Octavius ​​(ship)

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The Octavius is a legendary ghost ship .

Legend

According to the accounts, the ship was found by the Whaler Herald on October 11, 1775 west of Greenland . When the supposedly abandoned ship was being rescued, the Herald crew found the entire Octavius crew dead, frozen and almost completely intact below deck. The body of the captain of the Octavius is said to have been on the table in his cabin with a pen in his hand in front of the logbook . A dead woman, a dead boy covered with a blanket, and a dead sailor with a tinderbox were also found in his cabin . The crew of the Herald only took the logbook with them before leaving the ship and refused to search the ship any further. Most of the log was lost in transit, however, as it was frozen and slipped out of its bindings into the water. Only the first and last pages of the log remained. The last remaining entry in the log was from 1762. As a result, the Octavius must have been lost in the Arctic for 13 years .

The Octavius ​​left England for a trip to the Orient in 1761 and reached her destination a year later. For the return voyage, the captain planned a route through the treacherous Northwest Passage . North of Alaska, however, the ship was trapped in sea ​​ice and got stuck. Most recently, however, the ship itself had crossed the Northwest Passage posthumously after many years. After the encounter with the whaling Herald , the Octavius ​​was no longer seen.

Processing in the literature

The legend of Octavius clearly serves as a model for the illustrated novel "Le démon des Glaces", German "The demon of ice" by the author Jacques Tardi from 1974.

literature

  • Tom Spunyarn: The Ice Ship . In: The Cincinnati Literary Gazette . tape III , no. 24 , 1825, pp. 187–188 ( books.google.de - original story).
  • The Dangers of Sailing in High Latitudes . In: The Ariel . tape 2 , no. 17 , 1828, pp. 130 ( books.google.de - first widely used variant).
  • U .: The ship in the ice . In: Bohemia . No. February 20 , 14, 1841 ( books.google.de - story of "Jenny").
  • Phyllis Raybin Emert: Mysteries of Ships and Planes . Tom Doherty Associates, New York NY 1990, ISBN 0-8125-9427-4 .
  • Raymond H. Ramsay: No longer on the map. Discovering places that never were . The Viking Press, New York NY 1972, ISBN 0-670-51433-0 .

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ This description also corresponds to the legend about the schooner Jenny.