#baychimo

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.

So. Imagine: it's the 1930s, and you are a sailor aboard the Swedish steamer Baychimo. On one of its routine trading trips in the Arctic, it gets caught in the ice (as ships are prone to do in the Arctic -- even ones designed to weather it). You and the rest of the crew abandon ship, get the cargo out, come back to check on it a couple times, aaaaand one day it's just gone. Oops. It wasn't looking too salvageable anyway, so it must have sunk.

Just kidding! Over the next few months, multiple people report sighting the Baychimo floating aimlessly around the Arctic. Months turn into years. Picture yourself as a random sailor aboard another ship, looking out to the horizon, and suddenly, in the distance, a long, dark steamer appears, completely umanned and directionless. You and the other men are all mildly impressed that the ghost ship still hasn't sunk. You radio to other ships that you've spotted the now-familiar Baychimo as it drifts out of sight once again.

Now, finally, I want you to imagine yourself as an Inuit trapper. You're traveling on ice with nine others when, suddenly, a snowstorm hits. To your surprise, shelter appears out of the ice! It's...the FUCKING Baychimo?? That thing's still kicking? You recognize the ghost ship, either from the news or from when you yourself met it to trade at a harbor years ago. You and your group take shelter in the icebound ship for ten days before the storm finally passes.

1 - The Gerat Eastern

Baychimo: *proceeds to kick him in the tread and run away*

D-Stroy: *narrows eyes* You lost your son?

*Tyran is heard screaming from the other side of the crater*

D-Stroy:

D-Structs:

Tyran: *holds up Baychimo* This is mine.

D-Stroy: Wha-NO.