250-Foot Ghost Ship Reappears 2 Years After Disappearing Near Bermuda

yeah something like that [Music] February 16th 2020 jogger Barry MacDonald was running his usual route on the coast of Ireland near the village of Bally cotton he'd been forced to take a break the previous day due to the strong winds and heavy rains of wind storm Dennis but something was different this time a hulking 250 foot cargo ship had washed ashore with no sign of life aboard this boat known as the MV Alta was last seen two years prior to the southeast of Bermuda enroute from Greece to Haiti what happened to its crew and more importantly how could a vessel have sailed itself all the way from the Caribbean to Southeast Ireland was it salvagers spies ghosts but first this episode we'll be talking about abandoned ships like any abandoned structure it can be tempting to explore these but they can be structurally unsound please don't go around exploring old abandoned ships also ghosts don't exist as far as we know and with that out of the way let's get into it the MV Alta is a prime example of a ghost ship something with two very different definitions and a cultural impact big enough to make it the basis of numerous films a television series and about a million video games the first definition is more literal namely a boat manned by spectres such as the famous Man O'War the Flying Dutchman its cruise curse to eternally sail the sea and bring ill omens to any witnesses but for today we'll focus less on the mystical and more on the tangible definition a derelict ship with no living crew you know like the MV Alta or like the Mary Celeste one of history's most famous ghost ships the story goes that in December of 1874 the crew of the British Brigantine Dei Gratia spotted a ship drifting to the east of the Azores a series of Portuguese islands in the Atlantic who is the Mary Celeste another Brigantine sailing from New York City destined to arrive in Genoa Italy when the sailors boarded it they found it abandoned one of the ships pumps had been disassembled its lifeboat was missing all but nine barrels of its cargo of alcohol remained and there was enough food in water stores left to last six months a suspicious fine for sure which is probably why the courts investigated the de Gras Tia's crew though no evidence of foul play was found between the many many fictional accounts of the Mary Celeste history there are a few theories as to what actually happened one theory as read on the University College London news site posits that an explosion led to the abandonment of the vessel dr. Andreas Allah a professor of chemistry at UCL built a replica of the vessels hold and created a simulated alcohol leak then lit it ablaze the resulting explosions sent up a ball of fire more than enough to blow open the hatches and scare the crew into abandoning the ship but importantly did not burn anything leaving the simulation in a relatively pristine state otherwise however the boarding party did not record smelling any fumes and recorded the main hatch was secured another theory has put forward by documentarian and MacGregor is that the Mary Celeste chronometer a device that lets ships determine position was faulty leaving the ship's timeline off it also faced poor weather conditions so while these factors alone wouldn't be cause to abandon ship MacGregor also learned that the Mary Celeste previous cargo had included coal and the ship had undergone extensive repairs McGregor's theory is that coal and construction dust had clogged the pumps hence why one was found disassembled without pumps the captain couldn't tell how much water was in the hull and facing heavy weather the captain may have taken his chance at landing on the Azores and called to abandon ship the crew was never found and the Mary Celeste passed between a string of owners until it was loaded with worthless cargo to be deliberately wrecked as part of an insurance fraud ploy On January 3rd 1885 but as this happened more than a hundred years ago finding new evidence is difficult there are many other ghost ships without as much fame such as the seabird it was reported to have beached itself on the coast of Rhode Island with no crew on board and was said to have disappeared once its cargo was unload or you know maybe it was sold to a local merchant who changed the name go but what fun is that today we have things like GPS and steel-hulled boats so go ships must be a relic of a bygone age where sailors thought that at any moment their ship may be torn asunder by the dreaded Kraken not something that happens to modern vessels like the MV Alta right well not exactly go ships are still common enough it's just that these days there isn't as much mystery behind them after all there are a lot of bad things that can happen at sea surrounded by water on all sides for example Korean ghost ships for at least the last decade dozens of boats have been washing up on the coast of Japan Korean lettering on the sides of the vessels has led the Japanese Coast Guard to believe that the ships drifted from waters around the Democratic People's Republic of Korea colloquially known as the Hermit Kingdom in their reported statistics 57 boats were found in 2011 47 in 2012 80 in 2013 and 65 in 2014 but that number has increased in recent years the first peak was in 2017 with a hundred and four vessels found a figure which doubled in 2018 the nikkei asian review reported ninety nine boats washed ashore by December of 2019 and at least a hundred and fifty six boats were found by the end of 2019 according to The Japan Times so what's happening some suspect spies or defectors what do you think Oh slave bull abductions no but close thanks I would wait really one theory is that the ships are being used to reestablish an abduction program of Japanese citizens now this gets a bit dark so if you want to put some cream in your coffee I'll forgive you this time speaking to undercover Asia Kazuhiro Iraqi CEO of the abduction Research Organisation described how hermit Kingdom ran an operation to abduct Japanese citizens to fill gaps in skilled labor which peaked in the 1970s and a the fear is that these ships washed up on shore some with military uniforms around them may be used by spy seeking to infiltrate the country and kidnap citizens however the size and condition of the boats and their crew suggests a different story yeah I don't like where this is going I'm sorry but many of these ships are small wooden fishing boats that aren't exactly abandoned often containing the remains of their crews according to Judo Ishimaru an investigative journalist specializing in the DPRK a hermit Kingdom fishing company reports that Jung chin one of the country's four largest cities is known as widow's town because of the number of fishermen who go missing at sea and never return alive malnutrition is common within hermit Kingdom according to Business Insider and the South China Morning Post has reported that government mandates for bigger fish caches have led to fishermen traveling further and further afield taking larger risks to bring in larger hauls and the increase in ghost ship sightings came in 2017 after a series of sanctions was issued to hermit Kingdom including restrictions on coal and oil trade from China which leads to the conclusion that these ghost ships are the result of desperate fishermen taking risk that their ships just aren't equipped to handle ending in tragedy for many and leaving the boats to wash ashore but that's the sea of japan' a sea contained by Japan and the Korean Peninsula the MV ulties route from Haiti to Ireland is more open in a much larger distance around five thousand and five kilometers compared to a thousand and forty three kilometers a lot bigger besides the MV Alta is a significantly larger and sturdier boat than the fishing ships washing up in Japan so what happened well in this case we have some solid info that helps us recount the tale of this spectral journey the Alta was built in 1976 and operated in well-traveled waters in an age of high communication September 2018 the Alta was enroute to Haiti from Greece when the ship became disabled according to the Gloucester Times the crew of ten found themselves unable to make repairs and were stranded about thirteen hundred and eighty miles to the southeast of Bermuda they drifted for three weeks rationing their food stores with more supplied by a Coast Guard helicopter before they were rescued by the US Coast Guard on September 30th 2018 oh and this all happened while a hurricane was bearing down on them just in case we needed bigger stakes between 2018 and 2020 the US Coast Guard had arranged to tow the elta to Guyana but it was apparently hijacked once or twice enroute according to the Irish Post the next time the elta was spotted was in the mid-atlantic by the British Royal Navy ice patrol ship the HMS protector according to the independent also the HMS protectors Twitter two days ago HMS protector discovered this apparently abandoned merchant vessel whilst mid-atlantic we closed the vessel to make contact and offer our assistance but no one replied whilst investigations continue we're unable to give you more detail on this strange event freely drifting the ulta had apparently moved north near the coast of Africa half the Iberian Peninsula and into the Celtic Sea before it was finally caught by storm Dennis and delivered to the coast of Ireland somehow avoiding detection on the way or in the words of Bally cotton RNLI lifeboat operations manager John Tatton this is one in a million it has come all the way up from the African coast west of the Spanish coast west of the English coast and up to the Irish coast I have never ever seen anything abandoned like that before and so ends the long unmanned journey of the MV Alta the owners have since reached out to the Irish government and are currently in discussions on how to handle the rack but the MV Alta isn't alone in terms of modern-day ghost ships and these vessels can pose a serious hazard when left adrift in shipping lanes they can threaten not only other ships but also offshore oil rigs but at the end of the day at least we don't have to worry about any malevolent spectral ships just maybe don't go exploring any those things probably aren't structurally sound what no pun no did you watch the tetanus episode this is a serious matter besides ship happens should have seen that coming [Music]

Channel: Brew

Views: 1,703,484

Rating: 4.8700666 out of 5

Keywords: ghost ships, north korean ghost ships, north korea ghost ships, mysterious ghost ships, mystery, mysterious, unsolved cases, unsolved mystery, unsolved mysteries, history, ghost ship, scary ghost ships, mysteries

Id: mYcbQDMump8

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/lavahot]

Which episode?

[u/Brad3000]

This guy’s vocal delivery is so dull I lost interest despite the nice animation and fascinating subject manner.