Ghosts that Sailed the High Seas

by Nancy Knudsen on 13 Apr 2008 This week it will be just one year since the 12 metre sailing catamaran Kaz II was found drifting 80 nm off the east Australian coastline, with no sign of its West Australian crew of three.

On board the engine was running, the table was set for a meal, fishing lines were set, a computer was open and running. Fenders were down on one side of the catamaran. Apart from a torn sail, there were no signs of anything amiss on the boat. The crew have never been found, and no explanation has ever been given for their disappearance

It had set off three days before from Airlie Beach to sail around Northern Australia to Western Australia. Many theories have been advanced. The fact that fenders were down led to suggestions that they had been boarded by another boat and were victims of foul play. As clothes were found neatly folded on the aft deck, another theory was that the three crew known to be on board had all taken a swim together. Other theories were that the catamaran became stuck on a sandbank, and the men jumped overboard to push her free, but a gust of wind blew the vessel away from them, or that one fell overboard and the others were lost trying to save him. It was determined by instruments on board that the yacht had not been steered since the day of her departure, but had not been discovered drifting for three full days. An air-and-sea search was called off after four days, and the mystery has never been solved. A coronial enquiry is scheduled for June this year.

This mystery is one of a long line of sailing mysteries of the world:

Probably the most famous was the mystery of the Mary Celeste, a brigantine, discovered in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872, unmanned and under full sail, heading towards Gibraltar. Of her people on board nothing has ever been learned. She had sailed with a Captain and a crew of seven, plus the Captain's wife and two year old daughter.

She had set off on November 5 from New York, headed for Genoa with a cargo of alcohol. Just a month later, she was discovered drifting by another sailing ship, the Dei Gratia. They boarded the ship, finding her in generally good condition. One lifeboat had been launched, and the Captain's sextant and chronometer were missing. The last log book entry had been made on 24th November, showing her west of the Azores. The Mary Celeste was world news at the time, but no conclusions were ever reached. Some suspicion fell on the crew of the Dei Gratia after they returned her to Spain, and as a result of this they were rewarded only one fifth of what they should have been awarded for bringing the ship home.

One of the South Pacific's greatest sea mysteries of another kind was the disappearance of the Patanela, a 19-metre steel schooner, which vanished without trace while approaching Sydney Harbour in November 1988 in calm seas.

Patanela was one of the sturdiest yachts afloat and was famous for her Antarctic voyages and circumnavigations of the globe. She was considered by those who sailed her, and by the man who built her, to be virtually unsinkable. Instructed of steel with four watertight bulkheads, Patanela carried the latest safety and navigational equipment. During her three decades sailing the roughest seas in the world, Patanela did not falter.

Yet she disappeared on a calm November night, within sight of the lights of Botany Bay. There was no mayday call, no distress flares sighted, no debris, and no bodies as evidence of her sinking.

However, just under 20 years later, a ghostly 'message in a bottle' was found from one of the crew on a beach in the Great Australian Bight by a beachcomber. The 'message in a bottle' was from Patanela crewman John Blissett. In faded blue handwriting inside a Bacardi bottle, it was found on a secluded beach near Eucla on the southern coast of Western Australia, by Esperance woman Sheryl Waideman on New Year’s Eve.

It was written by John Blissett, 23, of Taree, NSW, on October 26, 1988, just two weeks before her demise as he and three others sailed Patanela from Fremantle across the great Australian Bight. It gave no clue, merely promising the finder a sail on the Patanela.

The solitary trace was a barnacle-encrusted lifebuoy found floating off Terrigal seven months after she disappeared, but no explanation has ever been given as to why she disappeared on a calm night so close to home.


The Atlantic and the South Pacific do not have all the mysteries to themselves. The Mediterranean has its story too.

In August 2006, the schooner Bel Amica, was found drifting dangerously off the island of Sardinia near Punta Volpe with a half eaten meal of Egyptian food, charts of the Mediterranean and piles of clothes on board, but no crew.

The coast guard boarded the vessel and steered her away from the rocks and shallow waters she was drifting towards. The only identification aboard the ship was a wooden tablet or 'plaque' as described in some papers that read 'Bel Amica'(sic), and she had been registered in no country.

Later the owner of the vessel was located, but no satisfactory explanation was ever found for why she had been abandoned suddenly, or what had happened to the crew..

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Interesting letter received from a reader:

Sender: ivan Hills

Message: Apropos 'Patanela'
Most likely reason for her disappearance is that she ran into water saturated with gas ... a gas such as methane. Once unable to displace her own weight of water she would have submerged like a submarine. It was a fine, calm night and no doubt hatches and vents were open. Being a steel vessel would only hurry her submergence. A boat with positive buoyancy might float through and resurface and thus be found, although the crew would likely not survive. One cannot swim and breath, even with life preserver in gaseos water. Try a model boat in soda water and see for your self. I have always thought that this is probably what happened to the to the SS Waratah in 1909, between Durban and Cape Town. She disappeared without trace. I have read that that part of the Indian Ocean is gaseous. There was a brief, strong storm in the area but rough seas and the turbulence generated might free up methane from the ocean floor. My father served in RN destroyers in World War -1 on patrol in the shallow North Sea. Weather was frequently bad and his destroyer often seemed to be much below her loadline at times. He observed that the water looked milky and frothy. Likely it was airiated. The RN lost several destroyers to bad weather, not enemy action. Best resist all government attempts to dispose of carbon dioxide in the ocean.