This (Haunted?) Ship Won’t Sink

Fog curls across the gray water. Chunks of ice bob like bath toys. As a sharp wind whips the mist into ghostly ribbons, a strange ship appears in the distance. Fading letters on her bow spell out her name: Baychimo (BAY-chih-moh). The eerie sound of sea ice scraping against her rusty hull drifts across the water. The ship seems to be looking at you.

And then? The ship vanishes.

If you think this ship seems haunted, you wouldn’t be the only one. For decades, the Baychimo was spotted floating through the waters close to Alaska. But the ship was empty. She had no cargo. She had no passengers. She had no crew. She was guided only by the currents and the wind—and, some say, her own will. Now and then, she would emerge from the fog and allow someone a glimpse of her dark shape. But she never stayed around for long.

Built around 1914, the SS Baychimo was a cargo ship. Now she is a ghost ship—that is, a vessel floating at sea without a single living soul on board. Ghost ships both real and fictitious have been sending shivers down our spines for centuries. Some say these ships are piloted by the dead and that seeing one is a bad omen.

There is certainly something eerie about an empty ship at sea. Perhaps it’s the question of what happened to the people who were once on board—and the possibility that some supernatural force has taken their place.

In the case of the Baychimo, however, there is no question of what happened to her crew: They abandoned her in 1931. The Baychimo was traveling along the northern coast of Alaska when she got stuck in ice. The crew knew the ship would be crushed. They knew she would sink. So they built a makeshift hut. They built it on a nearby slab of ice. They waited there to be rescued. One morning, they stepped out of their hut to find that the ship had disappeared. The crew figured she had sunk to a watery grave, joining thousands of other wrecks that litter the ocean floor.    

Except she hadn’t. In the coming years, the Baychimo would be spotted many times drifting through the waters near Alaska. How she was still afloat is a mystery that has never been solved. Some said the Baychimo was alive.

The last sighting of the Baychimo was in 1969. Has she finally sunk? It’s hard to say. In 2006, the state of Alaska conducted a search, but no trace of the wandering ship was discovered, neither below the surface nor above. So perhaps she is still out there, haunting the seas—and our imaginations. 

This article was originally published in the March 2020 issue.