When a ship or plane vanishes, people immediately create theories on what happened. Sometimes, when the wreckage is found or the ship mysteriously returns to port with no crew on board, these horrible theories become a reality…
The Rose-Noelle
In 1989, four sailors boarded the Rose-Noëlle for a leisurely voyage. They set off the coast of New Zealand and planned on being out on the water for a few days. They were quickly faced with the harsh truth that is not the case…
Freak Storm
Soon after they set sail, a huge storm rolled in and capsized their ship. The ship was immediately lost on all radars, and after an extensive search, the New Zealand coast guard declared them lost at sea and dead…
They Were Half Right
The men were lost at sea, but they weren’t dead. In fact, they were far from it. They ended up construction a shelter inside of the half-sunken ship. The ship was scuttled, so it was able to stay afloat. Unfortunately, that also meant they couldn’t steer it.
Survival
They were able to conjure up a freshwater collection system and figure out how to catch and cook fish. After 119 days, they were able to land ashore on Great Barrier Island near Tonga. They were alive and semi-well.
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
The Uruguayan rugby chartered this flight in 1972. It ended up going off the radar while they were passing through the Andes Mountains. Allegedly, the plane crashed into the peaks of the mountain…
No Trace
Back in the day, there was no trace of the place. They couldn’t even find the wreckage. People searched in the area for eight days before calling off the search. Months later, they were found against all odds…
Survivors
Somehow, 33 passengers had survived the crash. 12 ended up perishing. They survived through the harsh, frigid conditions of the Andes Mountains for months. They ended up having to eat the bodies of the dead in order to survive.
More Deaths
After a while, only 16 remained as many others perished. They had been rescued, but still faced the backlash of cannibalism despite overcoming many peoples worst nightmares.
The Ourang Medan
In February of 1948, all of the nearby vessels sailing in the straights of Malacca received a Morse code emergency signal that haunted everyone who received it…
The Signal
The ships received this call for help, “All Officers, including the Captain, are dead. Lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead. … I die.”
Finding the Men
A ship was able to locate the ship that was drifting aimlessly. They were able to board the ship to see what happened. As the message said, every crewmember was dead in a horrific manner…
The Possible Truth…
It seemed that the ship was illegally smuggling potassium cyanide and other nerve gases. It seems that there was a leak, and it poisoned the entire crew… The muscles on their faces were tight and twisted, giving the people who found them a scare.
Flight 19
The Bermuda Triangle is the place where all missing ships and airplanes end up, right? It’s apparent that this is a popular theory, but is usually debunked… Except in the case with Flight 19.
Wrong Turns
A group of Marine and Navy pilots took off from Florida in five torpedo bombers on December 5th, 1945. The flight leader suddenly began making weird turns. He was under the belief that the compass was broken and tried to correct it.
Hundreds of Miles
At one point, he communicated that he had ended up hundreds of miles off course. Flight 19 ended up getting lost in a fog. There was a bizarre buzzing sound over the radio, and then, they vanished.
Search and Rescue
The Navy immediately went into a search and rescue mission but found nothing. Even some of the search teams went off the radar as well, going missing just like Flight 19. None of the people have been found.
The Mary Celeste
In 1872, the Mary Celeste set sail from New York and vanished soon after. The ship did not reach its end location. Eight days later, it was seen sailing 600 miles off the coast of Portugal, full sail.
Curious
The folks who found the ship boarded it and immediately became confused. There was no one on board, navigational equipment was missing, but there were no signs of struggle. After investigating, they ruled out foul play.
One Possibility…
After investigating further, they found out that the Mary Celeste was carrying alcohol. It seemed as if the alcohol barrels may have exploded, possibly from an undersea quake…
Panicked Crew
This eruption from below deck would easily alarm the crew. They believe that the crew must have jumped off the ship under the guise of it about to explode… Even though it didn’t.
The Witchcraft
In December of 1967, hotel millionaire Dan Burack set sail with a friend on Burack’s nice new cabin cruiser, the Witchcraft. All they wanted to do was set sail to check out the Christmas lights along the Miami shoreline.
Unsinkable
Naturally, Burack had claimed time and time again that the Witchcraft was unsinkable. At 9 p.m., he called the Coast Guard to tell them that he hit something and needed to be towed back to shore. They were less than a mile offshore, so Burack was calm and collected.
Searching for Burack
The Coast Guard headed to his pinged location about twenty minutes later but found nothing. They tried to ping him again but didn’t have any luck.
No Signs
They ended up searching through 24,500 square miles to find the sunken boat without any luck. There’s no reason why the ship disappeared…
The Clotilda
The Clotilda shipped over 100 slaves from Benin to Alabama in the 1860s. It all started with a bet…
Betting
A local businessman bet that he could bring a ship of Slaves into the Southern states. He ended up kidnapping 110 West Africans and loaded them into his ship.
It Never Made It
Naturally, the ship never made it. No one knew what happened to it, and only recently did was wreckage found.
Years Later
Years later, the wreckage of the Clotilda was found. It was burned at the bottom of the Mobile River. No one will know what happened…
The Nina
The Nina was an 85-year-old sailing yacht that did not have the modern-age safety equipment that most boats have now. On May 29th, 2013, a group of friends boarded the Nina for a month-long voyage from New Zealand to Australia.
All Was Well… For Now
The first week of sailing went off without a hitch. The folks on the ship were able to communicate daily with the people on land. But, on June 4th, they hit a storm…
Text Message Panic
The people on shore were messaging the people on board via text message as they tried to help them get through this storm. Unsurprisingly, texting is not the best method of communication for a boat…
Silence
There was silence after a while. The people on land had not gotten a text back, and they assumed the worst. Even after searching, there was no sign of the Nina. A month later, a message had reached the meteorologist’s phone. “Storm sails shredded last night, now bare poles.” Unfortunately, this didn’t bring on any more insight on what happened to them…
The U.S.S. Cyclops
This ship was one of the U.S. Navy’s largest World War I ships. In 1918, it was on its way from Brazil to Baltimore, Maryland with a large shipment of raw materials. During that trip, it disappeared.
Sudden Silence
After a while, there was silence. There was no distress signal sent out and no radio calls logged in the area. It just… disappeared. One of the largest vessels in the U.S. arsenal just, gone!
Wide Array of Theories
Some believe that a German U-boat struck the Cyclops down. In later years, that was disproven as German records show that there were no U-boats in the area. The other theory is a bit outlandish…
Giant Squid
Yeah, a giant squid. Some believe that the ship got caught up in some giant tentacles and was pulled under… The most likely case would probably be mutiny and sinking. To this day the ship has never been found.
Theodosia’s Ship
This is one of the more famous instances of disappearing ships. Theodosia Alston was the daughter of a wealthy New York politician. In 1812, she suffered the loss of her son and fell into a depression. Her family in North Carolina thought that they should visit her father in New York.
The Patriot
She got onto the ship from North Carolina to New York. Soon after they set sail, the boat vanished. There are tons of different stories about what happened to Theodosia…
The Legends
Some believe that pirates raided the ship and left no survivors. Others think they became the victims of a storm, or maybe even a mutiny… But, another legend came up after word spread.
Native American Chief Saw Theodosia
Apparently, a Native American Chief saw Theodosia crawl onto the beach one day. They took her in and took care of her, but she eventually died. Right before her death, she handed him a locket that said “Theodosia” on it.
Jose Salvador Alvarenga
A small fisherman’s boat disappeared off the coast of Mexico. Jose Salvador Alvarenga and his friend, Ezequiel Cordoba, vanished along with it. No one had any idea of where the boat could have gone.
He Survived
In a shocking turn of events, Alvarenga ended up surviving. He ended up swimming to shore on the Marshall Islands shoreline… 438 days after the boat went missing.
How Did He Survive?
Alvarenga survived by eating sea turtles, drinking turtle blood, his urine, rainwater, and even eating his fingernails. It’s crazy to think about what people will do when they want to survive…
His Buddy DIdn’t Make It
Unfortunately, Cordoba did not make it to shore with his friend. Cordoba’s family accused Alvaregna of eating his friend, but a lie detector turned out that he absolutely did not.
Octavius
In the early 1700s, the captain of the Octavius decided to go on a little gambling spree. He bet that instead of sailing all the way around Europe to Asia, he could take a shortcut through the Canadian Arctic.
Naturally, It Didn’t Go Well
It disappeared. The ship and the crew never showed up. Years and years later, a ship was discovered off the coast of Greenland. It was in-tact and still afloat, but it was an older ship…
Frozen Solid
The story as it that a boarding crew got onto the ship to investigate it. They found the captain still seated at his desk, frozen solid. The rest of the crew met a similar fate…
Don’t Cut Corners!
Obviously, the moral of the story here is to not cut corners and maybe be careful with your gambling. This is most likely a tall tale, but it’s not too crazy to be false…
Sea Bird
Back in 1750, a merchant ship was on a routine cargo run from Honduras. As it was making its way back to Rhode Island, it vanished. The last time someone saw the vessel was on the waters. A fishing boat logged seeing it and waving to the captain.
No Storms
It was allegedly calm on the seas while they were on their way home. So, when they were late to arrive at to port, those who were expecting them got worried. It ended up showing up days later off the coast of Rhode Island, but not under great circumstances…
They Board the Ship…
A boarding party got onto the ship to investigate since the ship itself never docked. When they got on board, there was no one to be found. There was no evidence on board to figure out what happened…
It Was As If They Vanished
When the men got on board, they detailed something extremely ghoulish… They claimed that the food was laid out on the table as there was a dinner that was never finished… The smell of tobacco still lingered in the cabin. There’s truly no other evidence to figure out what happened. They just vanished.
U.S.S. Scorpion
This is one of the most controversial missing ship stories out there because, once again, the U.S. government was caught in a lie. In May of 1986, the U.S.S. Scorpion was transporting radioactive material when it vanished.
Problematic Disappearance
The nuclear submarine had 99 people on board when it went missing, and there was, allegedly, no trace of it. The government said, “The certain cause of the loss of the Scorpion cannot be ascertained.”
Grieving Families
Basically, the poor families involved never got an answer to what happened to their loved ones. It seemed impossible for the government to lose an entire naval submarine… And it was because they didn’t lose it. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the families finally got the truth.
Russia Got Them
According to the newly declassified documents, the vessel was actually found off the coast of the Azores, Portugal, days after it sent out its final message. It turns out that it was taken out by a Soviet submarine.
Frederick Valentich
In 1978, 20-year-old Frederick Valentich was on a test flight when he vanished off the coast of Australia. There were no signs of the crash. His final recording to air traffic control was eerie…
Last Words
Valentich claimed that he saw a long, metallic ship that was shining a green light at him. It was looming over him. His last words were, “It is hovering, and it is not an aircraft.”
UFO Sightings
After his disappearance, other UFO sightings were coming in from the area. Some believe that he just hijacked the plane and disappeared on his own, but the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said that he did not exhibit bizarre behavior.
Inexperience
Since Valentich was training to be a pilot and was somewhat inexperienced, it’s possible to think that there was some human error on his part. He could have just encountered something that was normal but unknown to him.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
This is a huge one. In 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing and took 239 lives with it. Three different countries have tried to find the plane over the last five years but had no luck.
Millions of Dollars
There have been millions of dollars spent on trying to find anything about the flight but with little luck. They’ve only found a few scraps of the plane… Not even the black box can be found.
Bizarre Theories
There have been tons of theories about the plane. Something aliens took it, others believe it was shot down by enemy forces and covered up by that country. Others think that it was a massive murder-suicide by the pilot…
The Pilot Did It
The pilot was extremely off course before it went off the radar. They bizarre course could have been a hijacking, but people aren’t convinced. Also, the pilot’s computer had a flight simulator on it, and the bizarre route that he took was on it… Sketchy.