The Baychimo, the Ghost Ship of the Arctic
A cargo ship abandoned in the Arctic ice in 1931 kept being sighted, drifting with no crew, for nearly 40 years.
What was reported
The SS Baychimo, a cargo steamer of the Hudson's Bay Company, was trapped in pack ice off the north coast of Alaska in October 1931. The crew camped ashore to wait, but after a blizzard the ship had vanished, and the company assumed she'd sunk.
She hadn't. The Baychimo was seen drifting along the Alaskan coast many times in the decades that followed, sometimes boarded by hunters and travellers, but never salvaged. The last reported sighting was in 1969, frozen in the ice.
Explanations offered
Ice and currents in the Beaufort Sea could have carried her for years before she finally sank or was crushed. In 2006 the Alaskan government began a search, but the wreck has never been found.
- When
- Abandoned in 1931
- Where
- Beaufort Sea, off Alaska
- Witnesses
- Inuit hunters, traders and sailors
- Status
- Never found
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.