Ghost Ships In Malaysia!
Well, ok, they were actually just big empty barges that washed ashore in Eastern Pahang state. But nobody knows how they got there or where they may have come from. These suckers are two football fields in length and three stories tall, so it isn't like nobody would notice they'd gone missing.
Villagers spotted the barges as they approached off the coast of eastern Pahang state in rough seas on Sunday, the New Straits Times said.
"I thought they may be mysterious islands which had surfaced unnaturally from the bottom of the sea," said villager Ismail Mat Taib, who had been herding cattle near the beach.
When they settled on the sand, the villagers discovered they were barges each the length of two football fields, and three storeys high.
Markings indicate they could be from Singapore. But who loses things this big? Car keys, sure. But barges?
Weird Stuff, World news | Gaius Tuesday, 2 January , 2007
By Jack Gunter, Jr., Tuesday, 2 January , 2007 @ 10:16 pm
I’ve been following a related story on another site and have even posted about this phenomenon myself.
It’s entirely possible however, especially given the general area that these were pirated barges, used previously in smuggling operations and were later dumped. Or they could have been abandoned as a method of discarding old freight and haul craft in order to avoid the expense of scuttling or sinking them when no buyer could be located.
A couple of years ago similar things were happening with commercial airliner in Africa.
I suspect a pirating operation myself, but due to lack of direct evidence and since I cannot personally investigate, it will be left to local authorities who I suspect won’t look too deeply into the matter unless either contraband or bodies are discovered aboard, and I’m sure they were probably swept clean before being set adrift or abandoned.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 2 January , 2007 @ 10:39 pm
Wouldn’t it be easier to just sink them? One good hole and down they go. Barges aren’t exactly rocket surgery shipbuilding.
By Jack Gunter, Jr., Wednesday, 3 January , 2007 @ 8:40 am
They aren’t but if you’ve ever scuttled a ship, it isn’t always as easy as it seems especially in calm waters and depending upon the design and who is trying it.
They may have in fact tried it and it simply didn’t work.
Many larger hauling ships nowadays are designed to compartmentalize flooding and stay afloat a long time. Scuttling can be dangerous and so can blowing a hole in the hull below the water line, either internally or externally.
If you’ve got a light crew, no proper equipment, or inexperienced crew, a lot, especially pirates, will just cut a ship loose once they have stripped her.
It’s cheaper and safer if they feel they can’t be tracked, and it’s hard to track pirates. Or even ships or planes that have been off proper lanes for a long time.
I’ll bet that these ships have probably been untracked for a while no matter what they hauled; cargo, people, contraband, whatever the case was.
Most parts of the world aren’t like America, good records aren’t kept and those that are can be easily manipulated. Of course that’s true in some industries, and in some parts of America as well. Or anywhere in the world if you know what you’re doing.
Unless the locals are gonna devote real resources to solve this, and they will not most likely, whoever cut these ships loose know they are in no danger of being tracked. Assuming they could be.