Ships, like cars, have a limited lifespan. They break down over time. They require costly maintenance and repairs. And after several decades, ships become worth less than the metal they’re made of and are sentenced to the scrapyard, usually in South Asia.

Yet some condemned vessels, even as their identities are wiped from public record, manage to sail on, becoming the closest thing there is to a real-life ghost ship.

While IHS Markit and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) track ships still afloat, no comprehensive database for dead ships yet exists. And this has