The Ghost Voyage of the SS Baychimo

A cargo ship was abandoned in Arctic ice in 1931 — and it kept drifting the frozen ocean alone for the next 38 years, repeatedly spotted by stunned sailors who boarded a ship that never should have still been afloat.

The SS Baychimo was a cargo steamship abandoned by its crew in Arctic ice off Alaska in 1931 after being trapped by pack ice during a blizzard. Rather than sinking, the ship continued drifting the Arctic Ocean as an unmanned "ghost ship" for the next 38 years, repeatedly and independently sighted by different crews and explorers, some of whom boarded it, until its final confirmed sighting in 1969.

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Quick facts

→The Baychimo became trapped in Arctic pack ice off the coast of Alaska in October 1931 during a severe blizzard, and its crew, fearing the ship would be crushed, abandoned it and set up a temporary shelter nearby.
→When the crew later returned to check on the ship, they found it had vanished from where they'd left it, having drifted away intact rather than being destroyed by the ice.
→Over the following decades, the abandoned, unmanned Baychimo was independently sighted and in some cases boarded by different crews and Arctic travelers, still structurally intact and drifting the ice-choked Arctic waters.
→The ship's last confirmed sighting was in 1969, nearly 38 years after its crew first abandoned it, after which it was not seen again and its final fate remains unknown.

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SS Baychimo (vessel)

Cargo ship abandoned in Arctic ice in 1931 that continued drifting, unmanned, for 38 years before its final confirmed sighting in 1969.

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