MV Joyita
A ship that left Apia, Samoa, for the Tokelau Islands on 3 October 1955 and was found drifting weeks later with all 25 passengers and crew gone.
1955 CE · -13.84, -171.76 · status: unexplained
The account
The former luxury yacht was in poor condition, with corroded pipes and a faulty radio, but too buoyant to sink. Investigators could not see why everyone left.
The sceptical view
Flooding, a failed engine and fear that the boat would sink could explain an abandonment; the people's fate remains unknown.
The researched reading
A boat found waterlogged and empty with clear signs of trouble aboard. Flooding, injury and a panicked abandonment explain it best, with foul play a lesser possibility; nothing points to anything stranger.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A known natural phenomenon | 40% | The boat was found with a corroded cooling pipe that had flooded the bilge, a failed engine and a radio whose broken wiring limited it to a couple of miles; three rafts were gone. Fear of sinking in a flooding boat, with the crew taking to rafts that were lost at sea, explains the empty hull, which cork lining kept afloat. |
| Undetermined | 30% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 10% | Panic after the captain was hurt, with no one experienced left to judge whether the boat would float, could have led to a fatal abandonment. |
| A cultural story | 8% | The case is retold as a “Pacific Mary Celeste”, with claims of Japanese fishermen or secret wartime units that have no evidence. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | Foul play is a real possibility: cargo and the logbook were missing, and blood-stained bandages and a doctor’s bag were aboard; theories include an injured captain and a crew conflict, or piracy. No proof exists. |
| Something in the surroundings | 4% | Fumes or fire in the engine room could have driven people off, though no fire damage was reported. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 3% | The physical evidence on the boat points to ordinary trouble at sea. |
Official position: A 1956 commission of inquiry could not determine what happened to the 25 people; it blamed the captain for sailing an unseaworthy vessel without a working radio.
Connections in the atlas
- High Aim 6, the empty fishing boat
- ? Why was the Mary Celeste abandoned?
- Kaz II, the 'ghost yacht'
- Mary Celeste