Nautical Mysteries

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As a species, we have always believed ourselves to be the most dominant on the planet, relentlessly expanding outwards to lay claim to the territories and natural resources we discover.

And yet, over two-thirds of the world remain beyond our reach, hidden deep beneath seemingly endless stretches of water.

What do those depths hold for those in peril?

Perhaps one of humanity's most redeeming qualities is an unrelenting fascination with the mistakes of our past.

We pick apart each misadventure and catastrophe in order to avoid their repetition in the future.

In the aftermath of any significant crisis, society demands that the cause of the disaster be clearly identified, as well as any contributory or aggravating factors.

This is particularly true of tragedies that have historically occurred in a nautical setting.

The harsh and unyielding nature of the oceans have remained unchanged throughout the ages.

No matter what advances in communication technology or failsafes we have introduced to protect the sailors who traverse them, these vast bodies of water remain amongst the most dangerous environments on the planet.

Over time, mistakes of the past have been rectified, from lighthouses to lifeboats and radio sets to GPS systems.

With every seafaring disaster, Shipbuilders have developed mechanisms in order to prevent such losses from being repeated.

And yet despite their finest efforts, seafaring craft continue to vanish from our seas daily.

Sometimes these tragedies are born of human error in the construction or handling of the vessel.

In other instances, the fault lies with the savagery of nature itself, from tempestuous weather to natural disasters.

But in a small number of cases, a cause is never identified or simply defies explanation.

In this series, we will examine the disappearances of some infamous vessels, and on occasion, the crews that inexplicably vanished from them.

We will explore the mysteries surrounding the remains of ships that were located far away from where they should have sunk, and evidence of alleged cryptids that remain undiscovered beneath the waves.

In this episode, we start by exploring the notion of ghost ships.

This phenomenon usually relates to visions of spectral vessels, which have returned to traverse the high seas long after having been sunk.

But there is another form of ghost ship, one beset by the antagonisms of an unseen phenomenon, often leading to the deaths of the crews who sail aboard them.

In the early hours of the 8th of February 1904, the Japanese Navy attacked the Russian fleet whilst it lay at anchor in Port Arthur.

The Japanese ships struck without warning, hours in advance of an official declaration of war.

This attack would prove to be the opening salvo in a brutal conflict that would play out over the following two years, the precursor to a much larger and bloody global conflict.

The unexpected nature of the campaign took the Russian Admiralty by surprise, necessitating an immediate build-up of their forces.

Hundreds of civilian ships were pressed into military service, including a steam freighter named the Ivan Vasily, which had previously been employed to haul freight across the Baltic Sea between Russia and Finland.

Captain Sven Andrist received orders to sail from his vessel's home port of St.

Petersburg and deliver war supplies to Russian ships stationed in Vladivostok.

The journey would take them around the Cape of Africa, much further than they had travelled before.

But what the Ivan Vasily lacked in speed, it compensated for in reliability.

and several weeks later, the crew found themselves taking on coal beneath the sunny skies of South Africa.

It was as they departed Cape Town that Captain Andrist recorded a noticeable change in the mood of his crew.

Sailors heard whispered voices behind them as they moved around the boat, and witnessed shapeless black figures passing straight through metal bulkheads.

Those tasked with maintaining watch reported hearing ghostly footsteps.

traversing the deck of the vessel in the dead of night.

NERS further frayed as these incidents escalated in terms of frequency and intensity.

Crew members described feeling temperatures suddenly plunge and then immediately rise again, as if an invisible force had passed directly through their cabin.

Fights started to break out, with sailors accusing one another of playing tricks.

Then, things deteriorated further.

After several nights, The men awoke to pitiful screams emanating from the ship's deck.

They emerged to find one of their crewmates huddled against a bulkhead, bulkhead, howling and clawing wildly at his eyes.

The unfortunate sailor was sedated, and when he awoke the following morning, he claimed to have witnessed a mysterious figure walking the length of the boat.

He described this apparition as human in shape, but with no discernible features.

It seemed composed of a luminous mist, and when he shouted a challenge, it had turned and walked directly through one of the ship's lifeboats, disappearing from view.

The sailor said that the very sight of the intruder had consumed him with hopelessness and an inexplicable urge to end his own life.

A search of the ship uncovered nothing, but Captain Andres decided to double the number of sailors tasked with watching the deck at night.

The next two evenings passed without incident, but as the Ivan Vasily neared its destination, A bizarre and tragic incident transpired.

The crew were again awoken by panic shouting coming from the deck and hurried to see what was happening.

They found the two men assigned to the watch rolling around on the floor, strangling one another.

As others tried to intervene, they too seemed to be consumed by madness, lashing out and trying to throttle their comrades.

This terrifying scenario played out for several minutes, until a sailor named Alec Govinsky silently rose to his feet and hurled himself from the boat into the churning black waters below.

Govinsky's death had an immediate effect, causing the other men to stop in their tracks.

He had been one of the original two victims, his companions stating that they had encountered a glowing shape moving towards them before they completely lost their minds and began to fight.

When the ship arrived at Vladivostok the following morning, 12 sailors promptly deserted, only to be detained by sentries and herded back onto the ship.

Having delivered their supplies, the crew were subsequently tasked with another mission, down through the East China Sea to the port of Hong Kong.

Despite assurances from the captain that whatever had taken place had now ended, the men were visibly apprehensive as they readied for departure.

It would take little time for their worst fears to be realised.

On the third evening of the voyage, there was a further sighting of the nocturnal spectre, which ended with another crew member stabbing himself to death in the galley.

Two nights later, one of the ship's stokers was found deceased in his cabin.

The man appeared to have been scared to death, his lifeless eyes wide open in fear, hands outstretched as if to ward off an attacker.

There would be one more tragedy before the Ivan Vasily reached its destination.

As it neared Hong Kong, Captain Andrist hurled himself off the stern, down onto the propellers below.

The crew who had been on the bridge at the time reported that his eyes had suddenly glazed over before he had silently risen and walked stiffly to the rear of the boat, ignoring any attempts to stop him.

With no soldiers left on board, all the crew, with the exception of Second Officer Hansen and five other sailors, immediately deserted the ship.

It took several weeks to assemble a new crew, with new orders necessitating a trip to Sydney, Sydney, to collect a cargo of wool.

Whether it was a sense of duty or merely stubbornness that motivated Hansen, his decision to remain aboard the ship would prove disastrous.

Immediately prior to their arrival in Australia, he retired to his cabin and ended his life with a revolver.

The Navy were forced to dispatch a replacement crew to Sydney.

as word had spread around the port about the curse hanging over the ship.

During its next journey to San Francisco, another fight erupted between two sailors who had been stationed on watch.

They were confined below decks, howling like animals until they broke free of their shackles and somehow managed to strangle one another.

The relief captain would suffer the same horrific fate as Second Officer Hansen, shooting himself in the head with a pistol before reaching America.

His panicked crew immediately turned the ship around and made their way directly to Vladivostok, where they were detained for mutiny.

The Ivan Vasily's notoriety as a death ship meant that few were willing to sail with her.

She spent the next few years gradually rusting away where she was abandoned.

In 1907, a group of drunken men decided to be done with her once and for all, creeping aboard in the dead of night and setting a fire.

As the doomed vessel was rapidly consumed by the Inferno, the docks lined with sailors who cheered as it keeled keeled over and started to sink.

But before the ship slipped beneath the waves, an eerie and unnatural scream emanated from deep inside her, one that sent chills down the spines of the assembled onlookers.

In December of 1924, a tanker named the SS Watertown sailed from its home port in California to deliver a consignment of oil to New York.

It was a lengthy journey, requiring the vessel to stop in New Orleans and to traverse the Panama Canal, but the ship had not even cleared the western seaboard when tragedy struck.

Two of her crew members, James Courtney and Michael Meehan, found themselves subject to sanctions imposed by Captain Keith Tracy for a minor offence.

Part of this punishment involved the pair being tasked with cleaning one of the empty cargo tanks in the ship's hold.

Not long after the two sailors had clambered down inside the tank, the hatch above them had slammed slammed shut.

Isolated deep in the bowels of the vessel, nobody heard their screams for help, nor the desperate hammering of their fists against the metal walls, and eventually, both men succumbed to the toxic fumes which permeated the confined space.

The senseless nature of their deaths made the rest of the crew uneasy.

Even though neither of the two victims had been especially popular amongst their colleagues, a short service was held for them by Captain Tracy, with their bodies bodies weighted down and committed to the deep.

But this would not be the last time that either Mihan or Courtney would be encountered by their comrades.

The following morning, the ship's first mate was stood sipping a mug of coffee on the stern of the tanker when he suddenly cried out in horror.

In the waters below, he could clearly see the faces of the two dead crewmen looking up at him.

Their eyes were wide open, their mouths moving soundlessly before they faded away after a few seconds.

The captain was somewhat sceptical of his deck officer's report, attributing the incident to fatigue or an overactive imagination, but subsequent events would soon change his opinion.

Over the coming days, dozens more of the Watertown's crew came forward to report the same thing, witnessing the faces of the two dead sailors following behind in the ship's wake.

So great was the consternation amongst those on board, that not only did Keith Tracy record it in the ship's log, he also raised the issue with the shipping company when the vessel docked at New Orleans.

He was sarcastically advised to take a photograph of the phenomenon, a reply that prompted him to purchase a camera before once again setting sail.

As soon as the tanker was out on the open seas, further reports of the two ghostly figures following the ship started to surface.

Upon waking every morning, Tracy made his way to the rear of the vessel, camera in hand, before he finally witnessed the Phantom Sailors for himself.

On the third morning of the voyage, he had arisen and walked down to the stern, when he caught sight of two pale objects lying in the water a short distance away.

He immediately raised the camera he was holding and took six photographs before the faces faded away.

Tracy was deeply disturbed by what he witnessed.

experiencing a paralysing sense of fear and self-doubt.

As he paced back to his cabin, he tried to figure out the best course of action, deciding to lock the camera away in a secure cabinet.

When the ship finally arrived in New York, he disembarked and made his way directly to the shipping company's offices, where he surrendered the camera and undeveloped film.

The first five photographs that Tracy had taken showed nothing untoward, but the sixth photo has become one of the most infamous depictions of an alleged ghost in history.

The image clearly shows what appears to be two faces of two adult males staring back up at the camera, surrounded by swirling seas.

Unsettled by the claims made by their employee and the accompanying photograph, the shipping company took the negatives to the offices of the Burns Detective Agency, who confirmed there were no indications of tampering or alteration.

Whatever business the dead sailors had with their crew, It appeared to end with the delivery of their cargo, as they were not seen on the return leg of the journey, or indeed, ever again.

Roughly 40km north of Perth, on the western coast of Australia, the barnacle-covered remains of a sunken vessel can still be seen jutting out of the waters, not far from the shoreline.

This wreck is the SS Alcamos.

which holds the unwanted accolade of being one of the unluckiest ships to ever sail the seas.

The vessel was one of nearly 3,000 Liberty ships that were hastily manufactured by America during the Second World War, in order to transport desperately needed supplies across the Atlantic to Great Britain.

They were famous for the speed with which they were constructed, taking a mere 10 days to assemble from start to finish.

But even before her hull had touched the water, the Alkamos had already claimed the life of one unfortunate soul.

One evening during construction, the welder was found to be absent from the assembly team.

It was assumed that the missing man had slipped away from his duties due to illness or perhaps indolence.

It was not until the following day that he was discovered to have fallen between the hull plates and had passed away whilst trapped in the space between them.

The Alkamoz was launched on the 20th of October 1943, assigned to the Norwegian trade mission under the command of Captain Torbjörn Thorsen.

Sadly, the ship's maiden voyage did little to shake its unlucky reputation.

During an attack by German U-boats, the crew found themselves grounded on an uncharted reef, and spent the next six hours frantically trying to free their stricken vessel.

During this time, two other ships which approached to assist them were sunk by enemy torpedoes.

The sailors of the Alkamos were a mixture of Norwegian and Canadian service personnel, including a radio operator named Maud Steen.

Tragically, whilst en route to Naples to deliver gliders to the Allied forces, Steen was shot and killed by a Norwegian crewmate, who then turned the gun on himself.

Concerned about negative publicity, the Canadian authorities claimed he had in fact been killed by enemy fire, a lie that was maintained until the conflict's end.

With the war over and the ship no longer needed by the American government, it was sold off to a private company, where bad luck and numerous accidents caused it to change hands on a near-regular basis.

In 1963, having been sold to a Greek shipping company, the Alkamoz was sailing from Jakarta to Bunbury when it again struck a reef off the Australian coast.

The vessel was towed into Fremantle where it was discovered that its propeller was catastrophically damaged.

With no other option, it was secured to a tugboat, which then set out to tow it to Hong Kong for a further attempt at repair.

Within an hour of the tug's departure, the tow line between the two craft snapped, sending the cursed freighter crashing against the nearby shoreline.

After the crew had secured the grounded vessel as best they could, they were evacuated, and local caretakers were employed until a salvage operation could be launched.

The men assigned to this task reported feeling uneasy, as if someone else was aboard the boat with them.

whispering and shuffling around the ship's cabins at night.

Two further attempts to take the Alchemoz under tow ended in disaster, with one of the rescue ships catching fire and another tow line failure leaving it stranded on a stretch of coastline known as Eglinton Rocks.

Her owners could do little more than house more caretakers and try to raise the funds for further salvage attempts.

Almost immediately, local residents hired to act as the ship's custodians refused to spend the night on board her.

They would find supplies and equipment inexplicably moved around when their backs had been turned.

The smell and sounds of a dog were apparent, even though one was not present, and there were repeated sightings of a mysterious spectral figure dressed in oilskins, shuffling from room to room.

As time wore on, the wreck became embroiled in a bitter legal battle, until it finally deteriorated to the point where it couldn't be refloated.

As salvage workers moved in to remove anything of value, there were yet more inexplicable occurrences.

Tools would vanish, only to reappear a day or so later, placed in inaccessible parts of the boat.

The smells of cooking emanated from the galley, even though it was long past any means of preparing meals, and several of the workers reported being pushed or assaulted by an invisible entity.

This strange activity was not only confined to the wreck itself.

Locals riding horses or walking their pets on the beach within 500 meters of the ship reported that their animals became distressed and refused to proceed any further.

A significant number of swimmers have disappeared or drowned in the vicinity of the vessel, including a long-distance swimmer named Herbert Voigt.

He had been training in the waters nearby when he vanished.

His skull was found washed upon the wreck a few months later.

Misfortune and calamity have consistently befallen anybody associated with the Alchemos.

A naval diver named Ted Snyder, who was contracted to demolish the shipwreck, died in a plane crash.

An author who visited the wreck in order to research a book he was writing on the ship's history fell gravely ill, having to spend 10 months in hospital prior to his recovery.

And the wife of one of the caretakers suffered a harsh fall whilst visiting him there and lost the baby she was carrying as a result.

It remains unknown what mysterious force hangs over the Alchemoz, frustrating any and all efforts to remove her.

Some say it is the vengeful spirit of Maud Steen.

Still others claim it is the ghost of the construction worker killed during her assembly.

Regardless, she remains where she eventually came to rest, in an isolated grave, just off the Australian coast.

It was the morning of the 25th of March 1882.

and the clouds hanging low over the port of Vicksburg were dark and foreboding.

Down on the docks, the captain of the Iroquois chief watched on impassively as the men hurried back and forth across the deck, eager to secure their cargo and cast off ahead of the approaching storm.

They were an experienced crew, most of whom had spent the bulk of their lives travelling up and down the Mississippi River and her tributaries, giving him complete faith that they would achieve the task before the coming downpour.

The unexpected blast of a ship's horn suddenly shook him from his thoughts, and as he looked up, he saw another ship passing by, heading out of port.

The captain smiled and cheerfully waved back as the other vessel pulled away, towing five heavily laden barges behind her.

It was the SS Iron Mountain, a fellow paddle steamer, which they regularly encountered whilst traversing the river.

From the looks of things, she was carrying cotton and molluses on this trip, most likely as far upriver as Pittsburgh.

Within the hour, his own ship was ready to depart, casting off and following northwards.

They had hardly cleared the port when the expected rainfall came in, hammering down and drastically reducing visibility.

As a precaution, orders were issued for the engine speed to be halved and the number of lookouts doubled.

Mercifully, the river traffic that afternoon was light, but a short time into the journey, there was a sharp cry of alarm from the bow.

The captain instinctively ordered the engine room to stop the engines, before hurrying forwards through the driving rain to ascertain the issue.

As he neared the lookouts, he suddenly saw a pair of dark shapes flowing downriver along the starboard side of his ship.

He immediately recognised them as the barges he had seen being towed behind the Iron Mountain.

Both were now loose and drifting in circles, as the swirling current propelled them further downstream.

Barely had he reached the two crew members standing at the ship's bow before two more barges materialised, one of which bounced harmlessly off the chief's hull before continuing on its way.

Assuming something serious must have befallen the other vessel, the captain ordered the rest of the crew up onto the deck, equipped with ropes and poles.

As the paddle steamer slowly laboured upriver, its horn repeatedly sounded, and the crew bellowed offers of help and assistance into the vale of the torrential downpour.

A short distance upstream, not far from where the river joined Lake Providence, the ship encountered the fifth barge, held fast along the riverbank by a fallen tree.

As the Iroquois chief slowly manoeuvred alongside the stricken vessel, The crew gasped in horror as they caught sight of a female body, trapped by the fast-flowing current against the side of the boat.

It soon became clear that there was no significant damage to the barge itself, although the rope that had been used to secure it appeared to have been severed rather than frayed.

The dead woman's clothing identified her as a stewardess, and she would be the only member of the Iron Mountains 55 crew to be found that day.

Once the matter had been reported to the authorities, Naval divers were deployed along the river, but no wreckage was to be found, despite the significant size of the ship which had disappeared.

It would not be until several months later that any trace of the Iron Mountain was uncovered, in circumstances that raised far more questions than answers.

Workers ploughing the land near the town of Omega uncovered wooden timbers and furnishings, which were subsequently identified as originating from the missing vessel.

How these remains had come to be buried in a field situated so far away from the river defied explanation, as did the whereabouts of the rest of the steamer.

It was as if a mighty force had come down from on high and plucked the helpless ship right out of the water.

Some commentators believe that this is exactly what happened, citing the incident as one of the earliest cases of alien abduction.

They hypothesise that an extraterrestrial technology removed the vessel and her crew from the river, hidden by the poor weather conditions, depositing minor wreckage further inland as they departed.

A more rational explanation may lie in the geography of the Mississippi River itself.

Prone to heavy flooding in poor weather, some believe that the steamer suffered a catastrophic accident of some kind, breaking into smaller debris.

This wreckage may have been washed clear of the waterway through burst levees, quickly becoming concealed under the flooded and muddy fields that bordered the river.

The official cause attributed to the ship's disappearance was that she must have struck a submerged tree and rapidly sunk, the barges breaking free as she went down.

This should, however, have resulted in her wreckage remaining largely intact, making it easy to locate.

Until more of her remains are found, her disappearance will remain one of America's most enduring maritime mysteries.

In the same year that the Iron Mountain disappeared, further along the eastern seaboard in the shipyards shipyards of Philadelphia, construction was finally completed on the latest passenger ship commissioned by the Red Dee Shipping Line.

The SS Valencia would spend the next 16 years ferrying passengers back and forth between New York and Caracas, before she was pressed into military service during the Spanish-American War.

The post-war years would prove to be difficult.

She was hard to handle in high seas.

and the thickness of her bulkhead had fallen below recommended safety standards.

There There were a series of embarrassing collisions, followed by a scandal involving her purser overpricing the tickets he had been selling, all of which rendered the ship far less attractive to prospective passengers.

In 1906, the Valencia was temporarily assigned to a new route, running from San Francisco to Seattle, due to one of her sister ships requiring an extensive refit.

On the 20th of January, as she was passing Cape Beale near Vancouver Island, deteriorating weather conditions forced her onto a reef a mere 100 yards from the shoreline.

Against the captain's explicit orders, his panicked crew hurriedly launched the lifeboats.

All but one were either ripped away or smashed to pieces by the angry seas that repeatedly crashed against the side of the ship.

The hull of the stricken vessel then gradually began to disintegrate as the keel seasawed back and forth upon the rocks.

Passengers hurrying from their cabins were washed overboard by walls of water which swept across the deck.

Women hugging their children were consumed by the churning ocean, whilst others clung to whatever they could lay their hands on.

A solitary lifeboat containing nine men eventually made it to shore, the occupants staring in anguish at the nightmarish scene, before hurrying to find help.

As the residents of Victoria hurried across land to the cliffs, three commercial ships also launched from the harbour, but when they arrived, they were unable to approach the disintegrating wreck due to the dangerously high seas.

Their crews watched on helplessly, as those still alive were eventually cast into the waters, or were crushed as the dying vessel's superstructure finally collapsed upon them.

All but 37 souls were lost, including all the women and children.

Rescue ships frantically combed the raging seas for survivors, including the city of Topeka, which was filled with volunteer staff from Victoria's main hospital.

In a small act of mercy, this ship was able to locate two life rafts containing 18 sailors, their lives undoubtedly saved by the medical training of the doctors and nurses present.

It was whilst the rescuers were returning to port the next morning that the first mysterious incident associated with the disaster was reported.

As the rescue ship approached Victoria, it slowed to inform another passing vessel about the survivors, when a number of the crew suddenly cried out in horror and alarm.

In the thick black smoke pouring out of the steamer's funnel, the outline of the SS Valencia was clearly depicted, before slowly fading away into the morning breeze.

In the weeks and months that followed, the harbour master in Victoria received a number of reports from other ships arriving at the port that they had sighted an ocean liner in difficulty not far from the city.

Some of the captains making these allegations described seeing a ship which resembled the Valencia struggling to make headway through the rough seas before disappearing beneath the waves.

Other witnesses described seeing a doomed vessel breaking apart on the rocks, tiny figures helplessly clinging to her structure.

When they tried to approach in order to render assistance, the ship and survivors promptly vanished.

leaving the rescuers bewildered.

Stories told by local fishermen were even more lurid.

Several described how at night, lifeboats from the Valencia rowed up and down the coastline, oars being pulled by the bloated and waterlogged corpses of her long-dead crew.

Six months after the incident, a native hunter claimed to have located a lifeboat trapped in a sea cave not far from Pacina Bay.

He described how the cave was filled with seawater, but that the entrance was obstructed by a sizable fallen boulder.

Inside, he had seen a small boat drifting in a a circular motion on the water, with eight skeletons lying inside it.

Despite an extensive search, the authorities were subsequently unable to locate the cave.

Bizarrely, one of the Valencia's lifeboats did eventually turn up, when it was found floating in the sea off Barclay Sound in 1933.

Despite having been missing for over 27 years, it was recovered as polished and pristine as the day it had been launched from the stricken ship and remains on display in the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.

No explanation of how it endured for so long, without becoming damaged or degraded by the elements, has ever been offered.

So, what are we to make of the inexplicable events that occurred in the wake of this tragedy?

Was the incident somehow anchored to the present day, doomed to play out again and again by the tortured spirits of those who died?

Perhaps, but the emotional trauma of having witnessed such a senseless loss of life must have significantly affected the minds of those involved.

This is likely what led to the image of the sunken ship being sighted aboard the city of Topeka.

Reports of ghost ships and haunted lifeboats moving along the coast can be similarly explained, a product of overactive imaginations or even deliberate hoaxes.

But the incidents involving the ship's lifeboats prove more troublesome to dismiss.

In the chaos and confusion of the sinking, it is possible, even likely, that some of the lifeboats managed to drift free, perhaps even containing the bodies of the dead or dying.

It's feasible that one may have been washed into a sea cave, where its occupants slowly wasted away until it eventually sank, still waiting to be found.

Likewise, it is conceivable that one may have been trapped in a sheltered area, subsequently found and recovered, and later released out of a sense of guilt or a desire to perpetuate a hoax.

Whilst difficult to explain, explain, these occurrences do provide a means of revisiting the tale, keeping the tragedy alive in the public consciousness.

The Great Lakes are some of the most hazardous maritime regions on the planet, and have claimed the lives of countless sailors throughout the ages.

Ships have been navigating these five vast waterways since the 17th century.

and it is estimated that the remains of as many as 25,000 lost vessels may languish on the muddy beds which lie beneath beneath these seemingly endless tracks of water.

It is the sheer geographical size of the area that makes it so deadly, the region possessing the ability to generate its own unpredictable weather systems.

When storms sweep in from one of the lakes, they quickly grow in speed and intensity, with no geological features to absorb or impede their power.

Boats caught out in these tempests have no available refuge or hiding place, with little prospect of assistance should they succumb to nature's fury.

On the evening of the 5th of December 1927, the SS Kamloops was hurrying across Lake Superior, bound for Thunder Bay.

Like many other local vessels of the time, the steamer was designed for quick runs of mixed cargo, her owners eager to complete as many deliveries as possible before the arrival of winter prevented any further access across the lakes.

Unfortunately for the Kamloops, that evening saw the onset of a massive ice storm.

She was last sighted by another ship, heavily coated in ice and drifting towards the southeastern shore of Isle Royale, having apparently lost power.

It would be another week before weather conditions eased sufficiently to allow a search to begin, an undertaking that would uncover nothing but misery.

Initial attempts to locate the missing boat proved fruitless.

It was not until six months later that fishermen discovered minor wreckage in the bodies of some of her crew, washed up on Isle Royale.

Only nine of the ship's complement had made it to the shore.

With no available means of creating shelter or warmth, most had succumbed to hypothermia, whilst an unlucky few had fell victim to the island's wolf population.

The years afterwards, there were reports of a phantom boat drifting through the area, half submerged and covered in ice, even during the summer months.

Many ships and their crews claim to have witnessed the Kamloops, these alleged sightings persisting until the summer of 1977.

The missing shipwreck was eventually found northeast of Isle Royale, lying on her side under 260 feet of water, her cargo spread out on the lakebed around her.

As with many wrecks of the Great Lakes, The Kamloops quickly became a focal point for the international diving community, and it was at this point that stories of a unique and terrifying phenomenon began to circulate.

Both the hull of the vessel and its contents were remarkably well preserved, as was the body of one of her crew, who had failed to make it off the ship prior to its loss.

During the earliest dives, the remains of an adult male were found trapped in the ship's engine room.

Due to the extremely cold temperatures of the water and the lack of marine predators at the location, this corpse was intact and fully clothed, a wedding ring clearly visible on his finger.

Successive divers then mysteriously recorded that the deceased sailor, nicknamed Grandpa, was somehow moving around the wreck.

Some visitors would find him lying on a bunk in one of the cabins, whilst others encountered him on the ship's bridge, staring out into the darkness.

Perhaps the most disturbing sightings came from explorers who claimed to have been followed around by him.

Several divers have reportedly fled the wreck in terror, having turned to see the pale figure silently moving along the dark corridors behind them, watching their progress through sightless glassy eyes.

In a small number of accounts, witnesses state that the corpses appear to be reaching out in an attempt to touch them.

A minority even claim that what they have encountered must be the dead sailor's ghost, as during the same trip to the boat, they have subsequently found his body still inside the engine room, trapped between pieces of fallen wreckage.

Is it possible that somewhere deep inside Grandpa's remains, some small spark of consciousness has somehow been preserved, allowing him to interact with visitors to his final resting place?

Sceptics are quick to point out that currents around the bottom of the lake and disturbances in the water caused by the progress of the divers themselves may have been sufficient to cause some degree of animation to the body.

If indeed Grandpa's spirit still inhabits the wreckage of the Kamloops, then we can only hope that his existence is a peaceful one.

This is certainly the perception of the majority of those who have encountered him, many describing the dead sailor as appearing inquisitive rather than hostile in any way.

Whilst potential explanations have been offered for each of the mysteries we have featured in this episode, pressing questions persist that often serve to undermine them.

It remains clear that our seas and oceans are a place that must be respected and feared rather than taken for granted.