Ghost ship

Ghost ship is a fictional concept for a haunted vessel, such as The Flying Dutchman.

The same term is also used to describe derelict ships found adrift with their entire crew either missing or dead, such as the Mary Celeste or the Baychimo.

It may sometimes also be used to refer to ships which have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, such as the Clemenceau (R 98).

Chronology

The Flying Dutchman by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Amazon (later renamed Mary Celeste)

Carroll A. Deering as seen from the US Coast Guard lightvessel at Cape Lookout (North Carolina) on 28 January 1921

File:Kaz II.jpg

Kaz II adrift off the coast of Townsville, Queensland

• 1775: (Possibly a fabrication) The Octavius, an English trading ship returning from China, was found drifting off the coast of Greenland. The captain's log showed that the ship had attempted the Northwest Passage, which had never been successfully traversed. The ship and the bodies of her frozen crew apparently completed the passage after drifting amongst the pack ice for 13 years.

• 1795 onwards: (Legend) The Flying Dutchman, a ship manned by a captain condemned to eternally sail the seas, has long been main legend of ghost ships among mariners and has inspired several works.

• 1872: The Mary Celeste, perhaps the most historically famous derelict, was found abandoned between Portugal (mainland) and Portugal's Azores archipelago. It was devoid of all crew, but largely intact and under sail, heading toward the Strait of Gibraltar. While Arthur Conan Doyle's story "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" based on this ship added some strange phenomena to the tale (such as that the tea found in the mess hall was still hot), the fact remained that the last log entry was 11 days prior to the discovery of the ship.

• 1907: (Possibly a fabrication) The Russian freighter Ivan Vassili is purported to have picked up a spirit in Zanzibar, which led to the suicides of nine crew members, including two captains. The ship was ultimately burned to eradicate the ghost.

• 1917: Zebrina, all hands missing.

• 1921: The Carroll A. Deering, a five-masted cargo schooner, was found stranded on a beach on Diamond Shoals, North Carolina. The ship's final voyage had been the subject of much debate and controversy (see main article), and was investigated by six Departments of the US government, largely because it was one of dozens of ships that sank or went missing within a relatively short period of time. While paranormal explanations have been advanced, the theories of mutiny or piracy are considered much more likely.

• 1931: The Baychimo was abandoned in the Arctic Ocean when it became trapped in pack ice and was thought doomed to sink, but remained afloat and was sighted numerous times over the next 38 years without ever being salvaged.

• 1933: A lifeboat from the 1906 wreck of the passenger steamship SS Valencia off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island was found floating in the area in remarkably good condition 27 years after the sinking. Sailors have also reported seeing the ship itself in the area in the years following the sinking, often as an apparition that followed down the coast.

• 1947: (Original report of this incident cannot be located, and the entire episode is thought to be apocryphal) The Ourang Medan was found adrift off Indonesia with all of its crew dead. The boarding party found the entire crew "frozen, teeth baring, gaping at the sun." Before the ship could be towed to a home port, it exploded and sank.

• 1955: The MV Joyita was discovered abandoned in the Pacific.

• 2006: The tanker Jian Seng was found off the coast of Weipa, Queensland Australia in March. Its origin or owner could not be determined and it was scuttled in April.

• 2006: In August the "Bel Amica" (which is one "L" short of the modern Italian spelling of "Good Friend") was discovered off the coast of Sardinia. The Coast Guard crew that discovered the ship found half eaten Egyptian meals, French maps of North African seas, and a flag of Luxembourg on board.

• 2007: A 12-metre catamaran, the Kaz II, was discovered unmanned off the coast of Queensland, northeast Australia in April. The yacht, which had left Airlie Beach on Sunday 15 April, was spotted about 80 nautical miles (150 km) off Townsville, near the outer Great Barrier Reef on the following Wednesday. When boarded on Friday, the engine was running, a laptop was running, the radio and GPS were working and a meal was set to eat, but the three-man crew were not on board. All the sails were up but one was badly shredded, while three life jackets and survival equipment, including an emergency beacon, were found on board. A search for the crew was abandoned on Sunday 22nd as it was considered unlikely that anyone could have survived for that period of time.

• 2008: A 50 ton fishing vessel grounds itself on a reef near Kuta Beach in Bali. "The scorched shell of the Tai Ching 21 was found near Kiribati on 9 November with no sign of the crew members. The crew are from Taiwan, China, Indonesia and the Philippines, but news reports were unclear if the boat was Korean or Taiwanese."

Film

• 1980: Death Ship is about a lost Nazi German torture and concentration camp ship that is still being crewed by the evil spirits of the dead crew. It now roams the seas for new victims, picking up survivors to abuse and kill after it sinks their ships.

• 1980: The Fog depicts the ghost ship Elizabeth Dane passing by a fishing boat just before the dead crew of the Dane kills the three fishermen on board the fishing boat.

• 1997: Event Horizon is a spaceship which disappeared while testing an experimental propulsion system, then returned intact seven years later but with no crew, life support offline, and data recordings scrambled. The investigating team soon encounters an evil presence that the ship brought back with it.

• 2001: The Triangle has the tagline: "60 years ago, the Queen of Scots vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. Now four friends have found the unthinkable... or has it found them?"

• 2002: Ghost Ship is about the Antonia Graza, an Italian ocean liner lost at sea 40 years earlier, and now boarded by a salvage crew who soon encounter the ghostly apparitions of murdered passengers.

• 2003: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and its sequels Dead Man's Chest (2006) and At World's End (2007) feature the ghost ships Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman.

Literature

• 1798: A "skeleton ship" crewed by two spectres features in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

• 1897: The Demeter, whose captain's corpse was tied to the helm, is featured in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

• 1937: "Three Skeleton Key", a short story by George Toudouze about a ghost ship infested with sea rats, was originally written for Esquire magazine. It was adapted for the dramatic radio program Escape in 1949 by James Poe and was also broadcast on the Suspence radio drama series in the 1950s.

• 1965: The Ampoliros, the "Flying Dutchman" of space, is mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune.

• 2001: The Flying Dutchman plays a key part of Brian Jacques' series Castaways of the Flying Dutchman.

Video games

• In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, which uses as scenario a vast ocean, a ghost ship can be seen at night at various locations depending on the phase of the moon. A map with the ship destinations was made by a sailor, who died in the moment he finished following the ship in its entire cyclic trip. The player needs to find the map in order to enter the Ghost Ship; otherwise, it will vanish when the player gets too close. In Wind Waker's sequel, The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, a similar Ghost Ship is used as a dungeon, a plot device, and a boss battle.

• In the Half-Life universe, a ship belonging to Aperture Science, the Borealis, vanishes, taking part of the drydock with it. It is discovered in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and also implies the player will travel to it in Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

• In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, there are two scenarios involving ghost ships. The first is "The Ghost Ship of Anvil" in which the Dark Brotherhood spy killed all the members of the crew and the player is subsequently asked to cleanse the ship. The other, "The Forlorn Watchman", the player hears the tale of a sad-looking ghost who frequents the shores of Niben Bay by night. After speaking with the ghost, it becomes apparent that he has been part of a shipwreck of mysterious cause and the player may go to the shipwreck to solve the mystery.

• In Skies of Arcadia, one of the games discoveries is a Ghost Ship that can be seen in upper sky near the entrance to the Dark Rift.

• In Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny there is an optional subquest dealing with a ghost ship.

• In Age of Mythology, if one worships Isis or Set as a Major god, and in the heroic age selects Nephthys as a minor god, one will be granted the 'god power' Ancestors. When this god power is invoked on water, it will summon up a fleet of ghost ships which all return to the depths of the ocean once the power ends.

• The game System Shock 2 takes place on the derelict, faster-than-light starship Von Braun.

• The game The Legend of Dragoon features an extended sequence on a ghost ship. While Dart and his party are sailing towards Mille Sesau, their ship crashes into a ghost ship. The characters decide to explore the ship, finding the spirits of the dead sailors inside.

• In Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean from the Sega Saturn, on the second half of it, a short dungeon, without monsters, is a ghost ship that actually is a giant monster. So, a boss fight occurs.

• In Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific the Flying Dutchman is featured as an Easter egg, which the player may encounter on a patrol. Notably, the identification for the ship reads "What is this!?"; she is invincible to torpedo and deck gun fire.

• In Illusion of Gaia the player encounters an Incan Gold Ship which is a Ghost Ship with the remains of the Incan people. It eventually gets destroyed when a giant fish attacks. One character actually refers to the ship as a "Ghost Ship" during their time on board.

• In the Monkey Island game series, the main character, Guybrush Threepwood, encounters the ghost pirate captain LeChuck and his Ghost Ship crewed by the undead repeatedly. It becomes known in the first game that LeChuck boarded the ship and killed the crew himself. In the third game LeChuck's Ghost Ship is called Death Starfish although the name of the ship is never actually mentioned in the game. Later, in The Curse of Monkey Island Guybrush encounters the Flying Welshman (a pun on the Flying Dutchman) who takes him to Skull Island.