There are a great many tales in maritime lore, about ghost ships that sail the world over with ghostly crews and are destined never to reach port.

It is the story of a mysterious disappearance, and of a captain, a frozen body, still sitting behind his desk, and a crew that suffered the same fate. Some people say that this is not a simple legend.

It was October 11, 1775, when the whaling ship Herald came across a rather strange-looking schooner. The Herald’s crew thought that the weather-beaten ship was probably adrift and decided to inspect it more closely.

As the crew approached the ship, they saw that the ship was weathered: the sails were tattered and torn and hung limply from the masts. They boarded the drifting Octavius ​​and there discovered the reason for the lack of activity on deck.

But to understand this we must go back to 1761, when Octavius’s voyage began, fourteen years before the Herald found her. Leaving the port of London, the 28 sailors began their journey to China….

It was a majestic sailing ship, which left port with its entire crew and arrived safely in China, where it unloaded its cargo.

The weather was unusually warm and it seems the captain decided to sail home via the Northwest Passage, a journey which at that time had not been made. This was the last anyone heard of the ship, its crew or its cargo. And so Octavio was declared lost.

Fast forward to 1775, when the Herald’s crew slowly makes their way through the strange, eerie, silent ship. Below deck, they discovered the 28 sailors, frozen, motionless, and blue. And when they reached the Captain’s office, they found him behind his desk, also frozen.

The inkwell and other everyday objects were still in their place on the desk. Turning around, they saw a woman wrapped in a blanket on the bunk, frozen to death, along with the body of a child.

According to legend, the captain was still holding his pen as if he had been frozen in an instant. The Herald team reported that the entire crew had the same characteristic and were like models in a wax museum.

When the Octavius ​​set out on its voyage in 1761, the Captain carefully noted the date in his logbook, a document that was found on his desk 14 years later (but the last entry in it was from 1762).

The thirteen years between 1762 and 1775 were nowhere to be seen! Realizing that they are aboard a ghost ship, the men left Octavius ​​and joined the rest of their crew aboard the Herald. According to those who believe this story to be true, it was the Captain’s fault that they all froze to death.

According to this version of the story, the captain of the Octavius ​​decided to carry out an impossible mission: to cross the famous Northwest Passage, and it was this decision that killed all the people on board. But, of course, this story was born almost 250 years ago and all traces of it, in reality, have been lost.

Two and a half centuries is a long period, in which stories change and are embellished with other different details. According to one version, the Octavius ​​remained trapped in the ice for two and a half months, and it was not long before they ran out of supplies and froze to death.

But why was the captain still behind his desk with a pen in his hand? Besides, according to legend, Octavius ​​managed to navigate the Northwest Passage, but only when it was already a ghost ship. The ship’s last recorded position was 75N 160W, which placed the Octavius ​​250 miles north of Barrow, Alaska.

More than a century passed before another attempt was made to cross this passage by ship, but this time successfully. And for hundreds of years, this story survived to become legend, adrift, just like Octavius ​​and no one knows what really happened, but above all, what is the reason that can freeze a man in the middle of his writing, still with the pen in hand!

The Herald’s crew was afraid of the Octavius ​​and feared it was cursed, so they simply left it adrift. To this day, it has never been seen again.