Heartbreaking and Shocking! Frozen Body of Captain Discovered on 18th Century Ghost Ship

The world has a great variety of tales, mysteries and legends, and when we read or hear them, we travel to a different dimension. These stories are interesting for all lovers of good mysteries, and the story of the ship Octavius is very fascinating.

There are a great many tales in maritime lore about ghost ships sailing with a ghostly crew around the world and destined never to reach port.

It is the story of a mysterious disappearance, of a captain, of a frozen body still sitting at his desk and of a crew that suffered the same fate. Some say that it is not just a legend.

It was October 11, 1775, when the whaling ship Herald came across a rather strange-looking schooner. The Herald’s crew thought the weather-beaten vessel was probably adrift and decided to inspect it more closely.

As the crew approached the ship, they saw that the weather had taken its toll: the sails were torn and frayed and hung limply from the masts. They climbed aboard the drifting Octavius and discovered the reason for the lack of activity on deck.

But to understand this, we must go back to 1761, when Octavius’s voyage began, fourteen years before the Herald found her. Setting out from the port of London, the 28 sailors set out on their journey to China…

It was a majestic sailing ship that left port with a full crew and arrived safely in China, where it unloaded its cargo.

The weather was unusually warm and it seems that the captain decided to sail back home via the Northwest Passage, a passage which at that time had not been made. This was the last time anyone heard of the ship, its crew or its cargo. And so Octavius was declared lost.

Fast forward to 1775, as the Herald’s crew slowly makes their way through the strange, eerie, silent ship. Below deck, they discovered the 28 sailors, frozen stiff, motionless and blue. And when they reached the captain’s office, they found him behind his desk, also frozen solid.

The inkwell and other everyday objects were still there on the desk. When they turned around, they saw a woman wrapped in a blanket on the bunk, frozen to death, next to the body of a child.

According to legend, the captain was still holding his pen as if he had been frozen in place. The Herald crew reported that all the crew members had the same feature and looked like models from a wax museum.

When the Octavius set out on her voyage in 1761, the captain carefully noted the date in his logbook, a document that was found in his desk 14 years later (but the last entry in it was from 1762).

The thirteen years between 1762 and 1775 were nowhere to be found! Realizing they were aboard a ghost ship, the men abandoned Octavius and joined the rest of their crew aboard the Herald. According to those who believe this story to be true, it was the captain’s fault that they all froze to death.

According to this version of the story, the captain of the Octavius decided to undertake an impossible mission: to cross the famous Northwest Passage, and it was this decision that ended the lives of all the people on board. But of course, this story was born almost 250 years ago and, in reality, all trace of it has been lost.

Two and a half centuries is a long time, and stories change and are embellished with different details. According to one version, the Octavius was trapped in the ice for two and a half months and soon ran out of provisions and froze to death.

But why was the captain still behind his desk with a pen in his hand? Besides, according to legend, the Octavius managed to navigate the Northwest Passage, but only when it was already a ghost ship. The ship’s last recorded position was 75N 160W, which placed the Octavius 250 miles north of Barrow, Alaska.

More than a century had to pass before another attempt was made to cross this passage by ship, but this time it was successful. And for hundreds of years, this story survived to become a legend, adrift, like Octavius, and no one knows what really happened, but above all, what is the reason that can freeze a man in the middle of his writing, still with the pen in his hand!

The Herald’s crew was afraid of the Octavius and feared it was cursed, so they simply left it adrift. To this day, it has never been sighted again.