1932 Yukon Nuggets

SS Baychimo

Al Oster has written a lot of story songs about the Yukon. One that doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves is about the Ghost ship of the Arctic. It was called the SS Baychimo.

Back in the 1920s, the Arctic coast especially around Herschel Island in the Yukon was an active place. The Hudson Bay company operated outposts where furs were traded and then shipped south on ocean going vessels.

The SS Baychimo was first based in Scotland and completed nine successful voyages along the north coast of Canada, visiting trading posts in the east and collecting pelts.

Then she was based in Vancouver. The steel hull single stack ship was about the length of the SS Klondike. The Baychimo, played a key role in opening the North but was abandoned in 1931 after becoming trapped in ice in the Beaufort Sea, forcing an Arctic air rescue of its 39 man crew. They were certain that the ship that was loaded with furs from the northern coastal communities, would sink.

But the Baychimo became free of the ice and for years drifted back and forth in the western Arctic Ocean. In 1932, explorer Leslie Melvin saw the ghost ship floating along the coast as he made his way by dogsled from Herschel Island in the Yukon to Alaska. Explorers, scientists and hunters reported many sightings after the second world war. At times, the ghost ship was boarded by curious Inuit hunters. They often wanted to salvage the ship but it proved impossible. Remarkably, the deserted ship stayed afloat for at least 38 years.

Finally, in 1969, as the U.S. oil tanker Manhattan crossed the Northwest Passage, a group of Inuit said they saw the Baychimo floating between Point Barrow and Icy Cape, Alaska. It was the last time anyone claimed to have seen the deserted vessel.

Now, many years after the Baychimo was left to the notions of nature, a team of scientists from the University of Alaska is charting the estimated four thousand sunken ships along the Alaskan shore for a marine heritage preservation program. A sea floor survey of shipwrecks could identify the final resting place of the fabled ghost ship of the arctic if it has actually succumbed to an icy grave.

A CKRW Yukon Nugget by Les McLaughlin.