Hundreds of people head off to sea each day, whether for fishing jobs, military conquests, or a plethora of other reasons. However, not all sailors who head off to explore the great blue ocean return. Here are ten sailors who were eerily lost at sea.

Related: 10 Shipwrecks That Are Still Unexplained

10 John Cabot

Giovanni Caboto was an Italian sailor who was born around 1450. However, it wasn’t until around 1495 that he decided to set his sights on becoming an explorer. To help finance the trip, he headed to Spain but was unable to secure funds from the king. So after anglicizing his name to John Cabot, he journeyed to England to get the support of the British crown.

King Henry VII agreed to finance his journeys, and John Cabot set off on a successful expedition following a more northerly route than Columbus had taken just five years earlier. After 20 days, he reached land, thinking it was Asia, naming it “New Found Land” or Newfoundland. Not finding the treasures that other explorers had discovered, he did note the mass quantities of cod. He staked claim to the land in the name of the king of England and, soon after, returned to England.

A year later, on his return trip, however, John Cabot wouldn’t have quite so much success.

In about 1498, he headed off on another expedition to further chart a route departing west from Europe to Asia. And that’s the last anyone heard of him. After heading off with five ships to support his journey, no more records were made about John Cabot.

To this day, we still don’t know if John Cabot disappeared while at sea or made it to a different continent but just didn’t write about it. So, for now, he’s thought to have been lost at sea on his final adventure.^[1]

9 Vasco de Ataíde

Vasco de Ataíde was a sailor from Portugal who, in 1500, joined Pedro Cabral on a trip to India. While the voyage was a success overall, poor Vasco de Ataíde never made it to his final destination.

What happened was that Ataíde was captaining one of the ships in Pedro’s fleet. The ship left Cape Verde along Africa’s west coast in late March 1500. However, that was the last that was seen of them.

Neither Ataíde nor the rest of his hundred and fifty crew members were seen again. And oddly enough, according to historical records from the time, there were no strong winds or storms that could have caused the ship trouble. To this day, it remains a mystery what happened to Vasco de Ataíde and his crew.^[2]

8 Gaspar Corte-Real

Gaspar Corte-Real was born in Portugal around 1450 and, like many other young men of his time, had a thirst for adventure and exploration. In 1500, Gaspar launched his sailing career, heading off on a voyage west from Portugal in the name of the king.

Gaspar made his way to Greenland but, unable to make a safe landing, was forced to return to Portugal. One year later, he gathered enough money and supplies to head out on a second mission to the icy continent.

Once again, he was unable to land in Greenland due to the icy terrain and ended up heading further south to Labrador. There, he captured several indigenous people, who he put in his boats to take back to Portugal.

Several months later, two of Gaspar’s three ships made it back to London. Notably absent, however, was Gaspar himself, who had been aboard the third missing ship. No one knew what had happened to Gaspar or his remaining boat, and to this day, he remains lost at sea.^[3]

7 Miguel Corte-Real

If the name Corte-Real sounds familiar, that’s because Miguel Corte-Real was Gaspar Corte-Real’s brother. After his brother failed to return home from his expedition to Greenland in 1501, Miguel was distraught.

Determined to find his brother and bring him back home to safety, Miguel gathered a crew and three ships of his own. In 1502, he set off from Portugal to search for his brother.

The voyage was initially a success, and the group arrived at the landing sight of Gaspar. Armed with these new clues, the three ships decided to divide and conquer to have a better chance of finding Gaspar. The plan was to meet on August 20th to discuss their findings.

However, when the date of the rendezvous arrived, Miguel’s ship didn’t turn up. There was no trace of what had happened to the second Corte-Real brother, and he was eventually declared lost at sea.^[4]

6 Diego de Nicuesa

Not all imperialist explorers were from Portugal. One Spanish explorer who decided to seek his fortune by venturing off to faraway lands was a man named Diego de Nicuesa. Backed by the Spanish crown, Diego de Nicuesa headed to Santo Domingo in 1502, the first of many voyages to Latin America.

The voyage was a success, and he was commissioned several times over the next few years to head to various parts of Latin America, including Panama and Costa Rica, where he governed Spanish colonies.

In 1510, however, his luck ran out. Rebellions were brewing due to hunger and illness, and Diego de Nicuesa headed off to put down one particular uprising. When he arrived, however, the colonists were waiting for him. Instead of letting Diego within their city walls, they loaded him and seventeen crew members onto a boat and shipped them off to Santo Domingo.

Somewhere out in the open waters, however, the boat disappeared. It never made it to Santo Domingo, and neither Diego nor his crew members were ever seen again.^[5]

5 Francisco de Hoces

Francisco de Hoces was a Spanish military man who, in 1526, joined the Loaísa Expedition to the Spice Isles. He was set to command a ship named the San Lesmes, which was one of seven other ships that were part of the expedition.

At first, things went well, and the fleet made its way to the Pacific Ocean. However, soon they were faced with strong gales. During one of these gales, the San Lesmes, with Francisco de Hoces aboard, disappeared.

Although no one knows for certain what happened to De Hoces or why his ship was lost at sea, it’s thought that the ship was blown as far away as Easter Island or New Zealand. Still, there’s little evidence to support this theory, and today, the general consensus is that poor Francisco was lost at sea. Part of the deadly water he traversed was later called the Drake Passage or the Mar de Hoces.^[6]

4 Roche Braziliano

Roche Brazilano was, unlike many of the more law-abiding sailors on this list, a pirate who launched his career of crime in 1654. He was said to have been an incredibly cruel pirate who threatened to shoot down anyone who wouldn’t take a drink with him.

After a rather successful career, however, Roche Barziliano’s pirating ways came to a rather abrupt end. You see, in 1671, he and his entire crew simply vanished.

What’s stranger still is that there are no records about what might have happened to Roche. So today, there’s still much speculation as to whether the ship capsized, was captured, or suffered some other fate. For now, this sailor remains lost at sea.^[7]

3 Dirk de Lange

Dirk de Lange was the captain of a ship called the Ridderschap van Holland. The Ridderschap van Holland was a merchant ship designed to trade in the East Indies. While most of its sailing career was successful, there was one fated voyage, however, that led to the disappearance of the ship, its captain, and its crew.

In 1694, Dirk de Lange, his crew, and his trusty ship sailed for Indonesia on the boat’s fifth voyage. They managed to land at Cape Good Hope for a short period of time before continuing on their journey to Indonesia. However, after departing the cape, the ship was never seen again.

With no trace of the ship or what had happened to her and her crew, Dirk de Lange was declared lost at sea. Today, some historians speculate that the crew was captured by pirates. Others suspect that poor Dirk capsized off the coast of Western Australia. Either way, the seamen and their effects have yet to be found.^[8]

2 John Coxon

John Coxon was a pirate who dedicated his life to terrorizing the town of Santa Marta, Colombia, in the Caribbean. It’s thought that he started operations around 1677 and spent much of his life plundering and pillaging the area.

At least, he did until around 1688. In 1688, after receiving a pardon from Jamaican authorities, John Coxon simply vanished. No one knows what happened to Coxon or his ship, despite years of attempting to track down clues.

The only clue about what may have happened to poor John is an account left by some of his crew members. The crew members cited Coxon’s ship as being extremely heavy, so perhaps the captain and his boat went down due to the weight.^[9]

1 Michel de Grammont

Michel de Grammont was born around 1645 in Paris and originally started life as a nobleman. However, after killing his sister’s would-be-lover, he fell out of favor with the court and was forced to turn to a new profession. He chose pirating as his new trade and set sail in 1670 on a ship called Hardi.

During his conquests, Michel de Grammont made his way around a number of Spanish forts, including Trujillo, Gibraltar, La Guaira, Cumana, Veracruz, and Puerto Cabello.

He made numerous conquests throughout his career, but in 1686, his pirating days came to an end. In April that year, he set off for a raid with a fellow French pirate named Nicolas Briguat. When Brigaut was caught, he sent word for Grammont to come and rescue him.

However, Grammont’s rescue mission never arrived. It turned out that he’d been caught in a storm along the way, and he and his crew had disappeared for good.^[10]

For as long as humanity has existed, we have thought about the future. It’s inevitable to wonder why we’re all here and what it all means. Looking to the future and pondering what may come gives people an opportunity to consider their place in the world. Besides, there’s no going back, right? Without time travel into the past, the only way is forward. So men and women throughout history have spent a lot of time making predictions about life ahead. But the prediction game is an unforgiving one.

Sure, many scholars have considered the future impact of new technology. Robots and space travel, as you’ll see below, factor in prominently. But many past guesses were remarkably inaccurate. Take, for example, the decades-old belief that we would someday live underwater and ride giant seahorses. As the saying goes, you can’t win ’em all. Still, in these ten instances, past prognosticators were remarkably on point with their guesses about life down the road. While they may not recognize the specific context of our modern world, these old-time predictions proved shockingly shrewd!

10 Space Travel

It shouldn’t be a surprise that humans in the past predicted space travel. For centuries, scientists and philosophers have thought about traveling to other dimensions. And since the moon and stars have always been within sight, even before the advent of the telescope, they’ve long been targets for future hopes.

In 1661, English philosopher Joseph Glanvil hypothesized that traveling to the moon would one day be as easy as sailing to America. Of course, sailing the Atlantic was far more difficult back then. Thus, his moon comparison arguably isn’t that far off base. Two centuries later, Jules Verne took it further with From the Earth to the Moon. Even though it was written in 1865, Verne’s theory on traveling into space proved remarkably similar to how launches and moon landings are actually performed in the modern era.

Thinkers in the early 20th century built on Verne’s theories too. One artist in the 1920s depicted space travel being undertaken by flying taxis powered by propellers. To them, the thought of a quick jaunt to the moon would be as easy as hailing a cab for a ride across town. Of course, space travel isn’t quite that easy in the modern era. But it’s not far off, either. Today, the most privileged among us are able to book tickets to fly outside our atmosphere. So in some ways, old predictions about future space taxis were right on the money!^[1]

9 Robots, Robots, Robots

Philosophers have pondered artificial intelligence for centuries. Of course, the computing technology we have today wasn’t always part of those theories. But long ago, thinkers wondered how automation might change life. In 1921, Czech writer Karel Čapek wrote Rossum’s Universal Robots. The play was about mechanization overtaking manual labor. His use of the Czech word “robota,” meaning forced labor, was purposeful. The word stems from a Slavic source meaning “slave.” And its use quickly caught on. English speakers developed the word “robot” to mean any artificial labor replacement.

Čapek’s concerns about mechanization extended to other thinkers as well. Many philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries worried about automated work. And now, robots continue to alter factory work worldwide. Those technological developments have changed the labor landscape just as Čapek first guessed. Other robot predictions have been more lighthearted, though. A little more than a century ago, French artists imagined robots as helpful domestic helpers. One artist designed images showing small robots doing automated cleaning inside the home. As anyone with a Roomba knows, the high-tech helper can be a welcome aid in mechanizing unwanted domestic chores!^[2]

8 High Speed Trains

Before cars became common across the world, trains were the main mode of transportation. So it makes sense that people making predictions would point to them as the future. In 1900, an American engineer named John Elfreth Watkins made a series of guesses about the 21st century. One of them was the development of high-speed trains. Watkins said locomotives would one day be able to top 120 miles per hour (193 kph). To his credit, he certainly wasn’t wrong. In fact, Watkins actually underestimated the technology.

Today, the United States’ Acela Express can reach 150 miles per hour (240 kph). Bullet trains in Japan can go even faster than that, with some reaching 200 miles per hour (320 kph). Massive high-speed train infrastructure has been deployed in China and other places too. Many engineers were pondering the potential of high-speed rail traffic in the early 20th century. Luxury auto brand Bugatti got serious about the future of high-speed trains during the Great Depression as auto sales fell during that difficult time. The company started producing Autorails, individual train cars meant for long voyages. Just as Watkins predicted three decades earlier, these Autorails reached 120 miles per hour.

But the idea didn’t take off after the Great Depression ended. Quickly, cars came back into favor. They have been king ever since. Still, with modern-day governments seriously considering one-lane high-speed tunnel traffic, it’s clear those old train plans were ahead of their time.^[3]

7 Digital Media And Citizen Journalism

Watkins’s 21st-century predictions went further than train travel. He also pondered the future of photography. Still a somewhat new technology at the time, cameras were cumbersome. Pictures took a long time to develop. But looking ahead one hundred years, Watkins wondered if the process couldn’t go much faster. “Photographs will reproduce all of nature’s colors,” he wrote in the 1900 analysis, predicting today’s crystal-clear photography. “Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance,” he added. “If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later.”

Of course, Watkins had no conception of today’s internet. But his predictions on photo-sharing sound eerily similar to modern digital media. Plus, Watkins’s then-crazy claim that pictures could be published “an hour later” was right on the money too. With worldwide access to social media, citizen journalists can report on events and publish content quickly. Within seconds, it is reproduced on screens all over the world. Watkins would be shocked at how quickly information flows today. But he was correct in his prediction!^[4]

6 Factory Farming vs. Farm-to-Table Food

During his life, FE Smith was a friend of British politician Winston Churchill. Smith was also one of the more outspoken men of his age. In the 1920s, he published a book laying out predictions of what the world would be like in one hundred years. Some of those predictions are dead wrong, of course. But others have proven to be on the nose. One of those was Smith’s take on food production.

He claimed that synthetic food produced in labs would take over “in civilized lands.” Lab-grown food was meant to feed an ever-expanding population, Smith argued. “From one ‘parent’ steak of choice tenderness,” he wrote, “it will be possible to grow as large and juicy a steak as can be desired.” With synthetic meat production expanding today, Smith’s prediction appears wise. Plus, the spread of highly efficient factory farms over the last several decades has largely replaced the stereotypical local farmer.

For Smith, he felt individual farming would only survive “as a rich man’s hobby.” In the 21st century, he argued, only men in “wealthy rejuvenation” would be able to “boast that the bread he eats is made from wheat which grows in his own fields.” Modern-day food production hasn’t quite gotten to that point. However, farm-to-table restaurants serving artisanal, locally-sourced dishes are flourishing in high-end neighborhoods. Thus, relative wealth offers the choice of better and more natural ingredients. In that way, Smith’s past prediction on gentlemen farmers runs an interesting parallel.^[5]

5 Netflix and Chill

At-home entertainment was very limited a century ago. Besides books, there was little by way of diversion. Radio was in its infancy, and television was still a ways off. But experts back then were already thinking of a fascinating future. In 1921, inventor Charles P. Steinmetz published an article predicting the spread of streaming services. He didn’t call them that, of course. But his words were eerily accurate. “There will be no need to go to some congested, poorly ventilated hall for a musical concert,” Steinmetz wrote. “Music will be supplied by a central station and distributed to subscribers… while sitting in our libraries at home.”

Even before Steinmetz, people were thinking about home entertainment. A series of postcards from 1900 predicted moving images would one day be beamed into people’s homes. More than a century later, Netflix and Hulu made good on that thought. And entertainment in concert halls had a future focus too. In one postcard set, viewers are shown going as normal to a show. However, instead of watching an orchestra perform live, they watch as a conductor pushes buttons on a machine that controls an automated band. Maybe modern-day electronica DJs owe a bit of their success to that early foresight.^[6]

4 Smart Phones, Zoom Calls, and FaceTime

Streaming services weren’t the only technologies considered for home delivery. Way back when, futurists wondered if work calls could be accomplished from the domestic domicile too. French cartoons from the early 1900s show people chatting from long distances using video conferencing. In those images, the technology is projected on a wall by a gramophone. That’s far from modern-day Zoom calls and FaceTime, of course. But the steampunk style clearly showed thinkers were already pondering its potential. Visionaries through the 1920s were hard at work on these ideas.

In 1926, Nikolai Tesla predicted video conferencing would one day be made available. Just a year later, a very rough prototype was demonstrated by inventors. In the years since, science fiction writers grabbed the proverbial ball and ran with it. Countless books in the genre showed futuristic video calling as a means of communication. For a long time, that technology seemed to be merely a dream.

But by the 21st century, Skype reigned supreme. From there, FaceTime grew quickly. Zoom’s massive use during the pandemic was a watershed moment. And live streaming on sites like Instagram and Twitch has taken video conferencing worldwide. Now, the idea of video calls via smartphones and laptops is second nature. Tesla and other old-time visionaries have been proven correct.^[7]

3 Drone Warfare

Remember our earlier reference to Churchill’s pal FE Smith? That synthetic food prediction from the 1920s wasn’t his only direct hit. Smith also predicted a high-tech future of drone warfare. Of course, at the time of his predictions, Smith had just lived through World War I. The brutal battle saw tens of millions of casualties in half a decade. So it makes sense Smith would think about ways to wage war using less manpower. In his futuristic screed, the politician wrote of “entirely unmanned” tank warfare directed by soldiers “in a distant control room” far away from the battle.

Or, Smith said, tank captains could fly far overhead and monitor progress below. “The commanders of tank forces will be carried in the air above their commands,” he wrote, “able to watch the course of operations and control their progress by wireless telephony.” This, he argued, would make war “more humane.”

Smith had no conception of today’s drone warfare. But what he’s describing sounds remarkably similar to unmanned vehicles used in modern-day battles. Plus, his theory on tank commanders watching the war from above seems similar to how high-powered satellites and cameras are used to track battles from long distances today. Whether war is now “more humane” may still be up for debate. But there’s no doubt Smith was on the money with his theory on unmanned vehicles in battle.^[8]

2 Earbuds, Bbt Make It 1953

When Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, the book was hailed as a dystopian warning about censorship. It also offered up meaty science fiction fare. And as it would turn out decades later, Bradbury’s legendary work even predicted aspects of future technology. In the book, protagonist Guy Montag tires of his work as a fireman destroying works of literature. As he sets about preserving and promoting literacy instead, he uses technology unheard of at the time.

In one particular scene, Montag uses a hidden earpiece to communicate with Faber, the book’s English professor. Of course, wireless technology was decades away at that point. And having a piece fit into one’s ear wasn’t on anyone’s radar in the early 1950s. But Bradbury took it all the way. In a later passage explaining more about these hidden earpieces, the author wrote, “in her ears the little seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind.”

At the time, the idea of a seashell-shaped earbud must’ve come from another universe. But decades later, Silicon Valley visionaries would make that a reality. Now, “thimble radios” like this are commonplace. And just as Bradbury predicted, these earbuds really do pipe in endless music and talk for the wearer.^[9]

1 Electric Ride-Share Scooters

When French artists created the “En L’An 2000” art series between 1899 and 1910, they were trying to figure out what life might look like in the new millennium. As we’ve discussed already, some of these visionaries predicted things like the Roomba. Others were keen on figuring out new modes of transport. And one artist in particular, Jean-Marc Côté, created a near-perfect prediction regarding ride-share scooters and e-bikes.

In his art, Côté showed the people of Paris riding around the streets on small, wheeled contraptions. To be fair, he was more keen on the tiny rides being skates instead of scooters. But they were electric and powerful, and his intention was to show people would get around with ease. In one sense, Côté didn’t have to wait long to see them come to fruition.

By the 1920s, people were already riding around on early powered scooters. In fact, some of those little vehicles look remarkably similar to what we know today. In recent years, companies like Uber, Bird, and Lime have mass-deployed scooters across major urban centers. To anyone from 1900, seeing these wheeled e-buggies might give some sense of a prediction well made. We can only guess what the time travelers would think of their ride-share technology and QR code use, though.^[10]