Baychimo : Arctic ghost ship

Baychimo is the legendary Hudson's Bay Company ship that survived for years in the Arctic after being abandoned by her crew in 1931.

In the 1920s, the crew of Baychimo set up trading posts in eastern Canada, sailed on fur-trading expeditions to Siberia during the turbulent years of the Russian Civil War, and eventually made the dangerous annual voyage around Alaska to Canada's western Arctic coast, shouldering her way through the ice floes to re-supply the HBC's remote trading posts.

Anthony Dalton tells the story of the hardy ship and her sometimes irascible captain, Sydney Cornwell, and through them brings to life the larger story of the community of northern traders, hunters and sailors of which Baychimo was a part.

But this ship's story had a remarkable twist. When Baychimo was caught in 1931 in an ice floe that refused to let go, her crew expected her to sink at any moment, and abandoned ship. But she was as stubborn as the ice, and she floated away unharmed to begin what would prove to be the longest phase of her seemingly charmed career: for the next four decades she would appear on the horizon at unexpected times and places, always defiantly upright and afloat, becoming the legendary ghost ship of the Arctic.