"In 1882 the Nova Scotia barque L.E. Cann was towed into a United States port by a steamship which had found her adrift. Later on in dry dock, fifteen auger holes were located in her hull, below the water line. They had all been bored from the inside, and subsequent inquiry revealed the fact that her former captain had conspired with a resident of Vera Cruz to load the vessel with a bogus cargo, insure it heavily, scuttle her when in a suitable position at sea, and divide the insurance money. Unfortunately for these partners in crime, the barque did not lend herself to their nefarious operations nearly as well as was expected.
"In 1894 the Austrian barque Vila, carrying a cargo of bones, which were said to have been gathered from the battle fields of Egypt, was found derelict by a Norwegian steamer and towed into New York. Not a word has ever been heard as to the fate of this vessel's crew. Presumably they took to the boats for some reason, and disappeared without leaving a trace. About the same time the sailing vessel C.E. Morrison was fallen in with, a drifting derelict and set on fire. The crew of a destroyer first salved a bank-book, a sextant, fifty charts, and some pictures, all of which were eventually returned to their rightful owner, Captain Hawes, who had been compelled to leave his vessel without standing on the order of his going. In 1895 the derelict and burning barkantine Celestina, bound from Swansea to the Strait of Magellan, was boarded by a boat's crew of the barque Annie Maud. A written message was found on the cabin table stating that she had been abandoned in open boats. The fire having been partially subdued, sail was made on the prize, and volunteers navigated her to Rio Janeiro.
"The Marie Celeste is a mystery of the sea. This brig left America for Gibraltar; and nothing more was heard of her until she was sighted approaching the Strait in a suspicious manner, when she was found to be derelict. Her hull was sound, there was no sign of an accident aloft, and her boats were in their appointed places. Some remains of a meal on the cabin table were still fresh, and a watch was ticking unconcernedly; yet her captain and his wife and daughter, together with the crew, had disappeared forever.
"Nautical novelists have made moving pictures of drifting derelicts, and hoaxers have also utilized them. In 1893 some witty person closely copied parts of a soul-stirring yarn by Clark Russell, and the alleged modern experience was telegraphed round the world, appeared in the press, and was then decisively contradicted. It was asserted that the Norwegian ship Elsa Anderson arrived at Galveston with an English-built brig in tow, which had apparently been burned and sunk more than a half century previously. A submarine seismic disturbance was invented to account for the vessel's return to the surface. The hull was covered with strange sea shells, and in the hold were chests containing many guineas bearing date 1800, several watches, and a stomacher of pearls! One of three skeletons was said to be that of a man over seven feet in height. This hoax was successful until it reached Galveston. Then the authorities denied that the story had the slightest foundation in fact. Six years later a similar hoax was perpetrated, which ought immediately to have been recognized as merely a variant of The Frozen Pirate, by the above-mentioned eminent nautical novelist. It was gravely asserted that the barque Silicon, on her way from the United States to Greenland, had picked up an old-fashioned derelict ship near the Greenland coast. When access to the hold was gained, the salvors, so ran the hoax, discovered that she was laden with furs in good condition; and her log book showed that she had been abandoned by her crew in 1848. Like the ship imagined by Clark Russell, she was said to have been fast in the ice in the far North. One of the most ridiculous derelict-ship hoaxes of the past century had quite a boom in 1896. A burning derelict, read an astonished world, had been passed between the Cape of Good Hope and Australia, with her lower holds full of coal and petroleum, and the between-decks portion crammed with the dead bodies of people who had met their fate by suffocation while on their way from Russia to Brazil. The burning cargo had generated gas which suffocated the emigrants; the bodies had swollen out of human shape, and subsequent explosions had torn many limb from limb! This tissue of falsehoods appeared in many of the world's daily papers without comment.
"H.M.S. Resolute, since broken up, was one of the most famous of derelicts. She was abandoned in 77 deg. 40 min. N., 101 deg. 20 min. W., drifted southward in the center of a solid sheet of ice, and was eventually picked up by an American whale-ship off Cape Mercy, in 65 deg. N. After having been refitted by the United States Government, she was presented to England with impressive ceremony. A desk of the President of the United States, in the White House, Washington, D.C., was made from the timbers of the Resolute, and sent by Her Majesty Queen Victoria in memory of that courtesy and loving-kindness of America to England. It is a substantial token of the good will existing between the two kindred peoples."
The gifted editor of our National Geographic Society's admirable magazine, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, in the September number, 1918, page 235, says on the subject of "Strange Stories of Derelicts," "How hard it is sometimes to send a ship to the bottom is strikingly shown by the experience of the San Francisco in destroying the derelict three-master Drisko a decade or so ago. That derelict was only 248 tons, but she was lumber laden. The officers of the San Francisco first tried to tow her to port, but found that impossible. Then they attached three 30-pound guncotton bombs to her keel and set them off, but still she floated. Five more bombs were set off; these broke her back and frames, but still she refused to go to the bottom. Then the San Francisco rammed her amidships and broke her in two, releasing the cargo; but even after that it took several shells to drive the afterpart of the staunch old schooner down into the jurisdiction of Davy Jones.
"Even in peace times ships are often reported missing, and appear to have been 'sunk without trace.' It is believed that most of such catastrophes are the result of collisions with derelicts. How many more such collisions there will be in the future may be imagined when it is stated that for two years the number of derelicts has greatly increased and the steps for their destruction have been much reduced.
"In peace times," continues Mr. Grosvenor, "there is no other menace to navigation as dangerous as the derelict, unless it be the submerged iceberg, such as sunk the Titanic. Refusing to stay in one location, yielding to no law of navigation, hiding most of her bulk beneath the waves, the lonely, desolate, moss-covered, weed-grown derelict, with deck or keel all but awash, comes out of the night or through the fog as an assassin out of a lonely alley, and woe to the sailor who has not detected her approach.
"Drifting hither and yon, now forced on by the wind of a stormy sea, now caught in a current and driven along, these rudderless, purposeless, wanderers cover many a weary mile, with only screaming sea birds to break the monotony of the roaring gale or the soft surge of a placid sea. Sighted frequently for weeks together, now and again they disappear, often reappearing suddenly hundreds of miles away. As many as a thousand have been reported in a single year in the North Atlantic. The majority of them frequent the Gulf Stream.
"Examining the records of the Hydrographic Office, one finds that in six years twenty-five derelicts were reported as having drifted at least a thousand miles each; eleven have 2,000 miles apiece to their credit, while three sailed 5,000 rudderless miles.