Retro - "The Ghost Ship of The Bering Sea."

 Chapter: The Ghost Ship of the Bering

I was instructed by the skipper, Donald Bark, on how to read the radar screen in the pilot house of the fishing vessel Iceland. The greenish glow of the screen cast a ghostly hue across the small wooden cabin as he pointed out the vertical and horizontal lines, each marking two nautical miles. "Keep to the compass course," he said, tapping the wheel, "and watch for any flashing blips. That means another vessel is nearby."

That was about the extent of my crash course in navigation. My final instructions were to scream for help if anything looked wrong.

The Iceland was a 65-foot wooden-hulled fishing vessel, one of the oldest boats out of Sand Point, Alaska. She had history etched into every beam, having once been a 90-foot shrimp boat before the Bering Sea ran out of shrimp. Paul Martinez, the Norwegian craftsman who built her, had named all his boats with the suffix "-land": Wonderland, Dreamland, and Iceland. Of the twelve, only Iceland still roamed these perilous waters, now cut down to size and rigged for halibut and salmon. The crew swore she was haunted—still touched by Martinez’s spirit. She was the subject of whispers among the fleet. But for those of us onboard, she was more than a vessel. She was a testament to grit and tradition, a living relic.

We were en route to Dutch Harbor, one of the westernmost inhabited points in the United States. During World War II, the Japanese attacked this place—the only U.S. soil they ever did. Now, the harbor was lined with old battleships turned floating canneries. Our hold carried 25,000 pounds of halibut. The largest of the catch was dubbed "Big Bertha" by the skipper—seven feet six inches long and weighing nearly 450 pounds.

Halibut are strange creatures. Flat and ghostly pale underneath, seaweed green on top, with both eyes on one side of their head. To catch them, we used a method called long-lining—miles of baited hooks sunk to the ocean floor with salmon heads, herring, and, if lucky, octopus tentacles.

Fishing the Bering Sea is no joke. Fall overboard, and you’ve got maybe two minutes before the icy water shuts your body down. Weather changes with vicious suddenness; a gale warning can mean the difference between a routine haul and a life-or-death struggle. Seasickness tore through me in the first few days. I cursed my decision more than once. But I endured. I can now say I survived the perfect storm, the rip tides, the temper flare-ups, and the grime and slime of life at sea.

How many Malaysians can make such a claim?

Donald Bark, the skipper, was from Teanaway Valley, Washington. A gentle man with strange hobbies—he collected outhouses, of all things. His yard was scattered with old toilets from the days of the wagon trail. I had visited his place on the drive up north from Green Bay, Wisconsin, in May 1982. My friend Robert Serge and I made the journey in his leaky Chevy Nova, the gas tank barely holding a quarter at a time. Before leaving Wisconsin, we stopped by Little Suamico, where we helped plant baby pine trees with a community of back-to-the-land idealists.

Robert was a photographer. We met at Bellin Hospital where we were to have a two-man show—his photos, my printmaking. His images floored me. They had been taken during his fishing trips to Alaska. I told him flat-out, "Take me with you." He laughed. I insisted. I had no money and no job lined up. But I was done with Green Bay. I had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. My son and his mother had moved to Germany. My love life had gone dry. The Midwest had lost its hold on me.

And so I found myself clutching the wooden wheel of the Iceland in the middle of a black Alaskan night, eyes darting from the sea to the radar screen. The engine hummed steadily, a sound I had come to tune out. Darkness surrounded us like velvet.

Then—a blip.

A single dot appeared on the screen, lower left, two squares from center. Another vessel. I felt strangely comforted. Company, perhaps. But something changed. Instead of continuing past, the blip paused—then turned. It began moving toward the center of the screen.

Toward us.

Toward me.

My heart pounded. The blip accelerated. It was now half a square from the center. I screamed for the skipper. I spun the wheel wildly, not knowing what I was doing. Suddenly, he was there, taking control, cursing and shouting. A light—no, two—flooded the sea around us. I stared out the cabin window, frozen.

A massive, silent ship slid past us, grey, illuminated from within, decks lit but entirely empty. Not a soul aboard. Not a sound. And then it was gone. Just bubbles in the wake.

We never spoke of it again.

The next morning, I expected a tongue-lashing. But everyone was silent. JR, the skipper’s nephew, later confessed he’d seen it too. He had been in the galley, unable to sleep, watching from below. He described exactly what I saw. He told Donald, who told him not to dwell on it.

Even now, I question whether it happened. But I remember it. The light. The silence. The enormity of it.

Maybe it was a ghost ship. Maybe it was a war relic. Maybe it was a dream.

But in the Unimak Pass of the Bering Sea—often likened to the Bermuda Triangle or the tip of Cape Horn—anything can happen. So said the old Alaskan fishermen.

And I believe them.