A steel-hulled cargo ship from Sweden, with no crew and no one at the helm, sailed along the Alaskan coast for thirty-eight years. The ship, named SS Baychimo, weighed 1,322 tons, was launched in 1914, and was originally named Ångermanelfven, built by Lindholmens Shipyard in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Initially, the ship was intended to serve Hamburg’s Baltische Reederei GmbH and was used for trade between Hamburg and Sweden before 1914. The ship was 230 feet long, powered by a coal-fired triple-expansion steam engine, and could reach speeds of up to 12 miles per hour.
After World War I, as compensation for German shipping losses, the ship was transferred to the British Hudson’s Bay Company in 1921 and renamed “Baychimo.” It then settled in Ardrossan, Scotland, and began collecting furs. Each summer, it shuttled between trading posts on the Canadian coast, exchanging tobacco, sugar, tea, and weapons. 
In 1924, the ship completed a circumnavigation and continued to transport furs and supplies until 1931. That year, the crew became stranded due to an early season freeze during a trading voyage. The crew trekked half a mile through the ice to Barrow, Alaska, planning to wait a few days for the ice to thaw before proceeding to the next station. A week later, the ice once again trapped the ship. Most of the crew were airlifted to safety, but several stayed in a makeshift hut to monitor the ship, expecting to spend the entire winter there.
1931 SS Baychimo
According to Arctic historian Ken Harper’s column in the “Nunatsiaq News,” the captain sent out a radio request for an aircraft to take most of the crew away. The remaining crew built a hut on the beach, with the Baychimo only half a mile offshore. They planned to stay nearby, ready to sail the ship away in the following summer. On November 24th, the temperature rose suddenly from minus 60 degrees to zero.
A blizzard lasted for three days, and no one dared to leave the hut. After the storm, the Baychimo had disappeared, leaving only a pressure ridge at its former mooring, leading people to assume it had sunk. Days later, an Inuit seal hunter reported that the ship had broken free from the ice during the storm and was floating about 45 miles (approximately 72.4 kilometers) away. When Captain Sydney Cornwall found the ship still intact, he deemed it no longer seaworthy and, after unloading the cargo and valuables, left. However, Baychimo’s seaworthiness far exceeded expectations. Months later, it was found to have moved about 250 miles (approximately 402.3 kilometers) eastward.
A year later, Leslie Melvin and his dog sled team, traveling near Nome, saw the Baychimo floating near the shore, as if waiting for the crew to reboard. Several months later, prospectors also reported sightings of the unmanned ship.
In 1932, a trading party attempted to board near Wainwright, Alaska. In 1933, a group of Inuit boarded the ship but were trapped for ten days due to a sudden storm. Months later, the Hudson’s Bay Company learned that the ship was still afloat but considered it too far offshore to be operational.
Baychimo
In 1934, explorers tried to board again but returned to their schooner. A year later, the ship was spotted again off the northwestern coast of Alaska. In 1935, Captain Hugh Polson attempted to salvage the Baychimo but was unsuccessful due to ice conditions.
In the following years, there were several sightings of the Baychimo, including one in 1962. In 1969, it was last seen trapped in the ice off the Alaskan coast in the Chukchi Sea. A decade ago, the Alaskan government launched a project to find the Baychimo, searching both the surface and the seabed, but to date, this “Arctic Ghost Ship” remains unfound.
