The Baychimo was a real Hudson's Bay Company cargo steamer, built in Sweden in 1914 and later purchased for Arctic fur trading.
In October 1931, while loaded with furs near Barrow, Alaska, the ship became trapped in early pack ice and was abandoned by her crew as unsalvageable.
Rather than sinking, the empty vessel kept drifting through Arctic waters for decades, occasionally spotted by hunters, traders, and pilots.
She was sighted intermittently until 1969, making her one of the longest-drifting ghost ships ever recorded. Her final resting place has never been found.
Built as the Ångermanälven, later seized as war reparations and eventually sold to the Hudson's Bay Company.
Loaded with furs near Barrow, Alaska, the Baychimo becomes icebound during an early freeze.
After a severe blizzard, the crew assumes the ship destroyed and camps ashore; days later an Inuit hunter spots her drifting 45 miles away, still intact.
Separate groups reach the still-drifting ship, but bad weather prevents them from bringing her safely to port.
Trappers, pilots, and sailors periodically report the empty ship drifting through the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.
The Baychimo is spotted locked in an ice floe for what is believed to be the last time.
The Alaskan government begins a project to locate the wreck; her exact resting place remains unfound.
At least three separate parties tried to bring the ship to port over the years; each time, weather intervened.
Later sightings noted a missing propeller and a growing list, yet the ship continued to drift regardless.
Items removed from the ship by Inupiat visitors and traders, including navigation tools, later surfaced in museum collections.
Despite modern sonar surveys and dedicated search expeditions, the Baychimo has never been located.
Most researchers believe the ship eventually sank somewhere in the Beaufort Sea sometime after her last sighting in 1969.
The ship's steel, ice-strengthened bow likely helped the empty vessel survive repeated ice damage far longer than expected.
A romantic but unlikely theory holds that she remains frozen intact somewhere within the pack ice.
Some accounts suggest local hunters intentionally left her drifting rather than risk a dangerous tow back to port.