Ellen Austin Ghost Ship Incident (1881)
CASE FILE: Ellen Austin Ghost Ship Incident (1881)
[edit | edit source]Case Identification
[edit | edit source]| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Vessel name | Ellen Austin (formerly Meta) |
| Vessel type | British merchant schooner |
| Length | Approximately 200 feet |
| Date of alleged incident | 1881 (exact date disputed; some sources say 1891) |
| Location | Sargasso Sea / Bermuda Triangle vicinity |
| Route | Liverpool to New York |
| Incident | Discovery of derelict vessel; placement of salvage crew; subsequent crew disappearance |
| Official records | No casualty listings found in Lloyd's of London records |
| Credibility assessment | Disputed; possibly apocryphal |
The Legend
[edit | edit source]According to the account popularized by Rupert Gould in his 1944 book The Stargazing Talks (based on radio broadcasts made in the 1930s), the following events occurred:
The Ellen Austin, en route from Liverpool to New York, encountered an unknown vessel sailing erratically in the Sargasso Sea. The mystery ship appeared to be abandoned. Captain Griffin of the Ellen Austin maintained a cautious distance for two days before sending a boarding party to investigate.
The boarding party found the vessel completely abandoned — cargo (reportedly mahogany) intact, no sign of crew, but with the captain's log and ship's nameplate missing. Finding the ship to be seaworthy, Captain Griffin placed a small salvage crew aboard to sail the prize to New York. The two vessels continued together.
Two days later, a squall separated the ships. When the storm cleared and the Ellen Austin located the derelict again, the salvage crew had vanished — just as the original crew had. According to some versions of the legend, a second salvage crew was placed aboard. That crew also disappeared.
Historical Verification Problems
[edit | edit source]Researcher Lawrence David Kusche (The Bermuda Triangle Mystery — Solved, 1975) conducted an extensive search of historical records and found:
- No newspaper accounts from 1880 or 1881 mentioning the incident
- Lloyd's of London records confirm the ship existed — the vessel was built as Meta in 1854 and renamed Ellen Austin in 1880 — but show no casualty listings for any vessel at the time suggesting a large number of missing men
- The earliest traceable source is a June 1906 newspaper story that claims the incident occurred in 1891, not 1881
- That 1906 story itself gives no reference for its source
Assessment
[edit | edit source]The Ellen Austin incident occupies a uniquely problematic position in the Bermuda Triangle case record. While the ship itself verifiably existed, no contemporaneous documentation of the incident has been located. The story appears to have entered popular imagination through Rupert Gould's radio broadcasts and book, making it potentially a nautical tall tale attached to a real vessel.
The incident is frequently cited in Bermuda Triangle literature as an example of the region's mysterious properties but must be treated with significant caution as the underlying event may not have occurred as described — or may not have occurred at all.
