Perdition at Lake Poyang

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​Poyang Lake is a large 1400 square mile body of water in China's Jiangxi Province. The lake was formed around 400 A.D. when the Gan River backed up, and the flood swallowed the countryside sending people fleeing for their lives. Was this ravenous hunger from the newly formed lake a foreshadowing of a hunger that is never satisfied?

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Ships on Lake Poyang (Source - VagabondJourney)

There are places on earth, which like a magnet to steel draws in things and people to a doomed ending. Sometimes there are no clues left in order to answer the question of what exactly happened.

Like the Bermuda Triangle and the Black Triangle over the Great Lakes, Poyang Lake in China has earned the reputation as a place of high strangeness. It is the largest freshwater lake in the country, located in rural Jiangxi Province.

The area where the most ships are said to disappear is the only passage Lake Poyang and the Yangtze River; the channel at Laoye Temple that has been an important shipping route since ancient times.

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Kobe Maru

In 1363, the fleets of the Ming and Han dynasties fought a bloody naval battle at Poyang Lake. This was the final days of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming emerged victorious and took control of the country. The leader, Zhu Yuanzhang would become the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

As the decades have passed there are sinister rumors surrounding the unexpected disappearance of ships that have never returned to port. It has earned the moniker of the "Waters of Death" or the "Place of Death" by the locals.

When the Japanese occupied China, the Japanese vessel, the Kobe Maru along with 200 troops inexplicably sank on April 16, 1945. It was near the Laoye Temple, and had set sail with favorable weather. Suddenly the weather turned and a huge wave overcame the ship and it sank. 

The Japanese sent in a salvage team, under the command of Colonel Tomohisa. Seven divers were sent down to only 30 feet of water, only one of the them survived. The lone diver was described as being overcome with terror by something he had seen in the depths, and never divulged exactly what he saw. The ship was never found, much less salvaging anything from it.

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The Kobe Maru lost in 1924

With the end of the war, the Chinese government decided to try to bring up the contents of the Kobe Maru. They hired a salvage expert Edward Bolton (Boer) to find the wreck and retrieve the contents. After a month he could not find it, and it is said he actually lost divers in the attempt. Years later, Bolton said when he was diving with his team there was a bright light that stabbed from the depths of the murky bottom, followed by a loud screeching sound. Then came a sense of being sucked down.

It seems though the name Kobe Maru had its own unfavorable history. On November 30, 1924, a shipped known by this name ran aground and was wrecked at Teuri, an island located in the Soya Strait, which is a narrow waterway that separates the Japanese island of Hokkaido from the Russian island of Sakhalin. The ship had served in the Russo-Japanese War.

But like everything else, is the fate of the Kobe Maru really an urban myth? It's reported that on November 11, 1942 the Japanese liner (used as a transport) sunk after a collision with the army cargo ship Tenzan Maru, 87 miles off the Yangtze River estuary. This event was three years before the ship was supposedly lost in sight of the Laoye Temple.

As to the diver who supposedly went to salvage the wreck, there is only one reference to E. Bolton in 1947, where he was reported salvaging the wreck of the Ametco which was en route to Singapore from Sydney when she went aground.

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Laoye Temple’s gate, overlooking Lake Poyang (source - VagabondJourney)

Supposedly during a 20 year period from the 1960s to the 1980s, 200 ships vanished along with 1,600 people. On August 3, 1985, thirteen ships disappeared on a single day. Survivors describe feelings of lost time, and go on to suffer from mental illness.

In 2001, a cargo ship was swamped by a large wave that came out of nowhere. In 2010, a 1,000 ton vessel sank on a calm day near the shore for some unexplained reason. The wreck was never found.

The strangest thing underlying all these disappearances is the calm weather preceding the event, and the fact that this lake has an average depth of only 28 feet, but the wrecks are not found. Where have they gone?

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Abandoned coal refinery on the lakeshore close to Laoye Temple (Source - VagabandJourney)

Three dams were built in 1977. It is said that one dam, the closest to Laoye Temple mysteriously disappeared in just one day.

Shen Dahai was sent in the 1980s with an expedition to find evidence of what occurred. When divers returned with no information he decided to dive himself. He didn't surface and the following day his body was found in Changba Shan Lake, which is not connected to the body of water where he disappeared from.

On August 3, 1985, thirteen ships went down in the same area after a sudden storm came up. Like before, recovery teams did not find any wrecks at the bottom of the lake.

It seems that not a year passes without a ship going down, and efforts to salvage any contents cannot be completed.

Some attribute the weird events to rogue tidal waves, whirlpools, UFOs, sudden lightning storms and even a lake monster. It's not so strange then to suspect that vortexes or portals have taken the missing ships along with their ill-fated crews.

​Others see the location of the lake upon the 30 degree north latitude known as God's Ring, as the cause of the disasters. The area is not limited to 30 degrees latitude in the northern hemisphere, but 5 degrees upper and lower, in other words between 25 degrees and 35 degrees north latitude.

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The disappearance of the crew and passenger of the ship Rosalie c.1840

This zone crosses the ancient civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, India and China, and 70% of ancient architectural remains are found here. 

The Bermuda Triangle which is known for its history of lost ships and malfunctioning equipment, falls within this latitude. Its reports of weird weather date back to Columbus' time in 1502. In 1840, a French ship named Rosalie did not reach its destination in Cuba. The vessel, which was new and built that same year, was found floating inside the Bermuda Triangle, but with no sign of the crew. Its cargo of wines, silks and fruit were intact. Everything on board was in its proper place. She was inspected and had no leaks. Only some poultry and a cat were found alive.

Other areas that fall in 30 degrees north are prone to disasters such as earthquakes. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake had an estimated magnitude of 7.7-9.0. Turkey is known as an active earthquake zone with one recorded in 1170 that measured 7.7 magnitude; in 1906 San Francisco was hit with a 7.9 magnitude quake; Wenchuan in China was also hit with 7.9 magnitude earthquake in 2008.

In recent years the bottom of Poyang Lake has become exposed due to extreme drought. Satellites are now able to view what was once under water, but the wrecks of the lost ships cannot be found.

Despite the passage of times and the advance of technology, there are still as many questions as ever regarding what force has claimed so many ships on Lake Poyang.

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