They Looked Inside Lost Bermuda Triangle Ship, Here’s What They Saw

The moon shines brightly and illuminates the black water of the ocean. Thick fog descends on it in ominous silence. Then, it’s suddenly broken by the creaking of wooden boards, followed by a rippling of the waves.

Through the fog, you see the outline of an old large ship. Its hull is rusty, and a strange cold is coming from it... But the most unsettling thing is that there’s no one on the deck.

The ship sails without a crew. No, this isn’t a mythical “Flying Dutchman”, but a very real ghost ship. September 2, 2019, the British Royal Navy’s Ice Patrol ship called the HMS Protector sails through the calm waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The time is 11 PM. Some of the ship’s crew are on deck, while others are sleeping in their cabins. The captain steers the ship and looks straight at the horizon.

The sky is lit up by an orange twilight, and clouds float in the distance. Suddenly, against this beautiful landscape, one of the sailors notices the black silhouette of an unknown ship. The captain slows down and steers the ship a little closer to the mysterious vessel. This is an old cargo ship 250 [ft (75 m)] feet long.

Attempts to contact the crew members lead to nothing. It seems the unknown boat is floating in the ocean by itself. There’s no one on board. At least no one is alive. The deck of the ship creaks from rocking on the waves. The sun sinks below the horizon and it gets dark. The ship looks terrifying. British sailors don’t dare to climb on that strange deck.

They take a photo, post it on the Internet, and sail away. “It seems our sailors met a real ghost ship!” “Yeah! I already know.” Many people on the Internet will assume the sailors met a real ghost ship. 5 months later, we’re in the village of Ballycotton in County Cork, Ireland. A local leaves the house early in the morning to go for a daily run.

Music in his headphones, fresh cool air, and a scenic route are ideal conditions for a good workout. The jogger runs along the road on the coast of the Celtic Sea. There was a strong storm last night and now the sea looks calm. The man runs along the top of a low cliff and notices a huge vessel.

An old rusty cargo ship 250 feet long lies on the beach, right among the rocks. No people on board. It seems the ship has been here for ages, but the local is sure this vessel wasn’t here yesterday. A little later, it turns out this is the same ship that the sailors from the HMS Protector saw 5 months ago, thousands of miles from this place.

The cargo ship called the Alta, was built in 1976. Nobody knows who used it all this time and for what purposes. It’s only known that in 2017, the ship was purchased by a new owner and marked with the flag of Tanzania.

It’s important to say that almost all cargo ships are equipped with AIS (Automatic Identification System) which is needed to track ship movements in the ocean. Since 2015, something strange started happening with Alta’s AIS. The ship disappeared from the satellites, then reappeared again. Over the past few years, this ship had changed several names and flags.

It’s not surprising that its AIS shut off and turned on numerous times. It’s said that some of those who disable AIS on their ships do so to hide outlaw activities. The ship’s captain, whoever it was, clearly didn’t want to show Alta’s movements. As AIS showed, in 2017, the ship had sailed near Greek port cities. The Alta made 12 stops in three such cities in different parts of Greece.

Then, the AIS signal disappeared, and 10 months later, the Alta reappeared near the northern coast of Africa, 1,200 miles from Greece. In September 2018, the ship was sailing about 1,400 mi (~2,200 km) miles southeast of Bermuda. And at that time, the crew members started having problems.

There were 10 people on board the Alta. On September 19, 2018, the ship’s engine failed right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The nearest shore was very far away. The ship began to drift.

As days passed, the crew couldn’t fix the vessel. Food supplies were running low. The crew started to panic and tried to contact someone. The situation got worse, as a strong hurricane was approaching the place where the ship broke down.

Crew members contacted the US Coast Guard. On October 2, a helicopter headed towards the ship. Food and water were unloaded on the Alta. This was enough for the crew to bide their time for several days. About a week later, a rescue boat sailed about 1,500 miles to reach the Alta and help the stranded sailors.

Shortly before the start of the hurricane, American rescuers succeeded. The entire crew of the wrecked ship was taken to Puerto Rico. The Alta remained drifting in the ocean.

After a while, another ship arrived to tow it to the coast of Guyana. Then, something went wrong — again. The ship was hijacked. Who did it, and why remains a mystery to this day. But then, for some unknown reason, the thieves decided to abandon the ship and left it to drift into the ocean.

For almost a year, the ship’s location couldn’t be tracked. Then in September 2019, the vessel was found by the British Royal Navy. How the Alta was able to cover the distance across the Atlantic and wash up on the coast of Ireland is unknown. An investigation has been launched in Ireland. It’s necessary to identify the owner of the vessel and find a responsible person to take on the task of towing it.

But no one has since been found. Once, an unknown person called the Irish authorities and introduced themselves as the owner of the ship, but didn’t provide any evidence. Several barrels of oil were found on board the Alta. To dismantle the ship, the Irish authorities will need to spend about 10 million euros. Local residents are annoyed by the wreck too: corroding metal is bad for the environment.

And kids have already snuck on board and posted a video on the Internet from inside the abandoned ship. The further fate of the Alta remains unresolved. It’s still lying there. That ship sailed in the ocean for just two years. Now imagine if some other managed to drift for 38! In all that time, no one could catch this ship, and people still seek it. That vessel is called the SS Baychimo.

It was a merchant ship owned by a Canadian trading company. In 1931, the ship got stuck in ice off the coast of Alaska. A strong snowstorm began. The team waited a week for it to end, but the storm only intensified. One day, the weather improved a bit, and part of the team was evacuated to the nearest city. Another part of the crew with the captain set up camp near the ship.

The storm started again and didn’t stop for a long time. The blizzard was so heavy that the ship’s captain couldn’t see beyond his arm’s reach. Finally, when the storm was over, the captain saw that the ship... simply vanished. He decided the Baychimo sank during the storm. A week later, the ship was found drifting near the place where it was lost.

The hull of the ship was damaged so badly that it was unsafe to sail on it. The captain decided to abandon the ship. However, it didn’t sink. For the next 38 years, it was drifting at various points along the Alaskan coast. Several times, people climbed on the ship, including native Alaskan residents and a group of researchers. Attempts to save the vessel from the sea ended in failure.

The salvage operations were hampered by drifting ice and bad weather. The last time it was seen was in 1969. The ship was frozen and blocked by the ice. In 2006, the government created a special project to find the Baychimo. However, in all these years, the ship still hasn’t been found. Its fate is unknown. It’s likely that the ship has finally found peace and is now lying on the seabed of the Chukchi Sea.