Key Aspects:
- Guests and crew aboard Emerald Princess spotted a lone lifeboat off the coast of Alaska.
- The ship investigated the mysterious lifeboat for around an hour before being cleared by the Coast Guard.
- The lifeboat turned out to be abandoned from a cargo ship that sank last year.
A mystery unfolded off the southern coast of Alaska on July 18, 2026. Princess Cruises’ 3,090-guest Emerald Princess was sailing a seven-day, round-trip Alaska itinerary out of Vancouver in Canada.
The ship was sailing towards Ketchikan from Endicott Arm Fjord, when an orange object was spotted floating alone in the sea, approximately 13 nautical miles southeast of Port Alexander. At around 8:00 pm, guests onboard reported that the captain announced that the ship would be temporarily changing direction to investigate the object.
The object turned out to be a lone lifeboat, bobbing on its side, heavy with grime and wear. The words “lifeboat” and “rescue boat” could still be read on the boat’s portside hull. Mysteriously, there were no signs of life within the boat, nor any large vessel nearby that it may have been deployed from.
When a vessel is adrift in the ocean with seemingly no people aboard, it is commonly referred to as a “ghost ship”. Guests were quick to dub the adrift rescue boat a “ghost lifeboat”.
Due to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), an international treaty administered by the International Maritime Organization and first implemented in 1914 in response to the infamous Titanic disaster, all ships have a duty to investigate and aid any vessel found in distress.
Cruise Hive has reported on several similar cases recently, where a cruise ship following SOLAS regulations has led to lives being saved, such as in May 2026, when Carnival’s Mardi Gras rescued nine people adrift in a disabled boat off the coast of Florida.
Emerald Princess reportedly circled the lifeboat for around an hour, with crew attempting to assess the situation while in communication with the U.S. Coast Guard. All the while, guests onboard watched, with many speculating as to what was happening and where the lifeboat came from.
Eventually, the captain came back on the PA system and announced to guests that the Coast Guard had released them, explaining that the lifeboat had been abandoned. Emerald Princess continued on her itinerary as scheduled, docking in Ketchikan on July 19. She is scheduled to return to Vancouver on July 21.
Where Did The Lifeboat Come From?
It was eventually revealed that the ghost lifeboat was a remnant from Morning Midas, a 46,800 gross ton cargo ship that sank in June 2025. On June 3, 2025, Morning Midas was about 300 miles southwest of Adak Island in Alaska, carrying around 3,000 cars from Yantai, China to Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico, when a fire broke out onboard.
It is speculated that the fire may have been a result of a catastrophic lithium battery failure from one of the 70 electric or 681 partially electric hybrid vehicles onboard. Crews attempted to battle the fire for some time, but were unsuccessful.
All 22 crew members onboard safely evacuated the vessel, boarding lifeboats like the one found by Emerald Princess before being rescued by a nearby merchant vessel, Cosco Hellas. There were no reported injuries. Morning Midas finally sank below the waves from the fire damage twenty days later on June 23.
So, while there may not have been any actual ghosts on the lifeboat, it still served as a haunting reminder of how quickly things can go wrong at sea, and how regulations, like those implemented by SOLAS, can keep a bad situation from becoming deadly.
