Y’know, that ship on which every passenger disappeared mid voyage never to be seen again. Did they ever find out what that was all about?
Here are some speculations that came up on a previous thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=24755
No passengers - it was a cargo ship with a small crew. I don’t believe there’s a universally accepted explanation. Some TV documentary I saw once had one that sounded reasonable to me:
The ship was carrying a cargo of denatured alcohol, something that the captain was rather leery of and had no previous experience with. Somebody theorized that some of the barrels burst their lids due to the heat, they opened the holds to investigate, and the alcohol caused visible fumes to emerge. They paniced, thinking the ship was on fire and abandoned using the lifeboats. They were unable to get back to the ship after realizing that there was no danger.
yabob, do you really think that is a better explanation than space aliens?