Happy Halloween!
The SS Watertown was a standard American oil tanker built in 1919 for the Cities Service Company and spent its early years transporting petroleum along the United States coastline and through the Gulf of Mexico. The ship lived a largely uneventful life until December 1924, when it departed New York bound for the Panama Canal.
During the voyage, crewmen James Courtney and Michael Meehan were assigned to clean a cargo tank but were tragically overcome by toxic gas fumes and suffocated. Because the ship was days away from port, the captain ordered a traditional burial at sea, and both men were committed to the ocean off the Mexican coast on December 4, 1924.
The ship became famous almost immediately after the burial when the crew began reporting a chilling phenomenon in the water. For days, multiple sailors claimed they could see the distinct, oversized faces of Courtney and Meehan staring back at them from the foam and waves in the ship’s wake, always appearing around dusk and following the vessel for miles. Skeptical but intrigued, Captain Keith Tracy purchased a camera when the ship docked in New Orleans to document the claims on their return trip.
When the faces reportedly appeared again, Captain Keith Tracy took six photographs of the water. According to the story, five showed nothing unusual. The sixth appeared to contain two humanlike faces floating among the waves. Later accounts claimed the William J. Burns Detective Agency examined the negative and found no evidence of tampering. However, the original negative disappeared, the agency’s report has not been located, and surviving copies may have been enhanced over the years.
The photograph may show nothing more than foam, shadows, and the human mind searching for familiar faces. But once you know the story of Courtney and Meehan, it becomes remarkably difficult to see only water.
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wowwwwww
Ghosts in the waves. That’s a new one!
I know…this I never seen before.
Talk about a perfect story for today, Max …. this is it! One thing I could never shake from my thoughts is how incredibly sad and lonely it sounds to be buried (or lost) at sea …. not for the dead, obviously, but for the people left behind, family and friends who need a place, a physical burial site, to visit in order to pay their respects properly. While most of us realize we can honor and remember those we have lost anywhere at any time, there are still those who need a tangible place or site where they can mourn. Then there’s the other legend about those lost at sea never being truly at peace as they have no real final resting place. It’s eerie and haunting …. and just right for today. Excellent write up, as always, my friend. My companion piece will be up very soon. Hope you have a ‘spirited’ Halloween! 👻
I thought it fit Nancy…I know exactly what you mean. I just read where a shipwreck hunter named David Mearns found two military ships in Australia and the families, even after all of these years, were so emotional. The two ships were sunk in WW2…and no one knew where they were. The families said now they could finally mourn and know where their long lost uncles, father, daughter, etc were. So yes…it does make a huge difference.
Have a great Halloween!
And here’s my piece, Max! In cases like this, there aren’t a whole lot of different photos/videos available and I see I chose the same video you did, but I think my photos may be different from yours.
https://theelephantstrunk.org/2026/10/31/ss-watertown-faces-in-the-water/
That’s a Halloween one for you, for sure! It was much more difficult to manipulate photos back then so it makes you wonder indeed. Too bad the original negative is missing, that could really clear up the authenticity question . Do you know how long the ship was kept in service or if those ghost faces continued to be seen?