KATRINA’S TOP 7 MYSTERIOUS SHIPWRECKS
As an aficionado of the golden era of Trans-Atlantic steamships (1900-1950s) and with an affinity for mysteries of the sea, I present a list of the top 7 mysterious shipwrecks… TITANIC not included.
7) OTAVI and The Wrecks of the “Skeleton Coast”
Along the coast of Namibia, a stretch of 976 miles (1579km) of inhospitable coast has been coined “The Skeleton Coast”, due to the cold water of the Atlantic’s Benguela current colliding with dry, warm, air of the Namib Desert and the resulting cold, dense fog which extends out to the sea. The wind and currents combine to produce a force pushing inexorably towards shore which creates favorable conditions for wrecks to occur.
6) HMHS BRITTANNIC
Sister ship of the Olympic and Titanic, she never saw service as a passenger liner, though she was reputed to be even more opulent than her sisters. Commissioned as a hospital ship at the outbreak of WWI, she was sunk on 21 November, 1916 off of Kea, Greece in the Agean Sea. Sinking in 55 minutes, out of 1065 passengers and crew, only 30 lost their lives. She is now the largest ocean liner intact on the ocean floor at a depth of 500 feet.
5) OCTAVIUS
After her departure from the Orient in 1762, her captain decided to navigate the treacherous and uncharted Northwest Passage. According to lore, the three-masted schooner was found west of Greenland by the whaler Herald on 11 October 1775. Boarded as a derelict, the five-man boarding party found the entire crew of 28 below deck: dead, frozen, and almost perfectly preserved. The captain’s body was supposedly still at the table in his cabin, pen in hand with the captain’s log in front of him. In his cabin there were also the bodies of a woman, a boy covered with a blanket, and a sailor with a tinderbox. The boarding party took only the captain’s log before leaving the vessel, because they were unwilling to search it. The last entry in the log was from 11 November 1762, which meant that the ship had been lost in the Arctic for 13 years. She was the first ship to successfully navigate the Passage, albeit posthumously.
4)BAYCHIMO
She worked as a trade ship, trading provisions for pelts in the Inuit communities in Alaska. On 1 October 1931, at the end of a trading run and loaded with a cargo of fur, Baychimo became trapped in pack ice. The crew briefly abandoned the ship, travelling over a half-mile of ice to the town of Barrow to take shelter for two days, but the ship had broken free of the ice by the time the crew returned. The ship became mired again on October 8, more thoroughly this time, and on 15 October the Hudson’s Bay Company sent aircraft to retrieve 22 of the crew; 15 men remained behind. Intending to wait out the winter if necessary, they constructed a wooden shelter some distance away. On 24 November a powerful blizzard struck, and after it abated there was no sign of Baychimo. Her captain decided she must have broken up during the storm and been sunk. Intermittent sightings of her were reported up until 1969.
3) MÉDUSE
A French frigate, she was on her way to St. Louis in Senegal when she ran aground on the Arguin Banks off of Mauritania on 2 July, 1816. In a panic and believing she could not be refloated, her passengers and crew abandoned ship, however there was not enough room for her 400 passengers on the lifeboats. A crude raft was constructed for the remaining 146 passengers. Cut adrift, the raft proved to be completely unseaworthy. Without provisions and conditions rapidly deteriorating, the people on the raft resorted to cannibalism. After 13 days at sea, the remaining 15 were rescued by the Argus on 17 July.
2) OURANG MEDAN
Whether or not the Ourang Medan even existed is up to speculation. No registry or records of her service exist. According to legend, the Silver Star was cruising the Straits of Malacca in either 1947 or 1948, when she received a distress call “All officers including captain are dead, lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.”This communication was followed by a burst of indecipherable Morse code, then a final, grim message: “I die.” This cryptic proclamation was followed by tomb-like silence. Upon boarding the Ourang Medan, the Silver Star crew were greeted with a horrific sight: all crew and the dog were dead, their faces contorted in fear. An attempt at salvage was made, but the Ourang Medan exploded.
1) JAPANESE MINI-SUB NUMBER 20 Attacked by the USS Ward at 6:37am on 7 December of 1941 a few hours before Pearl Harbor, proving that THE US SHOT FIRST in the Pacific Theater of World War II.