Talk:Octavius (ship)

Never Happened

I doubt that this event actually occurred. If anyone has more substantial references please add them. The reference given is to a book aimed at pre-teenagers and leans more towards ghost stories than historical research. Here are the only relevant links that I can find:

• Encyclopedia Titanica suggests that the story is fiction
• Fortean Times an unsourced retelling
• Roots Web another unsourced retelling

The story was also mentioned in A Long Desire ISBN 086547334X by Evan S. Connell, but I do not have a copy to see if any references were given. Griffinity 16:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I also have doubts about this one; the bit about passengers frozen like statues doing everyday activities reduces what little credibility this tale has. I am not sure what we can do besides sprinkling words like "alleged" and "supposedly" throughout the article. I have not been able to find "A Long Desire" in a nearby (huge) library. Wachholder0 18:04, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Vincent Gaddis wrote about the ship in Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea, published in 1965. The bibliography references Frank Edwards' book Stranger than Science published in 1959 and the February 1953 issue of Fate (magazine). I don't have access to the latter two references to see where they got the story. The story was recently recycled in John Harding's 2005 book Sailing’s Strangest Moments: Extraordinary but True Tales from over 900 Years of Sailing (ISBN 1861057458) but no references were given. Griffinity 10:58, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

As the person who posted this article, an admittedly cursory overview of what's available on the 'Net has finally forced me to accept the apocryphal nature of this story. It would be great if it were undeniably true, but I guess we'll never know. If it must be deleted, so be it.Erimus (talk) 05:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Keep but rewrite as legend. This seems more appropriate, there are lots of legends that are important because people believed them, like the Fountain of Youth. Especially in the Arctic, legends like the Open Polar Sea and the Northwest Passage (which turned out to be true) were the motivation for a lot of exploration and similar activity. And there are many sea legends, such as the Flying Dutchman, that are covered in Wikipedia, and are not deleted simply because they are legendary. This could be a really interesting article about how a legend becomes accepted as fact, especially if actual people took action based on the assumption it was fact.Mtsmallwood (talk) 17:25, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Legend seems right to me, since it hasn't been proven. I think it's possible with ocean currents, such as demonstrated here, that the ship would have moved, but you might expect some thawing and re-freezing of the people... Smarkflea (talk) 00:20, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction on location

The text of this article says the ship was found west of Greenland and never seen again. However, the coordinate offered as its last known location is north of Barrow, AK. Which is it? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 20:37, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I interpreted "last recorded position" as meaning "last position recorded in the ship's log" (that is, by the original crew while they were still alive, not by those who found the derelict ship later); in this case, there is no contradiction.