Ship goes 30km with no crew

[indigobusiness]

Ship goes 30km with no crew
By Ben Sharkey
August 05, 2004
IT IS a story straight out of the Bermuda Triangle. A ghost ship with no sails or crew makes a near 30km journey through treacherous river waters and into the open ocean as if guided by unseen hands.

The unnamed 8.5m North 28 timber yacht was last seen when its Padstow owner tied it to moorings at Parsley Bay near Brooklyn on the NSW Central Coast two months ago but on Tuesday it was found almost 30km away off Terrigal without a soul on board.

No one is sure when the yacht managed to break free of its moorings and set sail, although it was probably on Monday night.


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10349050%255E421,00.html

"A lot of boats have sunk around that area and they had the benefit of actually having crews on board.

"It's definitely one of the strangest things I have ever heard about.

[PartyPooper]

1. Ghost ship? Flying Dutchman?

:scared:

[alittlelark]

2. We had a BLAST on it!!!

Faaaaar too much fun....now it's back to the daily grind (we wiped the prints REALLY well!!!) ;-)

[shockingelk]

3. Maybe the WMD will be in the hull n/t

[BrotherBuzz]

4. 30km? That ain't nothing

An ocean racing trimaran I was familiar with pitchpoled (capsized) off Farallone Islands (San Francisco). U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescued the crew but lost the boat. After several futile attempts the search for the boat was called off. One year later she drifted into the Murilo atoll near Truk in Micronesia, nearly 5,000 miles away. She was still upside down and in fairly good shape except for one ama broken off. Rummor is the boat, a half million dollar high tech play toy, is now being used by a lucky islander as a fishing boat, proving trickle down economics works.

Pre crash photo

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Or there is HMS Resolute

Abandoned in Arctic ice (against the wishes of her Captain Kellett, but overruled by his incompetent superior Sir Edward Belcher),

"The drift of the Resolute was a remarkable proof of the direction of the current out of Barrow Strait. She was abandoned in 74 41 N. and 101 iiW. on the 14th of May 1854. On the 10th of September 1855 an American whaler sighted the Resolute in 67 N. lat. about twenty miles from Cape Mercy, in Davis Strait. She had drifted nearly a thousand miles, and having been brought into an American port, was purchased by the United States and presented to the British government."
http://42.1911encyclopedia.org/P/PO/POLAR_REGIONS.htm

Subsequently,
"When the ship was retired, Queen Victoria commissioned the desk and presented to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880.
...
Every president since Hayes, except Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford, has used the Resolute desk. The desk was made famous by a photograph of President John F. Kennedy at work while his son, John Jr., peeked out from behind the kneehole panel."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/oval-office.html

[DivinBreuvage]

6. Another famous "ghost ship", the Mary Celeste

http://www.maryceleste.net/

And, perhaps the creepiest story of all is that of the Demeter, a Russian ship that ran aground at Whitby, England, on August 8, 1892. The crew was gone and the captain was found lashed to the wheel dead with a look of sheer terror on his face!