A derelict cargo ship drifted thousands of miles across the Atlantic to wash up on the Irish coast of County Cork.
Earlier this week, an abandoned cargo ship pinned as a “ghost ship”, was washed up on the Irish coast of County Cork. It is unclear how long the boat was drifting at sea, but we can be confident that it’s been abandoned for quite a long time.
The ghost ship was washed up following the blustery weather of Storm Dennis
Aerial footage caught by the local coast guard showed us the 80-metre long cargo ship MV Alta beached on the rocky bay of Ballycotton village, County Cork.
The ship had drifted thousands of miles for over 12 months; it originally came from south-east Bermuda, a British island territory in the Atlantic Ocean.
The thundery weather caused by Storm Dennis seems to have blown it across the world and incredibly anchored it on the Irish coast.
Previously, the ghost ship’s crew had been rescued by the US Coast Guard
In September 2018, the ship’s ten crew members were rescued by the US Coast Guard after it had encountered trouble at sea when travelling from Greece to Haiti.
A power outage caused the 1976 vessel to coast across the sea for 20 days with the crew onboard, putting it around 1,300 miles south-east of Bermuda.
After being rescued by the local coast guard and taken to Puerto Rico, the crew never returned to the ship, and it has been vacant ever since. It was last spotted in September 2019 by a British Royal Navy vessel in the mid-Atlantic.
“We closed the vessel to make contact and offer our assistance, but no one replied,” the ship’s crew wrote on Twitter at the time. “Whilst investigations continue we’re unable to give you more detail on this strange event.”
A “one in a million” occurrence
Local lifeboat-chief John Tattan of County Cork noted that the occurrence was a “one in a million”.
The head of Ballycotton’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) told the Irish Examiner newspaper that he’d “never, ever seen anything abandoned like that before.”
It is usually the responsibility of the ship’s owner to dispose of their damaged boat, but in this instance, it is unclear what will happen.
The ghost ship is washed up on a dangerous stretch of Irish coastline
Cork City Council had this to say: “Cork County Council is again asking members of the public to stay away from the wreck location as it is located on a dangerous and inaccessible stretch of coastline and is in an unstable condition.”
It is not unheard of for large boats to be thrown across the world and beached during particularly bad storms.
Ireland has already endured the worst of Storm Dennis, but with Met Éireann predicting more chaotic weather this weekend, we’re hoping that there won’t be any other ghost ships anchored onto the Irish coast.
