Seven years ago, the notion of kayaking across the Ohio seemed crazy, especially for someone who had no knowledge or experience of paddling. I’d tell you I’m an expert now, but that’d be a lie in the tradition of the fishermen motoring past us in their single engine boats. Rather, my confidence on this day is coming solely from Bob in the watercraft ahead of me. The tributary gives way to the river and he looks both ways as if we’re merely crossing a street.
“Ok, you ready?” he shouts.
“Sure,” I yell back, not entirely confident that I mean it.
“Your stroke needs work, but you’re doing great,” Bob reports as we make it halfway across the water, but already well into Kentucky’s border.
“Paddle with your torso,” comes as my arms begin to burn and I watch him shift from side to side in seemingly effortless motions.
Finally, we make it close enough to the opposite bank and I wrestle with the sweat propelled sunscreen that’s now intruding into my eyes. As we overtake another pair of kayakers, Bob wonders if they too are headed for the “ghost ship.”
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It’s not even close—
the March 2013 QC/D story entitled: “The ‘Ghost Ship’” is the most popular thing ever posted on this website. Almost daily, it’s the most visited page and the story has been ripped off by every clickbait farm and small market tv news station imaginable. According to Google’s stats, the post has been viewed (as of today) 413,000+ times compared to the next most popular article’s stats of 80,300+. I had heard about this ship back in 2007 or 2008, but never got around to seeking it out until 2013. There was a news article detailing some of its historical significance and after
my friend Matt and I paid a visit, I did my best to verify what I could: the ship’s birth as a pleasure yacht, how it hosted Thomas Edison, served in two World Wars, became a tourist vessel, featured in a Madonna music video, and how it ended up abandoned in a quiet creek west of Downtown Cincinnati.
I’ve run this website for nearly 13 years and there’s a lot that I’ve published which I feel is important both in terms of photographs made and words typed—but “the ghost ship,” that’s been the main draw for better or worse.
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- A photograph of mine from the original article that was eventually published alongside an essay by Harvard Professor Dr. Tiya Miles in 2019.
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There’s rarely a month that goes by where the original post doesn’t get a comment or someone rips off the story and my photographs for their own benefit. I’m happy to share—just give credit (Brian Williams and NBC News could, so why can’t a random Reddit user?).
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- One of my original photographs appearing on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams in 2014.
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Once that article took off, I was content to let the USS Phenakite/USS Sachem/Circle Line V be in terms of its own history and where it intersects with mine. When folks would email me asking about efforts to save it or preserve it, I didn’t have an answer. It’s an incredible story, one I was happy to highlight, but I’m not the ship’s keeper. I’m not the person in charge of making it seaworthy once again, someone else is (I think, there’s been a lot of stories over the years). When we showed up back in 2013, we got permission from a nearby household to go looking. As I understand things now: the local landowners don’t want people coming by. They, however, have no control over the water. Which is all fine—I had made my photographs, written my piece, and shared a story. That’s not to say I didn’t care for the ship or its history, but hell... I’ve got a life to live and I feel that there are many other posts on this website that share a more personal and important tale. So, after that original jaunt, I never gave much more thought to the ship. Until Bob asked me if I wanted to go see it via kayak.
He assured me that kayaking to the vessel was definitely an attainable feat, even with my very limited experience. I needed a distraction on that day and paddling to the ghost ship seemed like the perfect thing to occupy my mind.
The Ohio River itself had seemed tranquil and peaceful. I’m not big on hiking or nature, but as soon as we put in on the Hoosier State’s coast and started moving—I felt an appreciation for the natural world around me. We had driven from Ohio, into Indiana, and were now paddling to Kentucky—a true tri-state experience. Once we rounded the corner into the creek that is the ship’s resting place, things got truly serene. I had just assumed the Ohio River and its minimal traffic was in tune with nature, but this small tributary felt like pulling off a major interstate and onto the quietness of a rural road. The wilting trees that framed the creek felt like they were also focusing my attention on the world around me.
The creek’s current gently moved us forward and soon enough, there she was: listing to her right and seemingly unchanged since I stood on the nearby shore over seven years ago.
This time I was physically close to the ship. I could touch it and feel its coarse surface. I floated in the shallow water and looked up at the faded “Circle Line V” lettering where dots of light shone through the rust like stars in the night sky. I meandered by, up an down, snapping photos like I was a tourist—an ironic reversal of the ship’s former life carrying sightseers.
I was able to sit amongst the water, in the quiet of the creek, staring up at the vessel that had experienced an incredible existence—one that had delivered many visitors to this website and my work to many outlets. I began to reflect on my relationship with the hulk before me. I was able to not just make photographs, but write while in the moment—jotting down notes amongst the calm of the scene. I could see the water reflecting off the hull, I could intimately glimpse the vegetation that’s growing on the deck, I could see the sun shimmering through the trees, and I could hear the birds as the water gently lapped up against the vessel.
There’s a thing I like to do when I photograph an
abandoned place, something I’ve tried to be cognizant and aware of the last couple years: I try to imagine these derelict places when they were active. Sometimes it’s easy (
Surf Cincinnati and
Americana for example, I knew those as a kid). Sometimes, I’m grasping at straws—trying to visualize life in a dead place that I never knew when it was living. I tried to visualize Madonna getting instructions form her music video director, Thomas Edison reviewing experiment results on the deck, Captain Martin shooting a gun from the side—but, no matter how much I tried to relax and put my head there, I just couldn’t see it.
Bob waited patiently nearby as I rowed back and forth. He had been here before and had read that
original article. The reason we know each other, the reason we had an ice breaker in conversation upon our first meeting: it was because he had been reading my website for years. And here we were—at the ship, in kayaks, good friends brought together because of things like this vessel (in full disclosure, I love Bob for many reasons, not just cause he’s read my ramblings for years, but dude: thanks for reading).
Even if I couldn’t picture the history before me, I was at peace to move on from the ship. No matter what form this website takes in the future, no matter what form my life takes—I was content to see “the ghost ship” one more time, to close a chapter. Even if I was unsure of where I was heading next aside from an immediate paddle back to the opposite shore. And I was happy to be there with a dear friend—the same friend who remarked on the way back: “We’re in the middle of the river, above many feet of water, amongst a current that’s been flowing for hundreds of years.”
Yeah, we were.
And it was wonderful.
For the original story on "The Ghost Ship," go
here.
