[Photo: CRI Online]

10. Baychimo

On October 1, 1931, at the end of a trading run and loaded with a cargo of fur, Baychimo became trapped in pack ice. The crew briefly abandoned the ship, travelling over a half-mile of ice to the town of Barrow to take shelter for two days, but then the ship broke free of the ice and the crew returned.

The ship became mired again on October 8, more thoroughly this time, and on October 15 the Hudson's Bay Company sent aircraft to retrieve the crew.

The crew decided that the ship was unlikely to survive the winter, retrieved the most valuable furs from the hold to transport by air. The Baychimo was abandoned.

The Baychimo did not sink, however, and over the next several decades there were numerous sightings of the ship. People managed to board her several times, but each time they were either unequipped to salvage the ship or driven away again by bad weather.

The last recorded sighting of the Baychimo was by a group of Inuit in 1969, 38 years after she was abandoned. She was stuck fast in the pack ice of the Beaufort Sea between Point Barrow and Icy Cape in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern Alaskan coast.