Ghost ships

Mary Celeste
>Voyage from New York to Genoa with a cargo of 1700 casks of commercial alcohol began on November 7, 1872,
>discovered adrift by the Canadian vessel Dei Gratia deserted in the Atlantic Ocean, off the Azores Islands, on December 5, 1872
>no one found on board including 7 crewmen and Capt. Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife, Sarah, and the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Sophia.
>Mary Celeste was in seaworthy condition, cargo and personal belongings intact with only her lifeboat missing.
>the crew of the Dei Gratia sailed ship to Gibraltar and claimed salvage.
>The court officers at the salvage hearings were extremely suspicious of the salvage claim but could not find any evidence of foul play and awarded salvage claim to the crew of the Dei Gratia, but only 10% of the ship's value.

Other urls found in this thread:

icc-ccs.org/index.php/piracy-reporting-centre/live-piracy-map/piracy-map-2017
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Carroll A. Deering
>On August 19, 1920, the Deering set sail from Norfolk, VA to Rio de Janeiro with a cargo of coal.
>captained by William Merritt. Merritt's son, Sewall, was his first mate. He had a 10 man crew made up entirely of Scandinavians.
>3 days into voyage Captain Merrit grew ill and was replaced by Captain W. B. Wormell.
>the ship arrived without incident in Rio, and while in port the Captain complained to a friend of his crew which he did not trust.
>return voyage from Rio de Janeiro to New York started December 2, 1920.
>after a stop in Barbados for supplies, the ship was last sighted by the Cape Lookout lightship in North Carolina on January 28, 1921.
>the lightship look out took note of the crew "mulling about" and noted how they were "short with brown skin" vastly different than the orginal Scandinavian crew.
>January 31, 1921, the Deering was next sighted run aground on Diamond Shoals off the coast of North Carolina totally abandoned
>The ship's log and navigation equipment were gone, and the crew's personal effects and the ship's two lifeboats were gone as well. In the vessel's galley it appeared that certain foodstuffs were being prepared for the next day's meal at the time of the abandonment.
>The Captain, and members of the crew have not been seen since.

Bel Amica
>discovered off the coast of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia near Punta Volpe on August 24, 2006.
>The Italian Coast Guard discovered the ship with no crew on board.
>Abord, they discovered a half-eaten meal of Egyptian food, French maps of North African seas, a pile of clothes, and a flag of Luxembourg.
>The ship had never been registered in Italy nor any other country. The only identification aboard the ship was a plaque that read Bel Amica.
>It is speculated that the ship was abondoned by a Luxembourg man to avoid taxation on the ship.

Kaz II
>A crew of three set sail in a 30 foot "catamaran" off the north-eastern coast of Australia on 15 April 2007.
>three days later and 88 miles out to sea the ship was found floating towards the Great Barrier Reef with all 3 men missing.
>Other than the crew missing everything else seemed in place, food was set out on the table, a laptop was open and still turned on, all of the boat’s emergency systems were fully functional and life jackets hung neatly on their hooks.
>the crew nor their remains were ever found.

Pirates, prove me wrong

Moar

These are interesting to read while im taking a shit

Its sad that, they must have thought the shit was sinking and decided to board the lifeboat. Imagine the horror and desperation they faced as the ship was caught in the current and sailed away on its own as they desperately tried to catch it in a tiny lifeboat. They must have all slowly died of dehydration, possibly giving their water rations to to the Captains wife and daughter they were the last ones left alive on that tiny lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic.

Isn't it better to go down with the ship rather than abandon it in the middle of the ocean? How likely are you to reach land alive in a lifeboat?

Sea Bird
>In 1750, a merchant brig under the command of John Huxham was returning from a voyage to Honduras and expected to arrive in Newport the next day.
>The ship was found aground on the beach at Easton's Beach, Rhode Island.
>the only living creatures found on board were a dog and a cat.
>The ship was found in perfect condition with coffee boiling on the stove, breakfast was laid out, tobacco could be smelled, and coins were visible on tables, but there was no crew.
>The only thing missing besides the crew was the ship’s emergency longboat.
>the last log entry read “Branton Reef sighted" which was only miles away from where the ship ended up.
>No sign of the crew was ever discovered.

Reading the Wikipedia my impression is that the following theory is the most logical.
>In his evidence to the enquiry, Deveau ventured an explanation based on the sounding rod (tool for ascertaining the amount of water in the ship) found on the derelict's deck. He suggested that Briggs abandoned ship after a sounding that, because of a malfunction of the pumps or other mishap, had given a false impression that the vessel was taking on water rapidly.[83]
>A severe waterspout strike before the abandonment could explain the amount of water in the ship, and the ragged state of her rigging and sails. The low barometric pressure generated by the spout could have driven water from the bilges up into the pumps, leading the crew to assume the ship had taken on more water than she had, and was in danger of sinking.[84]

So their equipment was faulty and they thought it was going to sink very soon and so they abandoned the ship.

Explain this one.

Marlborough
>On 11 January 1890, the Marlborough departed New Zealand bound for London.
>It was carrying a cargo of frozen meat and wool, with a crew of twenty-nine men and one female passenger.
>After being spotted on course 2 days later the ship was never seen again and after an inquiry it was assumed the ship and all her crew were lost at sea.
>23 years later, the ship was discovered sailing under full sail off of the southern most tip of South America.
>Skeletons of 6 of the original crew were found on board.

They're ghost stories. All ghost ships have such variations of them.

>the food was on the table, still warm
>hot tea was freshly poured
>the captains log was half written inside his cabin which was locked from the inside

Etc. The Mary Celeste in the OP also had such stories about it which circulated for decades but the actual recorded events show none of it is true. It is likely the stories about the Sea Bird are also fantastical imaginings of fishermen trying to scare children.

As a kiwifag I take offence to this, stories Ive been told say they went full pirate and ate lamb chops all the way to Cuba to sell their shit

Ourang Medan
>June 1947 two American vessels (the City of Baltimore and Silver Star) the Strait of Malacca in Indonesia pick up distress messages from Dutch merchant ship Ourang Medan.
>the message they sent was "S.O.S. from Ourang Medan * * * we float. All officers including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole of crew dead * * *."
>After a few confused dots and dashes later two last words came through clearly..."I die." And nothing further was received.
>The Silver star boarded the apparently undamaged Ourang Medan in a rescue attempt, the ship was found littered with corpses "Sprawled on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring, the dead bodies resembled horrible caricatures"
>Along with no survivors, there were no visible signs of injuries on the dead bodies.
>while the crew of the Silver star was still aboard the Ourang Medan, A fire then broke out in the ship's No. 4 cargo hold, forcing them to evacuate. Soon after, the Ourang Medan exploded and sank.

>Ghost ship thread
>Most are just the memes sailors made up

el bumpero

most of these are simply results of crime, if not all with the offenders being the same as the reporters

Fascinating. Moar plz

There are plenty more but many are more apocryphal than anything. I just watched History's Mysteries ghost ship episode and got the idea for the thread. Will post some more tonight.

Spookiest ITT.

Choppy seas in addition to an elderly crew with no life jackets would seem to be contributing factors, one man falls overboard ans the rest go in after him would be my theory.

Maybe some gas leak?

Ourang Medan most likely smuggled some chemicals. Poorly secured, they reacted in unpredictable way. This would explain both deaths and explosion and fire.

indonesians here, worth noting is that the straits of malacca used to be chock full of pirates and it wasnt until the 2000's they started to quiet down with indo-malay-singapore naval cooperation. anyway in '97 my father friends works in the custom told me a story about malaccan pirates(lanun), apparently they were becoming more sophisticated in recent years, they would infiltrate or bribe the ship crew and then the ship would suddenly gone from the radars in a few hours and when the patrol boat found it, they found that all the crews have fainted all over the floor and the ship cargo gone.

Interesting, how did they knock the crew out? Did they fuck it up this time and accidentally kill the crew or is the usual MO to keep them alive?

I mean, there's half a century gap here.
Though the image of a pirate awkwardly completing the SOS message like that is funny.

anyway i checked the piracy tracking map and apparently it is still filled with pirates despite the joint naval operation kek, check out the malaccan strait

icc-ccs.org/index.php/piracy-reporting-centre/live-piracy-map/piracy-map-2017

killing the crew usually attracts the indo/malayspecial forces and these guys are ruthless, so they usually left the crew alone unless it was a terrorist group
yeah the SOS massage was in broken english it could be some pirate who fucked up his gas or something and tried to damage control.

No such ship ever existed.

Spoopy