Tales of mysterious ghost ships don’t just belong to the so-called Golden Age of Piracy during the 17th and 18th centuries: There are a surprising number of ships, seemingly abandoned by their crew, turning up on shorelines across the world today. Although there certainly aren’t any ghosts aboard, their backstories are often fairly haunting.
Just last week, a tanker ship bereft of life washed ashore in the coastal city of Robertsport, roughly 75 kilometers (47 miles) west of Monrovia, the capital city of the West African country of Liberia. As reported by the Telegraph, the sudden presence of the “Tamaya 1” cannot be definitively explained, and the nation's Ministry of Defence has sent out coastguard personnel to investigate.
Reports suggest that it was an oil tanker, and that it once flew a Nigerian flag. Some of the ship appears to have been scorched, and one of the lifeboats aboard is missing, suggesting that the crew may have been trying to escape a fire. It’s unclear if there were any fatalities, but no bodies could be found on the ship.
The latest ghost ship. The Telegraph via YouTube
All documents aboard the ship have also been burnt to a crisp, and the only identifying feature available to investigators appears to be its name, which is apparently linked to the country of Panama. The website marinetraffic.com, which tracks seafaring vessels all over the world, shows that the Tamaya 1 last transmitted its position off the coast on April 22.
After that, no more signals were sent out. This means only one of two things: either the signal transmitted malfunctioned, or it was intentionally broken. At the time of writing, nobody is any the wiser, but something strange clearly transpired. In the meantime, the Liberian defense ministry is getting quite a bit of flak for not realizing for two days that a sizeable rogue ship entered its waters without permission.
