Ocean voyages have always been accompanied by various risks, and in the era when there is no satellite positioning, every time you go to sea, it is equivalent to going through a ghost gate. In the twenties of the last century, there was a famous shipwreck, the shipwreck was the Japanese fishing ship Ryōei Maru, which drifted on the sea for 11 months after being lost in a storm, and the 12 crew members on board were reduced to the point of killing each other and cannibalism due to hunger.
When the ship was eventually found in a U.S. port, there were only nine mutilated bodies left on board.
What's even more incredible is that according to the ship's logbook, during the nearly one-year drift, the Ryaei Maru has encountered other ships more than once, but no one noticed the cry for help from the Ryōei Maru, all of which is like a legendary ghost ship!
The protagonist of the incident, the Ryoei Maru, was a dhow with a displacement of only 19 tons, belonging to a fishing village in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, and was only a small boat among the ocean-going vessels of the time.
On September 16, 1926, a total of 12 fishermen under the leadership of Captain Miki Noboru Kizo set out from the local Tenko Port to fish near Misaki Port in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
Because of the scarcity of harvest, on December 5 of the same year, the Ryoei Maru sailed from Misaki Port in search of fish in the direction of Yaozi Port, and it was this voyage that drove the fishing boat into the abyss of hell.
Shortly after leaving the port, the Ryoei Maru was hit by a storm, and the captain Miki decided to speed up to Yaozi Port to escape the limelight.
However, the crew apparently underestimated the severity of the storm, and soon the sails of the Ryōei Maru were damaged, and to make matters worse, the main shaft of the ship's engine broke during the storm, causing the entire fishing boat to lose power completely.
After realizing that they could not control the ship to dock, the crew of the Ryoei Maru had no choice but to hang up the auxiliary sails, which were still intact, and sail along the current in the direction of the United States, which was far away from Japan, in the hope of encountering other ships to call for help.
But desperately, the Raei Maru was not rescued. By October 31, 1927, when the dilapidated Ryōei Maru was discovered by an American freighter near Vancouver Island on the west coast of Canada, there was no survivor left on the Ryōei Maru.
After the investigators towed the Ryoei Maru into the harbor for a closer inspection, they learned from the ship's logbook what kind of horrific human tragedy had happened here.
According to the American media at the time, the investigators boarded the ship and saw an indescribable picture of hell, with the mutilated bodies of the victims scattered everywhere, the broken skulls, and the limbs of the bones, which had long since been turned into dried corpses in the scorching sun and sea breeze. All the fresh water and food had long since been depleted, and there were dried and black blood stains left all over the ship, as if there had been a brutal and inhumane fight between the crews.
In the captain's room of the Raei Maru, the investigators found three logbooks, in addition to the suicide note of the captain Miki written on a wooden board with a pencil, which reads:
On December 5, Taisho 15 (1926), he set sail from Misaki Port in Kanagawa Prefecture to fish, drifted due to machine failure, and 1 stone and 6 buckets of white rice kept all the staff alive to this day, bravely fighting to the death, March 6, Taisho 16.
Behind this suicide note, there is also a suicide note left by Captain Duan and the three ghosts to his family, hoping that his children will never be fishermen when they grow up, as well as the longing for his family and the guilt of not being able to go back alive. The reason why the suicide note was written on the wooden board was also in the hope that after the ship sank, the last words of the crew would be able to be found in all directions.
And when the investigators opened the logbook of the Ryōei Maru, the most bizarre and mysterious place in the entire Ryōei Maru crash happened here.
According to the logbook, during more than 11 months of drifting, the distress signal of the Ryoei Maru was not detected by any passing ship!
In the eyes of passing ships, the Ryoei Maru seems to have been transformed into a legendary ghost ship, and although it has passed by other ships many times, it has not been detected no matter how much it calls for help.
Judging from the logbook, there was no great panic on board the Raei Maru, which was blown off course by the storm at first. Although the power system was damaged by the storm, the ship carried a large amount of freshly caught marine fish in addition to the rice it carried, and optimistically estimated to be able to feed the entire ship's 12 crew members for four months. In addition, the Ryoei Maru has only been out to sea for a short time, and the fresh water reserves on board are also very sufficient, and the distance from the shore is not too far, so the hope of being rescued is still very high.
However, as if under some evil curse from the sea, less than a week after the incident in Hainan, on December 15, Izawa, who was in charge of writing the voyage records, wrote that they had encountered a Japanese fishing boat of about the same tonnage as himself. The crew of the Ryoei Maru, who had seen the savior, raised their flags and shouted loudly to get the attention of the other party, but strangely enough, the fishing boat seemed to have no notice of them at all and drove straight into the distance.
The next day, the same story played out again, and another freighter appeared near the Ryōei Maru, this time the crew simply found a wooden plank to light a bonfire, and waved their clothes to call for help, but the result did not change, and the other party still left as if they were not looking.
After a series of failed attempts for help, the tense atmosphere quickly spread on the Raei Maru, and at the suggestion of the captain of the ship, the three demons, everyone began to save as much fresh water and food as possible in preparation for the next long-term drift at sea. With the ship's engine damaged, the crew relied on anchors to survive the extreme weather, leaving them at the wheel to carry them farther and farther away from Japan.
At first, the crew of the Raei Maru would actively fish and collect rainwater with iron buckets to ensure supplies, but as the drift time became longer, the food stored was no longer enough to meet the daily needs of the 12 crew members. In addition, with only rice and marine fish to eat, the crew was extremely lacking in vitamins and other nutrients, and severe debilitating symptoms and sepsis also spread rapidly among the crew, and everyone began to become more and more pale and weak.
On January 27, the Ryoei Maru, which had been adrift for more than a month, encountered an American ship again, but as on the previous two occasions, no matter how hard the crew tried to call for help, the crew ignored them as if they had suddenly become deaf and blind. Everyone could only watch in despair as the hope of survival quietly faded in front of them again.
By March 6, the food on board the Ryoei Maru had been completely depleted, and the crew, who were wounded and weakened, could not catch a single fish that day, and the crew finally had to face the threat of death from food and starvation. After a long day of suffering, Chief Hosoi, who had been injured by the previous storm on March 7, could no longer hold on, and wailed the hope of setting foot on Japanese soil again, swallowed his last breath, and became the first victim of the Ryoei Maru. The grief-stricken crew, led by the captain of the ship, Miki, held a water burial for Hosoi.
The good news is that two days after the death of Chief Engineer Hosoi, the crew of the Ryoei Maru finally caught a big fish, temporarily alleviating the crisis of food shortages. Unfortunately, the crew member Naoe was unable to eat due to excessive weakness, and died a painful death under the eyes of everyone, becoming the second victim of the Ryoei Maru.
At this point, the Grim Reaper finally began to show his sharp scythe to the suffering fishermen, and the crew members who were already on the verge of the limit began to die one by one. On March 15, Izawa, who was in charge of recording the logbook, fell ill and died, and was replaced by another crew member, Matsumoto. On the 27th of the same month, two more crew members went mad, rushed to the bow of the ship and shouted that they had seen Mt. Fuji, and gnawed the wooden planks on the side of the ship as turnips, and finally died in front of everyone with a mouthful of bloody sawdust.
Two days later, the crew member Mitani also went crazy, and suddenly picked up an axe and slashed at another crew member who was trying to fish to satisfy his hunger, and the other crew members who witnessed the tragedy were too weak to stop it, and actually watched Mitani beat his companion to death. As the log records became more and more terrifying, and the crew died of hunger and illness one after another, an even more crazy and cruel scene finally happened on the Ryōei Maru.
On April 14, Sawayama, who had completely lost his mind from starvation, began to target the corpse of his dead companion, trying to maintain his life by devouring the corpse. Soon, two more crew members began to join in the cannibalization of their companions, but even if they abandoned their humanity to this point, they still couldn't change the end of the crew of the Ryoei Maru.
Judging from the logbook records, by May 6, only the captain of the ship and Matsumoto were still alive on the entire ship. The last date of the journal was on the 11th, and the recorder wrote his last words in scribbled notes, and after lamenting the hope that he could eat another bite of sugar oranges, he said goodbye to the world forever.
So far, after nearly 200 days of drifting at sea, all the crew members of the Ryoei Maru have died and none of them have survived, and the US authorities have returned the nine mutilated remains collected from the ship and the wooden planks with the suicide notes written on them to the Japanese government after the investigation has been completed.
At the same time, the story of the ship's wreckage, especially the strange experience of the ship drifting like a ghost for a year without being discovered by any other ship, and the crazy act of 12 crew members killing each other in despair, caused an uproar in both the United States and Japan, and was reported by various media outlets. The originally ordinary Ryoei Maru has also carried the terrifying legend of the cursed ghost ship.
However, after the incident was widely disseminated, an American captain Richard came forward and publicly claimed that he had spotted the Ryoei Maru drifting in the ocean on December 23, 1992. But in stark contrast to the ship's logbook, he said he approached the wooden fishing boat and sent a signal asking if he wanted help in distress. However, when he approached, he saw that the ten crew members were just standing on the deck of the Ryōei Maru staring at him, and did not react at all, because they felt that Captain Richard had been tricked, so they had to leave. This statement was undoubtedly more confirmed, and the statement that the Ryoei Maru was cursed and turned into a ghost ship made people at the time more and more convinced of this.
So did the Ryoei Maru really turn into a ghost ship after the shipwreck, and why didn't any passing ships discover its existence?
In fact, if we take a closer look at the incident of the Ryoei Maru, it is not difficult for us to find many suspicious points. First of all, the main basis of the American report at that time was the three logbooks found from the ship, and from the fact that only 9 bodies could be pieced together, the possibility of cannibalism tragedy was exaggerated.
But in fact, there were two versions of the logbook that were reported at the time, which were different from the emotional version of the novel, which detailed the deaths of the people and the tragedy of cannibalism. There is also a very rudimentary version, with only a few words on each page, and there is no mention of cannibalism.
As for the three bodies that were lost, they were obviously the three others including Chief Engineer Hosoi, who claimed to have seen the Ryōei Maru, and the time and place where Captain Richard claimed to have seen the Ryōei Maru were completely inconsistent with the distance traveled by the Ryōei Maru after the shipwreck.
It's just that we can never know what the truth is.