcohol vapor in a stern warehouse. Or the collision of the ghost ship with a floating sand island. Or the conspiracy of Captains Briggs and Morehouse. Some even talked seriously about the intrigues of the aliens.

10. Jian Seng

The list of ghost ships is growing today.

An Australian patrol plane spotted an 80-meter tanker of unknown origin in Carpentaria Bay in 2006. The name of the vessel, Jian Sen, was deleted, but it was pretty legible on all the documents that the customs officers could find on the empty tanker. There was no evidence that Jian Seng illegally fished or transported illegal immigrants. There was a lot of rice.

It is assumed that the vessel towed without command, but the cable broke. The drift of the ghost ship lasted for more than a day, so the engines of Jian Seng could not start.

The ghost ship was submerged in deep water. There, in the depths, it lays beautiful and peaceful. Politicians have said that Indonesians illegally deliver drugs and migrants on such tankers.