Monday, July 25, 2016

Ghost Liner S.S Baychimo Adrift For Almost A Century

A passenger liner from the early 1900s that was abandoned and thought to be sunk after being adrift for decades has once again been sighted.

The Story of the S.S Baychimo starts in 1914 being built in Sweden and owned by the Hudson's Bay Company for passenger and cargo transportation near Alaska in the Artic began the strangest leg of its journey on October 1st, 1931. After being abandoned by the captain and crew once it was stuck in the ice packs off Barrow, Alaska, it was thought she had broken up and sank. But in the decades to come she would be sighted and boarded. In March of 1933 a group of Eskimos were trapped aboard her as they sheltered a freak blizzard. The last sighting of the S.S Baychimo was in 1969 38 years after she was abandoned. Since this time, and with no known sightings in decades, it was thought she had finally broken up and sank.

On January 21st 2016 the crew of the oil vessel "Artic Winsor" sighted her once more peacefully drifting at a distance of 36 miles away. As they got closer to her, as with numerous past accounts, bad weather set in and they could do nothing more than positively identify her from a distance and move on leaving the derelict to continue her ghostly voyage. One crew member who continued to watch her until they were too far away had this to say.

"While keeping an eye on the ship from a safe distance I could swear I saw figures moving on deck. I handed the binoculars to another shipmate and he said he didn't see anything, so I looked again and the figures were gone. I know it's not possible for a derelict ships abandoned and unused for so long could actual house or be in use, so I'm not sure what I saw."

He seemed fairly shook up as with most sailors that are highly superstitious of strange sightings at sea. It is hard to believe that a vessel nearly 100 years old, frozen and released many times since from the ice packs of the Artic, could survive this long. The captain of the "Artic Winsor" did radio the US Coast Guard about the sighting and when they arrived in the vicinity they reported finding nothing.

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