Ocean Facts

Description

Although the earth's warming temperatures mean that the Northwest Passage is now free (albeit not easy) to sail through, this was not always the case. The search for the elusive passage claimed the lives of many ambitious sailors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; keen to find an alternate trade route to Asia, their ships would become lodged in Arctic ice, sealing their fate in the Great White North. The Octavius was one of many to meet such a fate, but the grim scenes found on board was what made the story of this ghost ship particularly terrifying. The three-masted schooner departed from England in 1761, but was found off the coast of Greenland in 1775. Her captain had, unluckily decided to try and use the then nonexistent Northwest Passage (which superyacht Rosehearty has since cleared) to return home. The five men who boarded the derelict ship in 1775 were confronted with a ghostly sight; the entire 28-man crew was below deck, but frozen to death. The icy figure of the ship's captain was discovered sitting at his desk, writing in his logbook, pen still in hand. The last logbook entry was in 1762 - the ghost ship and her crew had been lost at sea for 13 years before being found.