When one person inexplicably disappears, it’s weird.  When two people vanish, presumably together, things get stranger still.  When two people and a boat all go missing, never to be seen again…

In the late 1960s, an Irish couple named Kieran and Ornaith Murphy emigrated to California.  They settled in the Bay Area, where they soon did very nicely for themselves.  The couple made a small fortune investing in increasingly prestigious real estate.  As landlords, they were considered “tough, but fair.”  Kieran, a brilliant mathematician,  also worked as an actuary for San Francisco’s retirement system.  Ornaith, meanwhile, became a skilled long-distance sailor, often voyaging alone.  In 1998, she became the first woman to sail alone from San Francisco to Cape Horn.  Arthritis and a serious car accident left Ornaith unable to walk without difficulty, causing her to cherish all the more the freedom and mobility she was able to find on the water.  “I just want to go as far as I can and as far as my legs will let me,” she wrote.  “I don’t want to triumph.  I don’t want to conquer.  I’m just very happy being at sea.”  The Murphys were both witty and intellectually-inclined, fond of reading and discussing literature.  The couple had two sons.  The family was seen as hard-working, talented, and friendly.

Unfortunately, the beginning of the 21st century was not nearly as kind to the couple as had been the end of the 20th.  They hit a rocky patch, both personally and professionally.  Ornaith was deeply distraught to discover that her husband was having an affair, and the couple separated.  A divorce was planned.  They also began facing problems with their real estate holdings.  In 1999, there had been a fire at an apartment building they owned which left a child badly burned, and the Murphys were facing a costly lawsuit over the incident.

These were grave problems, to be sure, but no worse than those successfully weathered by other couples.  For the Murphys, however, things would soon take a far darker turn.  On December 15, 2001, the estranged pair planned to meet to discuss their various legal issues.  Ornaith was seen doing work on her 39-foot sloop, the Sola III, as it was docked at Oakland’s Jack London Marina.  A friend stopped by that afternoon.  Ornaith mentioned that she was planning to go for a sail with a friend that evening.  (However, she did not file a sail plan for this trip, which would be highly unusual for this experienced and meticulous sailor.)

That night, people nearby saw a man onboard who matched Kieran’s description.  (If this was indeed Kieran, it would be unusual for him to be on the sloop--he did not know how to sail and hated being on the water.)  A short time later, witnesses heard a disturbance coming from the direction of the Sola III, a loud bang that may--or may not--have been a gunshot.  At 8:36 p.m., the Sola III sailed out of the marina.  It had about a week’s worth of food onboard, but it was not otherwise outfitted for a long journey.

Early the next morning, Ornaith phoned a niece whom she had been living with, saying she was in Berkeley.  She declined an invitation to breakfast.  She also left several voicemails for one of her sons, saying she was at the Berkeley Marina, on her boat.  She sounded quite calm and normal.  But that day, the Sola III vanished.  So did the Murphys.  No one has seen either Kieran or Ornaith--or the boat--since.

"San Francisco Examiner," December 28, 2001, via Newspapers.com

The complete paucity of clues in this triple disappearance has led to any number of wildly-varying theories.  Did Ornaith lure her husband on board her boat, only to shoot him, deliberately sink both the boat and the body somewhere, and disappear to start a new life?  Or was it Kieran who was the murderer?  Was it murder/suicide?  Did the beleaguered couple agree to reconcile and escape their problems together?  

Or was a third party responsible for their disappearance?  Everyone who knew Ornaith insisted that she had no thoughts of ending her life, and was utterly incapable of plotting her own disappearance.  And Kieran was too unskilled a sailor to take the boat for even a short journey.

At least some investigators believed this was a grim case of murder followed by suicide (they declined to state publicly who they believed to be the killer.)  However, to date, not a scrap of evidence about the final fate of the couple has been found, leaving this as a particularly eerie mystery.

On June 14, 1904, Kent Loomis, the brother of Assistant Secretary of State Francis R. Loomis, sailed from New York aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm II.  His mission was to travel to Addis Ababa in order to deliver an important trade treaty between the United States and the Ethiopian King Menelik.  This treaty had, for some time, been a matter of intense interest among the European powers.  His traveling companion was a wealthy, flamboyant entrepreneur named William H. Ellis.  Ellis was a frequent visitor to Ethiopia, and had campaigned to be given this mission himself, but the State Department declined to entrust him with the task.  This was a bitter disappointment for Ellis.  He had hoped to use delivery of the treaty as a signal to King Menelik that Ellis had the backing of the American government in his various ambitious business ventures in Ethiopia.  There are even suggestions that he hoped Menelik would appoint him as heir to his throne.

Loomis never made it to his destination.  Sometime on June 20th, he vanished from the ship.  There was conflicting evidence for what had happened to him.  Soon after he disappeared, the Kaiser Wilhelm made a stop at Plymouth, England.  One passenger swore later that he saw a dazed-looking Loomis go ashore at that time.  The captain and head steward, however, were equally positive that Loomis could not have disembarked.  Ellis claimed that Loomis had been drinking heavily during the voyage, and had an unfortunate habit of sitting precariously on the ship’s railings.  (This was not corroborated by any of the other passengers.)  Ellis expressed his opinion that his cabin-mate, while in a state of intoxication, had accidentally fallen overboard.  A further oddity was when it was noted that the tags on Loomis’ luggage had all been altered.  They showed the initial “E” instead of “L,” and the first name had been erased.  In Loomis’ mysterious absence, Ellis was given possession of the treaty, enabling him to complete the diplomatic mission after all.

Loomis’ whereabouts remained a complete mystery until a month later, when his body was found washed up on a beach fifteen miles from Plymouth, with an ugly wound on the back of his skull.  An autopsy found that this blow on the head had killed Loomis before he entered the water, but they were uncertain whether this injury came from an attack, or from striking his head on some part of the ship’s ironwork when he fell overboard.

The mystery of Loomis’ death has remained unsolved.  Ellis died in 1923 in Mexico City.  His obituary in Time magazine called him “one of the most remarkable men who ever acted as agent for the State Department.”

One certainly cannot argue that.

Via Newspapers.com

The following tale, which appeared in the "North Nebraska Eagle," August 1, 1895, may well be one of those old newspapers stories that are colorful, but probably having only the barest acquaintance with reality.  Still, it's a nifty little sea mystery, so let's go for it:

One of the strangest stories about an abandoned ship comes from the Indian Ocean.  In 1822 the British corvette Lizard was cruising off Ceylon. A ship came in sight with all sail set, and making good speed through the water. The officers took a long look and one said:  "There is something wrong about that vessel. Her crojack is loose and flapping and there is no man at the wheel. We had better run down to her."

This was done, and when near it was seen that the ship had no crew, as there was no answer to the hail. When boarded there were no marks of trouble until on raising a nail that was spread over the main hatch the body of a man was found. He had been ironed to the lock-bars of the hatch-cover and had apparently been dead a week. 

On going into the cabin, the body of an elderly man was found. He had been stabbed to death. On examining the log-book it was on record that the ship was Spanish, from the Philippines, and named El Frey Antonio, but, strangely, the last entry was six weeks past and spoke of abandoning the ship at a point 1,000 miles away, bound for Malaga, Spain. She was left on the road to China. A pitcher of water on the table was intact. Could the vessel hare come this long journey without meeting a storm, and how had the dead men got here? They had not been dead six weeks and both were Lascars. 

The Frey Antonio was taken into Madras, the Spanish government notified, and their answer only made tho mystery deeper. The ship had sailed from Celebes more than a year before with six Roman Catholic priests as passengers, bound for Spain, and had no Lascars among her crew. And this was all.  And from that faraway time until now the story of El Frey Antonio is one of the secrets of the deep.

Via Newspapers.com

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I have a particular fondness for obscure, unimportant, but intriguing little mysteries.  One such example appeared in the “London Morning Chronicle,” April 21, 1809:

Nevis, Feb. 7, 1809.

“Dear Sir,

"I beg leave to mention the following circumstances, and leave to your better judgment the propriety of making the same public.-- 

"About a fortnight since, the Overseer on the Camp Estate discovered a chest, floating in the wash of the sea, and with the assistance of several negroes he had it brought on shore. On opening it, it was found to contain a female corpse wrapped in several folds of seer cloth, and a quantity of tea was spread between each fold. The box or coffin was also filled up with tea, to the quantity, it was supposed, of two hundred weight. The body was in a tolerable state of preservation, and had the appearance of having been that of a person about 30 years of age, rather corpulent, with a remarkable handsome hand, a good set of teeth, and long dark hair--the mouth had been filled with tea, and some moisture having occasioned the tea to swell, left the teeth exposed; on touching them one fell in. The box was better than six feet long, and made remarkably strong, having 16 iron clamps, the whole of it covered with cloth, which had Burgundy pitch rubbed over it, and was perfectly water tight. It must have been in the sea a very long time, as it had a number of barnacles upon it.

“The wood was supposed to be what is called in the East Indies, Teak wood--Around the middle of the box was a tarred rope, which had the appearance of having suspended it, or been a lashing to it. 

"Should the publishing of this account be the cause of making it known to the relatives of the deceased, it may prove grateful to their feelings, to know that the body was decently interred, in this island, and every attention paid it. 

"I remain, dear Sir, yours, very truly, JN. COLHOUN MILLS.

To the very Rev. the Dean of St, Asaph.”

Although we’ll never know who this woman was, it’s easy to reconstruct what probably happened.  In the past, tea leaves were sometimes used to preserve the dead, although as tea was very expensive back then, it was not commonly used.  Our mystery corpse was likely a wealthy woman who died far from her native land.  Relatives arranged for her to be embalmed and shipped back home for burial.  Sometime during the voyage, the boat encountered some disaster at sea which sank it, killing everyone on board.  The coffin--the only survivor of the wreck, you might say--drifted for who knows how long before winding up on the shores of Nevis.

Scott Moorman

The tale of the last voyage of the "Sarah Jo" is a short, simple one, but at the same time it is one of the strangest sea mysteries I know.

On February 11, 1979, 27-year-old Scott Moorman, a native Californian who had moved to Maui, set out on the 17-foot Boston Whaler for a day-long fishing trip.  He was accompanied by four friends--Ralph Malaiakini, Pat Woessner, Benny Kalama, and Peter Hanchett.  The weather was good when they set out, but two hours later, the sky darkened, gale-force winds blew in, and the sea became dangerously turbulent.  And the "Sarah Jo" vanished.  

The Coast Guard spent nearly a week searching the area for the boat.  Friends and family of the missing men continued the hunt for another month.  Not one trace of the boat or her passengers could be found.

It seemed to be the end of the story.

Fast-forward nearly a decade, to September 9, 1988.  A Marine biologist named John Naughton Jr. was researching green turtles on the Marshall Islands, about 2,300 miles southwest from where Moorman and his friends disappeared.  On a bleak, uninhabited atoll called Taongi, Naughton found something very unexpected:  the battered remains of the "Sarah Jo."  By an amazing coincidence, Naughton, a member of the National Marine Fisheries Service, had helped in the original search for the boat.  Nearby was a pile of stones topped by a crude driftwood cross and a human jawbone. Under the stones was more of the skeleton.  Dental records were able to identify these bones as all that was left of Scott Moorman.  A search of the atoll found no further clues.

There was no way of knowing when Moorman was buried in this shallow grave, but Naughton and his crew believed it was a relatively recent burial.  Also, a government survey of the atoll done six years earlier would surely have found the boat and the grave.  The boat--and Moorman--must have arrived on the atoll sometime after 1982.  Where were they before that time?

Adding to the eeriness of the scene was something found buried with Moorman:  a stack of unbound, partially burned blank papers 3" by 3" and about 3/4" thick.  Between each of the papers was a small square piece of tin foil.  The meaning of this strangely ritualistic touch remains uncertain.

This partial "solution" to the disappearance only raised even more puzzling questions.  How did Moorman and his small motorboat manage to travel 2,300 miles?  How did he die, and when?  The pathologists could not say.  Who buried him?  What became of Moorman's four companions?  As Moorman's sister said, "All this is like the Twilight Zone."

Speculate away.  Your guess is as good as anyone's.

The remarkable Nova Scotian-born seaman Joshua Slocum has a permanent place in maritime history as the first person to single-handedly sail around the world (1895-1898.)  On November 14, 1909, he set out on his boat, the “Spray,” from Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, for the West Indies.  He was never seen again.  His exact fate is still considered a classic mystery of the sea.

Slocum’s book about his round-the-world voyage, “Sailing Around the World,” is a must-read for anyone interested in tales of the sea or travel literature in general.  However, for the purposes of this blog, I will settle for quoting the passage describing how one night, the sailor’s solo expedition went all Strange Company on him.  The occurrence took place in late July 1895, when Slocum was between the Azores and Gibraltar.

Since reaching the islands, I had lived most luxuriously on fresh bread, butter, vegetables, and fruits of all kinds. Plums seemed the most plentiful on the Spray, and these I ate without stint. I had also a Pico white cheese that General Manning, the American consul general, had given me, which I supposed was to be eaten, and of this I partook with the plums. 

Alas! by night-time I was doubled up with cramps. The wind, which was already a smart breeze, was increasing somewhat, with a heavy sky to the sou’-west. Reefs had been turned out, and I must turn them in again somehow. Between cramps I got the main-sail down, hauled out the earrings as best I could, and tied away point by point, in the double reef. 

There being sea-room, I should, in strict prudence, have made all snug and gone down at once to my cabin. I am a careful man at sea, but this night, in the coming storm, I swayed up my sails, which, reefed though they were, were still too much in such heavy weather; and I saw to it that the sheets were securely belayed. In a word, I should have laid to, but did not. I gave her the double-reefed mainsail and whole jib instead, and set her on her course. Then I went below, and threw myself upon the cabin floor in great pain. 

How long I lay there I could not tell, for I became delirious. When I came to, as I thought, from my swoon, I realized that the sloop was plunging into a heavy sea, and looking out of the companionway, to my amazement I saw a tall man at the helm. His rigid hand, grasping the spokes of the wheel, held them as in a vise. One may imagine my astonishment. His rig was that of a foreign sailor, and the large red cap he wore was cockbilled over his left ear, and all was set off with shaggy black whiskers. He would have been taken for a pirate in any part of the world. While I gazed upon his threatening aspect I forgot the storm, and wondered if he had come to cut my throat. This he seemed to divine. 

“Señor,” said he, doffing his cap, “I have come to do you no harm.” And a smile, the faintest in the world, but still a smile, played on his face, which seemed not unkind when he spoke. 

"I have come to do you no harm. I have sailed free,” he said, “but was never worse than a contrabandista. I am one of Columbus’s crew,” he continued. “I am the pilot of the Pinta come to aid you. Lie quiet, señor captain,” he added, “and I will guide your ship tonight. you have a calentura, but you will be all right tomorrow.” 

I thought what a very devil he was to carry sail. Again, as if he read my mind, he exclaimed: “Yonder is the Pinta ahead; we must overtake her. Give her sail; give her sail! Vale, vale, muy vale!” Biting off a large quid of black twist, he said: “You did wrong, captain, to mix cheese with plums. White cheese is never safe unless you know whence it comes. Quien sabe, it may have been from leche de Capra and becoming capricious — ”

“Avast, there!” I cried. “I have no mind for moralizing.” 

I made shift to spread a mattress and lie on that instead of the hard floor, my eyes all the while fastened on my strange guest, who, remarking again that I would have “only pains and calentura,” chuckled as he chanted a wild song: 

High are the waves, fierce, gleaming, 

High is the tempest roar! 

High is the sea-bird screaming! 

High the Azore! 

I suppose I was now on the mend, for I was peevish, and complained: “I detest your jingle. Your Azore should be a roost, and would have been were it a respectable bird!” I begged he would tie a rope-yarn on the rest of the song, if there was any more of it. 

I was still in agony. Great seas were boarding the Spray, but in my fevered brain I thought they were boats falling on deck, that careless draymen were throwing from wagons on the pier to which I imagined the Spray was now moored, and without fenders to breast her off. 

“You’ll smash your boats!” I called out again and again, as the seas crashed on the cabin over my head. “You’ll smash your boats, but you can’t hurt the Spray. She is strong!” I cried. 

I found, when my pains and calentura had gone, that the deck, now as white as a shark’s tooth from seas washing over it, had been swept of everything movable. To my astonishment, I saw now at broad day that the Spray was still heading as I had left her, and was going like a race-horse. Columbus himself could not have held her more exactly on her course. The sloop had made ninety miles in the night through a rough sea. I felt grateful to the old pilot, but I marvelled some that he had not taken in the jib. 

The gale was moderating, and by noon the sun was shining. A meridian altitude and the distance on the patent log, which I always kept towing, told me that she had made a true course throughout the twenty-four hours. 

I was getting much better now, but was very weak, and did not turn out reefs that day or the night following, although the wind fell light; but I just put my wet clothes out in the sun when it was shining, and lying down there myself, fell asleep. 

Then who should visit me again but my old friend of the night before, this time, of course, in a dream. 

“You did well last night to take my advice,” said he, “and if you would, I should like to be with you often on the voyage, for the love of adventure alone.” 

Finishing what he had to say, he again doffed his cap and disappeared as mysteriously as he came, returning, I suppose, to the phantom Pinta. 

I awoke much refreshed, and with the feeling that I had been in the presence of a friend and a seaman of vast experience. I gathered up my clothes, which by this time were dry, then, by inspiration, I threw overboard all the plums in the vessel.

Yes, the story does read like food poisoning-induced delirium.  However, there is that matter about the “Spray” staying on course through a gale…

[Note: If you’d like to read more about Slocum’s adventurous life, Stan Grayson’s “A Man For All Oceans” is a terrific biography.]

Via Newspapers.com

This story about a ship that had a really hard time keeping cooks appeared in the "Hull Daily Mail," December 19, 1946:

Two cooks who disappeared from a ship at the same spot on successive trips have created a new mystery of the sea. 

The story starts in September, when the 2,400 ton freighter Bantria, of the Cunard Line, was on a Mediterranean trip. While off Genoa the ship's cook, Clarence Arthur Laurie, aged 45, was reported missing. The ship turned and searched in vain. 

On her next trip, the Bantria was again in the Mediterranean when the new cook, Frank McNaught, aged 40, a single man, of 21 Armley-road, Liverpool, disappeared. Again the ship turned and made a search, but without success. 

The ship is now in Liverpool, and a BOT inquiry has failed to elucidate the double mystery. 

A member of the Bantria's crew said: "Each cook vanished when we were at sea during the night, and nobody knows how. Neither man appeared to have any trouble, or any enemies in the ship. No one suggests this is a hoodoo ship, but it does take a bit of explaining." 

Now comes the climax of the story. When someone called on Laurie's wife at her home in Bradford, to notify her of her husband's disappearance, the woman held up her hand and said: "Don't tell me. I know he's gone. I saw it in a vision last night through a spiritualist." 

A friend of McNaught, the second cook, said he had an idea that something was going to happen to him on the voyage, but said he was not afraid. 

The Bantria set sail with a third cook, one Fred Mather.  Mather told a reporter that he had not known about the double disappearance when he signed on.  He added cheerfully, "I'm not worrying.  I don't believe in such things.  But if I don't come back you'll know there's something in it."

I couldn't find anything more about the Bantria, so hopefully the blithe Mr. Mather did "come back."

As has often been said, strange things happen at sea.  One particularly eerie incident was recorded by nautical explorer Rex Clement in his 1924 book “A Gipsy of the Horn.”  He tells of a night some twenty years past when, while sailing the Pacific in a windjammer, he and his crew heard a sound they would never forget…

One dark, moonless night just before we got clear of the “forties," with a fresh breeze blowing and the ship running quietly along under t’gallant'sls, there occurred a most uncanny experience.

It was about four bells in the middle watch, the “churchyard” watch, as the four hours after midnight is called, that it happened. We of the mate's watch were on deck--the men for'ard, Burton and I under the break, and Mr. Thomas pacing the poop above our heads. Suddenly, apparently close aboard on the port hand, there came howling out of the darkness a most frightful, wailing cry, ghastly in its agony and intensity. Not of overpowering volume--a score of men shouting together could have raised as loud a hail-it was the indescribable calibre and agony of the shriek that almost froze the blood in our veins.

We rushed to the rail, the mate and the men too, and stared searchingly into the blackness to wind'ard. The starbowlines, who a moment before had been sleeping the sleep of tired men in their bunks below, rushed out on deck. Shipwreck would hardly bring foremast Jack out before he was called, but that cry roused him like the last summons. If ever men were “horrorstruck" we were.

Even the old man was awakened by it and came up on deck. Everyone was listening intensely, straining their eyes into the blackness that enveloped us.

A moment or two passed and then as we listened, wondering, and silent, again that appalling scream rang out, rising to the point of almost unbearable torture and dying crazily away in broken whimperings.

No one did anything, or even spoke. We stood like stones, simply staring into the mystery-laden gloom. How long we peered and listened, waiting for a repetition of the sound, I do not know. But minutes passed and still it did not come, and slowly, like men coming out of a trance, we began to move about and speak to each other again.

We heard it no more and gradually, one at a time, trickled back to fok'sle and half-deck. As far as the occupants of the latter were concerned, no one evinced any inclination to turn in and we sat around, smoking and discussing what the sound we had heard could possibly be. Nobody slept much more that night and thankful we were when the grey dawn broke over the tumbling, untenanted sea.

This was all. In bare words it doesn't sound very dreadful, but it made that night a night of terror. For long enough afterwards the echoes of that awful scream would ring in my ears, and even now it sends a shiver through me to think of it.

Who and what it was that caused it we never learnt. We hazarded a variety of guesses, many of them farfetched enough. The cry of a whale was suggested, but I never heard a whale utter any sounds with its throat. Some other sea-monster, somebody else thought, that only rarely comes to the surface but this was more unlikely still. The scream of seals or sea-lions on an island beach was another hypothesis--again, the nearest land was Easter Island, six hundred miles to the north'ard. Besides, the shriek we heard had certainly a human, if not a diabolic, origin. Whether it was, as some imagined, a shipwrecked boat's crew who saw our lights and in their extremity raised a sort of death-scream, or whether, as others asserted, it had a supernatural origin, remained a mystery insoluble.

Some time after, Nils, our taciturn Russian Finn, who was as superstitious as big Mac, told me we should have called out: “Jou wass come here, oldt man,” and the thing, whatever it was, would have come and done us no harm. Nils evidently thought it was a seaspirit. Who shall say? For my own part, I hold with Hamlet that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy," and certainly more than one can well put a name to.

Via Newspapers.com

The vanishing crew of the “Mary Celeste” is one of the most famous sea mysteries.  However, finding inexplicably abandoned ships is a more common occurrence than you might think.  A typically eerie example was noted in the “San Francisco Call,” January 27, 1892:

One of the very strangest of tales of the sea was that which the Italian bark Colombo D brought to this port. It was fully as strange, though true, as that which Captain Marryat evolved in the world-famed "Flying Dutchman." It has the same elements of mystery with the added fearful uncertainty of the fate of the living men, of whom no trace remains. 

On the 11th inst., while the Colombo D was about 150 miles off the coast of Bermuda, Captain Vigilana states that his lookout sighted a vessel about three miles off on the starboard bow. She was a three-master and square rigged.  She was signaled but no answer came. 

She was steering very erratically too, and although the shadows were gradually deepening into twilight, Captain Vigilana decided to bear down upon and see what, if anything, was the matter. Nearer and nearer they came, but to their repeated hailing not a sound of answer came. 

Not a trace of life was on board. All was silent save the soughing of the wind through the rigging.  Stranger still, all sail was set, and the ship, in charge of the fates, was sailing on with no hand on the helm.  As the Colombo sailed by her stern her name could be plainly made out. It was Hutchins Brothers; a Nova Scotian ship.

Captain Vigilana held a consultation with his officers and called a volunteer crew to investigate, but the night was growing dark and the superstitious sailors refused to go. It was finally decided to stay by the strange vessel until morning. Lights were already in the rigging of the Colombo, but none shone from the Hutchins, giving additional evidence that no life was on board her. 

Strange as had been the experience already, and great the expectancy on board the Colombo, the morning brought deeper mystery, for when dawn broke there was only a waste of water where the lifeless Nova Scotian ship had been. The night had been calm and peaceful. A skiff could have lived in the roll of the gentle sea. There was no land within sight and no storm had arisen, and yet nowhere could be found the strange ship. She had disappeared as mysteriously as she had come into sight.

As far as I know, the mystery of what happened to the crew of the Hutchins Brothers--not to mention their ship--remained forever unsolved.