Ghost Ship

Ghost ship has several meanings. The first meaning of ghost ship is a ship lost at sea that was later encountered as an apparitional experience, of which the most famous is the Flying Dutchman. The second meaning is a ship found adrift with the entire crew either missing or dead, such as the Mary Celeste or the Baychimo. List of ghost ships has the ships with the first two meanings. The third informal meaning refers to a ship that has been decommissioned but not yet scrapped.

Ghost ships in literature, by chronology

• 1798: A "skeleton ship" crewed by two spectres features in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

• 1897: The Demeter, whose captain's corpse was tied to the helm, is featured in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

• 1913: The Abel Fosdyk papers, an apocryphal explanation of the fate of the Mary Celeste, were presented as a true account by A. Howard Linford of Magdalen College, Oxford, the headmaster of Peterborough Lodge, Hampstead's largest prep school. The story appeared under the title Abel Fosdyk's Story in the monthly fiction magazine Strand Magazine, which had invited its contributors and readers to suggest possible solutions to the mystery of the Mary Celeste.

• 1937: "Three Skeleton Key", a short story by George Toudouze about a ghost ship infested with sea rats, was originally written for Esquire magazine. It was adapted for the dramatic radio program Escape in 1949 by James Poe and was also broadcast on the Suspense radio drama series in the 1950s.

• 1965: The Ampoliros, the Flying Dutchman of space, is mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune.

• 2001: The Flying Dutchman plays a key part of Brian Jacques' series Castaways of the Flying Dutchman.

Ghost ships in film, by chronology

• 1935: The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (a.k.a. The Phantom Ship) offers a fictional explanation for the events leading up to the discovery of the most famous of abandoned ships.

• 1943: The Ghost Ship tells of mysterious deaths among the crew of the Altair, for which it is suspected the insane captain is responsible.

• 1952: Ghost Ship is set aboard a yacht haunted by two murder victims (the previous owner's wife and her lover) whose bodies have been hidden under the floor.

• 1980: Death Ship is about a lost Nazi German torture and concentration camp ship that is still being crewed by the evil spirits of the dead crew. It now roams the seas for new victims, picking up survivors to abuse and kill after it sinks their ships.

• 1980: The Fog depicts the ghost ship Elizabeth Dane passing by a fishing boat just before the dead crew of the Dane kills the three fishermen on board the fishing boat.

• 1991: Ghost Ship, a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel by Diane Carey

• 1997: Event Horizon is a spaceship which disappeared while testing an experimental propulsion system, then returned intact seven years later but with no crew, life support offline, and data recordings scrambled. The investigating team soon encounters an evil presence that the ship brought back with it.

• 2001: The Triangle has the tagline: "60 years ago, the Queen of Scots vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. Now four friends have found the unthinkable... or has it found them?"

• 2002: Ghost Ship is about the Antonia Graza, an Italian ocean liner lost at sea 40 years earlier, and now boarded by a salvage crew who soon encounter the ghostly apparitions of murdered passengers.

• 2002: Ghost Ship (Doctor Who), a novella by Keith Topping

• 2003: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and its sequels Dead Man's Chest (2006) and At World's End (2007) feature the ghost ships Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman.

• 2007: Sunshine concerns a spacecraft, the Icarus II, sent to "re-ignite" the dying sun with a massive bomb some years after the Icarus I failed to complete a similar mission and was lost. As the new crew approach their destination, they discover the original ship and board it to investigate.

Ghost ships in music

• 2000: Ghost Ship (album), by the American band Sultans

Ghost ships in television

• 1964: "The Ghost Ship" (Stingray episode), a 1964 animation

See also

• List of Ghost Ships, lists ghost ships in two categories
• Phantom Ship, a small island in Oregon, USA, said to resemble a ghost ship
• The Phantom Ship, a novel exploring the legend of the ghost ship Flying Dutchman