This is a very strange story that over time has become somewhat of a legend. This is the story of the Octavius. It’s bizarre and fascinating, so stick with it!
In 1761, a British trading ship called the Octavius left the British Isles on its way to Asia. It was captained by a very old Dutch man named Hendrick van der Heul, who was a former pirate: he had once been quartermaster for the pirate Captain William Kidd in the 1690s. (Yes, he was a very old man)
The Octavius would have looked similar to this.
Now, the Octavius made the trip around the southern tip of Africa, and after about a year, they had traded spices in Asia and were on their way home.
However, Captain Hendrick decided to be bold. In a bold move which baffles historians to this day, Hendrick decided that instead of going home back the way they came, they would travel through the Northwest Passage.
The Northwest Passage was a passage that ships could go through, just north of mainland Canada, which would allow ships to bypass going all around South America just to get to Asia. However, the one problem for the Octavius and its crew was that it was 1762: nobody had even found a proper route through the Northwest Passage yet, and they weren’t even sure of its existence. The entire plan was basically suicide, but Captain Hendrick wanted to do it anyway.
The extremely cold, icy, and dangerous Northwest Passage. Why they wanted to go through here is beyond me.
This is when the story gets really interesting.
Unfortunately for the Octavius and her crew, the decision to go through the Northwest Passage was a really bad one. The ship’s last recorded position was 250 miles north of this place in Alaska.
250 miles north of there. I can’t imagine how cold it must have been.
After that, the crew sadly froze to death and died. But that’s not the end of the story.
In 1775, a whaling crew off the coast of western Greenland, on the other side of the Northwest Passage, discovered a totally frozen ship drifting along the ice. It was the Octavius, having finally completed its impossible journey through the Northwest Passage 13 years late!
Utterly befuddled, the whaling ship’ crew carefully boarded the eerie vessel, and when they went down into the hold, they were petrified: frozen bodies, perfectly preserved were all about the room, frozen in time, perfectly still. The captain, Hendrick van der Heul, was found frozen as well, perfectly preserved, sitting at his desk with a pen in his hand. He had frozen to death while in the middle of writing in his logbook, which was dated to 1762.
So how did the Octavius drift over 2000 miles through the treacherous Northwest Passage, without a crew and frozen sails, and arrive west of Greenland totally intact? We will never know. If you believe in ghosts, perhaps it was them. Perhaps just insane luck.
Regardless, I find it amazing that they finally achieved the near impossible: just 13 years too late.
