High Aim 6 Ghost Ship
After leaving southern Taiwan on 31 October 2002, the Taiwanese-owned fishing vessel High Aim 6 reappeared in Australian waters in January 2003 with its crew gone, rotting fish in the hold, fuel and provisions still aboard, personal belongings untouched, and no clear sign of distress or struggle; investigators learned that 87 calls had been made in Bali from chief engineer Lin Chung-li’s phone, and an Indonesian crewman later claimed captain Chen Tai-cheng and Lin had been killed, but the missing men, the rest of the crew, and the reason the ship was left drifting near Broome remain the unanswered cargo of the case.
The High Aim 6 case began as an ordinary deep-sea fishing voyage and ended as one of Australia's strangest modern ghost ship stories. The vessel, a Taiwanese-owned long-line fishing boat also reported under the name High Aim No. 6, left southern Taiwan on 31 October 2002. Sources vary on whether the port should be described as Liuchiu, Liuqiu, Tungkang, or a related fishing district in southern Taiwan, but they agree that the vessel was Taiwanese-owned, operated under an Indonesian flag, and carried two Taiwanese officers with an Indonesian crew. It reportedly stopped at Bitung in North Sulawesi around 7 November to take on ten Indonesian crew members before sailing toward the Marshall Islands fishing grounds.
The last known communication from the voyage came in December 2002. Public reports identify Captain Chen Tai-cheng as the skipper and Lin Chung-li as the chief engineer. Taiwanese sources later said family or owners last heard from the vessel in December, with some reports placing the final radio contact around 13 December near the Marshall Islands and others noting that Lin's family last heard from him earlier. When contact ceased, the owners reported the vessel missing and a search was reportedly attempted near its last known area, far from Western Australia.
The vessel reappeared in Australian waters in January 2003, far from the expected fishing grounds. The dates are reported inconsistently across public sources. Some reports say it was sighted on 3 January or 6 January, while others emphasize 8 January as the date it was boarded or formally intercepted, and 9 January as the Royal Australian Navy boarding from HMAS Stuart. What is consistent is the scene found aboard: no crew, no clear distress signal, no bodies, no obvious fight, no confirmed lifeboat launch, fuel and provisions still present, personal items still aboard, and a hold full of decaying fish. When first observed, the vessel was reportedly under power, but when boarded days later the engine was dead and the rudder was locked, allowing it to drift in a set direction.
Australian investigators faced a puzzle with few physical answers. The High Aim 6 was towed to Broome and placed under quarantine and examination. Search aircraft and surface searches covered a large area, reported as about 24,000 square kilometres or about 7,300 square nautical miles in different accounts, but no crew, raft, body, or conclusive trace was found. Early suggestions included people smuggling, illegal fishing, piracy, weather, mechanical emergency, or accidental abandonment, but the cargo of fish supported the vessel's normal fishing purpose, the lack of visible damage weakened a violent boarding scenario, and the intact belongings raised the question of why the crew would leave voluntarily.
The strongest later lead came from telephone records and Indonesian police inquiries. Reports in the Taipei Times said local calls were made in Bali and the Philippines from mobile phones belonging to the Taiwanese officers. A later Taiwanese foreign ministry report said Indonesian police in Bitung detained or questioned a man who admitted he had been one of the ten Indonesian crew members. According to that account, he told police that Captain Chen and Chief Engineer Lin had been killed and that the other Indonesian crew members had fled, probably to Central Java. The report supported a mutiny theory, but it did not provide a complete reconstruction. The exact date and place of the killings, how the alleged mutineers left the vessel, how the ship continued to Australian waters, why no forensic scene was obvious aboard, and what motive drove the violence were never publicly resolved.
For Broome, the mystery did not end when the investigation stalled. The empty fishing boat sat in Roebuck Bay and became a local landmark, a physical ghost ship visible to tourists and residents. Recreational fishers hoped the vessel might be sunk as an artificial reef, but the Western Australian Parliament later recorded that the vessel was made of fibreglass, foam, and a wooden frame rather than steel, making it buoyant and potentially unsafe as a reef. In October 2004, after months of uncertainty, the vessel was demolished by excavator and disposed of onshore. The physical evidence was gone, but the High Aim 6 remained a maritime mystery because the alleged mutiny account answered only part of the question. It identified a possible crime, but not the full sequence, motive, or fate of the missing men.