Mysteries and Sea Monsters E-Book

Graham Faiella

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Thrilling Tales of the Sea
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 341

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The sea realm has ever been mysterious: strange happenings upon it, an unfathomable abyss of 'The Great Unknown' below. Before the scrutiny of scientific Enlightenment and Age of Reason, in the eighteenth century, ghost ships and oceanic monsters were the stuff of superstition, myth and legend to explain the inexplicable, to enthral the imagination – and enliven the unimaginable. Narratives of phantom ships manned by ghostly (sometimes skeletal) crews, or damned like the Flying Dutchman to roam the seas forever; of sinister, sinuous sea serpents; and the lore of the terrible multi-tentacled kraken. Accounts inspired spirited controversy amongst believers and sceptics, in the awestruck thrill of such frightful enigmas.

Leseprobe

Monstrous Sea-Serpent as Described by Sailors. (Earth, Sea and Sky by Henry Davenport Northrop, 1887)

First published 2021

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Graham Faiella, 2021

The right of Graham Faiella to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9540 5

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

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CONTENTS

Preface

1 Mystery Ships

The Mary Celeste and Other Mystery Ships

Phantom Ships

Sally G.’s Encounter with the Flying Dutchman

A ‘Queer Yarn’

The Marlborough

The Dunedin

The Glenalvon

A Skeleton Ship of ‘Grinning Skulls’

A Curious Yarn

Ghost Ice Ships – The Jenny and Others

The Octavius

The Gloriana

The Frozen Fate of Erik the Red

2 Mystery Bottle Messages

The Loss of SS Pacific

The Caller Ou – George Dawson’s ‘Sad Message from the Sea’

3 Sea Monsters and the Oceanic Realm

The Oceanic Realm

4 The Sea Serpent

Amphibious Serpents

Bishop Erik Pontoppidan’s Natural History of Norway

Capt. de Ferry’s Letter

Olaus Magnus and Carta Marina

The ‘Monstrous Hog’

The ‘Stronsay Beast’ of Orkney

Natural History, The Zoologist and Sea Monsters

Hans Egede’s Greenland ‘Sea Monster’

Norwegian ‘Convolutions’

Minister Maclean’s Encounter in the Western Isles of Scotland

An Aberdonian Sea Monster

A Loch-Monster (… but not ‘Nessie’)

An Irish Visitor: The Kilkee ‘Sea Monster’

Transatlantic Apparitions

HMS Daedalus (and Others) and ‘The Great Sea Serpent’

The Royal Saxon

The Castilian’s Sighting Off St. Helena

Sea Serpent Passed by HMS Plumper

The Sacramento’s Encounter near the Azores

A Nova Scotian ‘Denizen of the Deep’

And Another in the Gulf of Mexico …

The Lorraine’s Mid-Atlantic Encounter

The Valhalla’s Encounter with a ‘Large Marine Animal’ Off Brazil

Pauline Witness to ‘Vicious Monster’ vs ‘Great Leviathan’

The Oakhurst and a ‘Strange Monster’

A ‘Sea-Serpent’ Stranded at Bermuda

Small Boat Encounters – The Andrews Brothers

Howard Blackburn and the Great Republic

John Ridgway’s ‘Sea Serpent’

The Great American Sea-Serpent

An American Monster – The ‘Wonderful Fish’ of Eastport

Royal Sighting of a ‘Gigantic Sea Monster’ in the Mediterranean

‘Marine Monster!’ in the Gulf of Suez

City of Baltimore’s Sighting in the Gulf of Aden

‘The Vagabond’s’ View

5 The Kraken

Norwegian Kraken-Islands and Bishop Pontoppidan

Hans Egede’s Greenland Hafgufa

From Kraken to Architeuthis dux

The Colossal Connemara Calamary Caper

Newfoundland Visitors at Portugal Cove and Trinity Bay

The ‘Devil Fish’ Attack on the Schooner Pearl

The Alecton’s Capture of (Part of) a Giant Squid

PREFACE

‘Strange things indeed are seen in the sea world …’ (‘The Nature of the Siren’, poem by the ninth-/tenth-century Old English poet Cynewulf)

The sea is an inherently mysterious place. Ships and seafarers have gone missing there, often without a clue about why, since ships (and seafarers) first sailed away from sight of land. For thousands of years, some ships have simply gone, disappeared, and then come back, derelicts, without a soul on board. Or, occasionally, with the remnants of what was a well-found ship of souls as a skeleton ship of soulless bones or corpses – or, indeed, as a phantom ship of ghosts. These have become the mystery ships of legend, of sailors’ yarns that splice some strands of reality (sometimes) with salt-seasoned imagination. They survive in sea lore because they are good stories; they are dramatic, sometimes ghoulish; they thrill to the thrall of sea mystery.

As for sea monsters: who knew how many there could be? US Navy Lieutenant Fletcher Bassett knew; he chronicled dozens of them in his Legends and Superstitions of the Sea and of Sailors – In all Lands and at all Times (1885): ‘monsters of the deep are alluded to in many places in the Bible … Classical authority has bequeathed us many [sea] monsters … In Hindoo legend, Krishna slew a monster that lived at the bottom of the sea … Scandinavia abounded in these monsters … Icelandic legends tell of a monster called there Skrimsi, living in a fjord at Grimsey, who bit off the heads of seals, and wrecked ships.’ And on and on – and on.

Of all these oceanic ‘monsters’, two in particular have protagonised the annals of cryptozoology – the pseudo-scientific ‘search for and study of animals whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated’ – as well as of legend, saga, lore, myth and, latterly, their perusal and inspection by naturalists and scientists: the sea serpent, and the kraken.

The kraken, for its part, has evolved from an ancient mythical creature of the northern seas, of immense size and equally terrifying ferocity, to a more rational assessment, in the nineteenth century, as a ‘gigantic calamary’: Architeuthis dux, the giant squid.

Sea serpents – much more benign creatures – have filled reams of narrative by first-hand witnesses of them. They have been claimed variously as other marine phenomena including long streamers of seaweed, large seals, extant prehistoric fossils, parades of porpoises, and other things besides the marine ophidian (snake-like) monsters recorded by observers of them and their kin.

The most intriguing nature of such mysteries, of ships and sea monsters alike, has been our human interaction and connection with them as essentially human stories that conflate some peculiarity of reality with legend or superstition or fear or horror. Because, as truth or fiction, or something in between, the mysteries of our ocean and seas, and ships thereupon or monsters therein, are, in their narrative form, quite simply ripping good yarns – thrilling tales of the sea.

1

MYSTERY SHIPS

One of the greatest of all sea mysteries concerned the discovery of the brigantine Mary Celeste near the Azores in mid-Atlantic, by another brigantine, the Dei Gratia, in December 1872. When three of the Dei Gratia crew boarded the Celeste they found her to be deserted: her master, Capt. Benjamin Briggs, his wife Sarah and their young daughter Sophia, and her seven crew had apparently jumped ship, suddenly and with no obvious cause. Why ‘a perfectly seaworthy ship’ (Mary Celeste: The Greatest Mystery of the Sea, by Paul Begg, 2005) was abandoned, and, moreover, while still under sail, has ever since been a complete mystery that has nurtured numerous speculative notions in books, magazine articles and other media, as well as some darker anecdotal postulates.

But why did that one derelict vessel so fabulously, so wondrously drift into such a prime position in the mythology of mystery ships? After all, thousands of deserted derelict vessels littered the seas in the age of sail. The difference was that the Mary Celeste was so well-found, so ‘perfectly seaworthy’ when her crew left her (‘we genuinely have no idea why the captain and crew abandoned a perfectly seaworthy ship’), compared with the rag-tail un-shipshape condition of other ocean derelicts that had obviously been overwhelmed by some cataclysmic disaster. Amongst the multitude of mundanely mysterious fates of other ships, her dereliction defied any plausible explanation of a catastrophic cause.

The Mary Celeste and Other Mystery Ships

Mystery ships and their diversely true or fictitious – or both – stories have been confabulated by legend. Mary Celeste has proved amongst the most enduring, though by no means the only one from a flotilla of other mystery derelicts enshrouded in her wake:

Mysteries of the Ocean – The Marie [sic – Mary] Celeste and Others

Everyone knows that sailors get the credit of spinning yarns so tough that no one will believe them except the Marines, who are popularly supposed to be gullible enough to swallow anything. But it is doubtful if the toughest sailor’s yarn ever conceived could possibly be one whit more amazing or credible than are many well attested facts.

The Marie Celeste

Take for instance the gruesome and mysterious story of the Marie Celeste. This vessel sailed from New York in November 1872, bound for Genoa with a cargo of oil [sic – her cargo was denatured alcohol for use in fortified wines]. There were thirteen souls on board of her all told, including Captain Brigg’s wife and child [sic – there were ten ‘souls’: Capt. Benjamin Briggs, his wife Sarah, their two year old daughter Sophia, and seven seamen]. She was sighted on the 4th December by the barque Deo [sic – Dei] Gratia, who signalled her, and receiving no response, suspected that something was wrong.

When a boat was sent off to investigate, the Marie Celeste was found to be absolutely deserted. Not a living thing was to be seen on her. Everything seemed in perfect order fore and aft, and the vessel was holding her course exactly as though she were under control. From that day to this not the faintest clue has been obtained as to what happened to her crew, or why, or even how they left her. The hull and cargo were intact, the rigging and spars were sound, and the sails were set for a light breeze such as was blowing at the time. The boats were every one at the davits, and there were no signs of either mutiny or bloodshed.

In the cabin a half-eaten breakfast for four was on the table, and a bottle of cough medicine, with a dose measured out in a tumbler, was beside a plate, where the captain’s wife sat. A sewing-machine, with a child’s gown under the needle, was against the bulkhead, just as the user had left it to have breakfast. In the galley the crew’s food was cooked but not served out; and nothing in the forecastle gave any signs of coming trouble. The men’s kits were in their usual places, and the weekly wash was hung up on the upper deck.

The log-book, posted to within 48 hours of being sighted by the Deo Gratia, showed the voyage to have been favourable, the last entry being the ship’s position, and ‘slight wind from S.E.’ and it was quite clear that no rough weather had overtaken her in the interval. Everything appeared to be going on as usual up until the moment that the crew had been spirited away by some mysterious agency which has never been revealed.

The Mary Celeste

The Marie Celeste was towed into Gibraltar and a fresh crew put on board of her. But misfortune seemed to dog her through her whole career. Strange superstitions were connected with her. Crew after crew asserted that the ship was haunted, and that the lost crew were still on board and interfering with the working of the vessel. Finally she was alleged to have been deliberately cast away on the coast of South America, for which action her captain had to stand trial on a charge of barratry [misconduct injurious to a vessel or its cargo].

The Case of the Resolven

A case in many respects similar to the Marie Celeste was that of the brig Resolven, which left St. John’s, Newfoundland, on a voyage to Labrador in August, 1884, with a crew of eleven all told. Early in the morning of the third day after leaving port she was discovered by H.M. gunboat Mallard quite deserted. The commander of the Mallard had his attention drawn to her owing to the strangeness of her behaviour.

On hailing her and getting no reply, a boat was sent to board her. So far as could be seen everything was in proper order. Her log-book was posted to within six hours of being sighted by the gunboat. The galley fire was alight, and both the binnacle lamp and side lights were burning. Her sails were set, but owing to the helm not being under control she was steering a very erratic course. No sign of disorder appeared anywhere. A bag of gold which was intended for the purchase of cargo, was found in a locker in the captain’s cabin.

Why the crew abandoned her is one of the mysteries of the sea that will probably never be cleared up. At first it was thought that they had only left her temporarily for some purpose, though it is a little difficult to understand why they should have done so with all sail set. The Mallard remained in the vicinity of the spot where she fell in with the Resolven for a couple of days, but failed to get any indication of the fate of the crew, and then towed the abandoned vessel into the harbour.

The Gruesome Ocean Queen

A far more gruesome story than either of the above was that of the Ocean Queen, a clipper barque which sailed from Rangoon with a general cargo early in May 1876, bound for Melbourne. Her crew numbered nineteen all told, of whom more than one-half were foreigners of various nationalities. In addition to these there were some passengers, probably about a dozen in all. From the time of her leaving Rangoon nothing was heard of her until she was picked up on July 27th by H.M.S. Orontes about 400 miles east of the Seychelles group.

When the boat’s crew of bluejackets boarded her their first impression was that there had been a mutiny or that the Ocean Queen had been attacked by pirates. No fewer than twenty-seven bodies in every stage of decomposition were scattered about the deck. Some of them had only been dead a few days, others again were reduced to skeletons. Some were clad in their every day clothes, others were naked.

In the cabin was the skeleton of a woman and two children. The youngest was a mere baby, and it was evident that the mother had died while nursing it; the other had died hugging its doll to its little breast. None of the bodies showed any signs of violence, nor were there any arms lying about.

So far as the vessel itself was concerned there was absolutely nothing to account for this extraordinary state of things. No attempt whatever had been made to either broach the cargo or rifle the cabins, in which there was a considerable amount of money. It was fairly evident that she had experienced some rough weather, but when the well was sounded there was found to be only six inches or so of water in it.

Everything of importance appeared to be intact, and the Ocean Queen was in good seaworthy condition, and well equipped with provisions and water. The log-book, however, was missing, and so also was the manifest.

On the chart the course was marked up for about three weeks after the vessel left Rangoon, the last mark being made at lat. 18 deg. 35 min. S., 64 deg. 28 min. E. – that is to say, in the neighbourhood of Rodriguez [Rodrigues] Island [just east of Mauritius], which would be a considerable distance out of her course. Assuming this to be correct, where did the vessel pass the intervening eight weeks or so which must have elapsed between the making of the last mark on the chart and her being picked up by the Orontes? It is hardly likely that she could have passed all that time in the track of ships to and from India and China without once being sighted.

Conjectures have been offered, but there is so much that is inexplicable about the whole thing that it would only be foolish to repeat them here.

The Orontes sent a party on board of her to clear up the decks and dispose of the bodies, afterwards leaving a crew to work her to Colombo. Four days after the vessels parted company, the Ocean Queen was spoken to [i.e. encountered] by one of the Messageres Maritimes boats, and this was the last that ever was heard of her. She vanished off the face of the ocean, and carried her secrets with her. Had she reached port, where she could have been more thoroughly examined, it is probable that some at least of the mystery surrounding her would have been cleared up. But it was decreed otherwise.

The Tale of the Foxdale

The story of the schooner Foxdale is perhaps as curious as any recorded of the sea. On October 13, 1891, this vessel left the Tees in ballast for Helsingfors [Helsinki, Finland]. On the second day out she was caught in a squall, and capsized, completely turning turtle. After drifting about for a couple of days in this condition, a warship was sent out to sink her, as she was a danger to other vessels.

When the warship sighted the derelict, the commander of her ordered up the gun’s crew for practice, using the capsized schooner as a target. As soon as the smoke of the first discharge had cleared away, the commander, looking through his glasses, was amazed to see two men frantically waving to him from the bottom of the upturned craft, while a third was struggling in the water. Proceeding to the spot with all possible speed he succeeded in rescuing the whole party, and then learned an almost incredible story.

It appears that at the time the squall struck and capsized the Foxdale, there was only one man on deck, while two men and a boy were below. So suddenly was the vessel overturned that the air had not time to escape from between decks. As soon as the crew recovered their senses sufficiently to realise the situation, they saw that there was no immediate danger, for they had both food and water beside them, and the air might last for a week or more.

It was on the fourth day of their imprisonment that they were released under such strange circumstances. Immediately after the shot from the warship ripped open the planking, one of them ran to the hole and was almost lifted off his feet by the rushing out of the imprisoned air. The other two quickly followed suit.

It may be that sailors are superstitious and cling to a belief in the supernatural. Who can blame them when there are so many mysterious and inexplicable things happening to those who go down to the sea in ships … (Wanganui Chronicle [New Zealand] (from The Scotsman), 14 March 1914)

Phantom Ships

On 22 January 1909 the Cardiff Evening News published an article titled ‘The Phantom Schooner’. The narrator, an Englishman, was voyaging on board ‘the clipper ship Toreador’ to Australia for ‘purer air and a milder climate’. During the voyage he struck up a friendship with the mate, Jim, who told him a yarn, ‘one night, in the North-East trades’ as they were ‘leaning over the taffrail enjoying our evening smoke’. The story went that when ‘Jim’ was on a steamship bound across the Atlantic for Boston she collided with and apparently sank a schooner off the Isles of Scilly. On the return voyage, coming up to the English Channel, they again struck a schooner that was ‘careering along, every sail full’, though it was a perfectly calm night. The name of the schooner, the Amitie, was the same as the name of the schooner they hit on the outward voyage – and, in the mate’s fevered imagination, she, too, sank.

It was a good yarn – but a fiction: the heading above the title in the News was ‘To-day’s Short Story’. Trying to separate fact from fiction in seafaring stories often smudges the two conceits together. The good yarn is often an amalgam of some kind of trope of truth spliced and braided and plaited with some fragmented memory of a real event by a creative imagination: real derelicts did drift, unmanned, around the seas, to be encountered occasionally by other vessels and, sometimes, storified as ‘phantom’ ships by awe-struck crews with fertile minds.

As Mark Twain, a journalist of record and fictionist of renown, is said to have written, ‘The truth should never get in the way of a good story’ (most likely an apocryphal attribution, but it does have the ring of a genuine Twain-ism). It is more of a truism that ‘a good story’, however chimerical, often shines and even gathers lustre long after any shades of truth in it have dimmed, flickered, sighed a final breath and expired.

And, indeed, that some mysteries of some real ships are, actually, real.

Le Vaisseau-Fantôme (‘The Phantom Ship’). (Le Petit Journal, 5 March 1911)

The Legend of the Phantom Ship

It is a somewhat singular fact that there is not a single European nation whose mariners do not share in the picturesque and romantic superstition that certain parts of the ocean are haunted by the Spectre of a Ship. The tradition is quite the best known among the lore of the sea … Nor can we be permitted to doubt that such an ocean Phantom really does exist. For did not two royal princes see her with their own eyes as short a time ago as the 11th July 1881? Such testimony is not to be disputed by any loyal British subject … (Chamber’s Journal, 16 June 1894)

The incident was picked up and reported by the press of the day:

The Flying Dutchman

To the two sailor sons of the Prince of Wales [Princes Albert Victor and George] has been vouchsafed a glimpse of that far-famed vessel the Flying Dutchman; the first sight of her that has been seen, or at any rate reported, for many a long year. Vanderdecken [the Flying Dutchman’s captain] has apparently succeeded in doubling the Cape [of Good Hope], since he has made his appearance on the coast of New South Wales. In their ‘Journal,’ which has just been published under the editorial supervision of the Rev. John N. Dalton, appears under the date of July 11 (1881):

‘At 4 a.m. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows [on HMS Baccante]. A strange red light, as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars, and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up. The lookout man on the forecastle reported her as close on the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her, who was sent forward at once to the forecastle; but on arriving there no vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship was to be seen either near or right away to the horizon; the night being clear and the sea calm.

‘Thirteen persons altogether saw her, but whether it was Van Diemen or the Flying Dutchman, or who else, must remain unknown. The Tourmaline and Cleopatra, who were sailing on our starboard bow, flashed to ask whether we had seen the strange red light.

‘At a quarter to 11 a.m. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the foretopmast cross-trees, and was smashed to atoms. At a quarter past 4 p.m., after quarters, we hove-to with the head yards aback, and he was buried in the sea. He was a smart royal-yardman, and one of the most promising young hands in the ship, and everyone feels quite sad at his loss. At the next port we came to the admiral also was smitten down.’ (Grey River Argus [Greymouth, New Zealand], 6 August 1886)

The Legend of the Phantom Ship (continued)

… There are many versions of the famous legend of the Flying Dutchman … Perhaps the story has been nowhere better told than by Captain [Frederick] Marryat in the novel which he founded upon it [The Phantom Ship, 1839]. Cornelius Vanderdecken, a sea-captain of Amsterdam, coming home from Batavia [Jakarta], is much troubled by head-winds when off the Cape of Good Hope. Day after day he goes on struggling against the baffling winds without gaining a foot of ground. The sailors grow weary, the skipper impatient. Still the bleak sou’-wester continues to blow this old galliot [galleon] steadily back.

For nine dreary weeks this goes on; then a terrible fit of passion seizes Vanderdecken. He sinks down upon his knees, and raising his clenched fists to the heavens, curses the Deity for opposing him, swearing that he will weather the Cape yet in spite of the Divine will, though he should go on beating about until the Day of Judgment. As a punishment for this terrible impiety, he is doomed to go on sailing in the stormy seas east of Agulhas [Cape Agulhas, east of the Cape of Good Hope] until the last trumpet shall sound, for ever struggling against head-winds in a vain effort to double the South African Cape.

Such, in brief, is the legend of the Flying Dutchman, as it has been accepted by English-speaking sailors for many generations past …

Dutch Phantoms

Bechstein, in the ‘Deutsches Sagenbuch’ gives the Dutch version of the phantom ship, which is totally dissimilar from our own, both as regards the name of its evil-minded hero, and the sin for which he was condemned to wander.

‘Falkenberg,’ he says, ‘was a nobleman who murdered his brother and his bride in a fit of passion; and was therefore condemned to wander for ever towards the north. On arriving at the seashore he found awaiting him a boat, with a man in it, who said, ‘Expectamus te.’ He entered the boat, attended by his good and his evil spirit, and went on board a spectral barque in the harbour. There he yet lingers, while the two spirits play at dice for his soul. For six hundred years has the ship been wandering the seas, and sailors still see her in the German Ocean [the North Sea] sailing northward, without helm or steersman. She is painted gray, has coloured sails, a pale flag, and no crew. Flames come forth from her masthead at night.’

Another Dutch account of the old legend says that the skipper of the phantom ship was a native of Amsterdam, one Bernard Fokke, who lived in the seventeenth century. He was a daring, reckless seaman, who had the masts of his ship encased with iron to strengthen them and enable him to carry more sail. It is recorded that he sailed from Holland to the East Indies in ninety days; and in consequence of having made many wonderful voyages, came at last to be reputed a sorcerer, in league with the devil. In one voyage he disappeared for a while, having been spirited away by Satan, and on his return was condemned – the legend does not say by whom – to sail for ever the ocean between the southern capes with no other crew than his boatswain, cook, and pilot.

Many Dutch seamen believe that his vessel is still to be fallen in with in the Southern Ocean, and that, when he sights a ship, he will give chase for the purpose of coming alongside to ask questions. If these are not answered, all is well; but should those hailed be so injudicious as to make any reply, ill-luck is certain to befall them …

A Spanish Phantom … and Its ‘Fiendish Crew’

In a volume of a German ‘Morgenblätter’ [morning newspaper] for the year 1824 is contained another story of a phantom ship. A lookout man sights and reports a vessel. When questioned concerning her, he says he saw a frigate in a faint haze of light, with a black captain, and a skeleton figure with a spear in its hand standing on the poop. Skeleton shapes noiselessly handled the cobweb-like sails and ropes. The only sound which he heard as the mysterious craft glided past was the word ‘water.’ The history of this strange ship seemed to be known to one of the sailors on board, who recounted it as follows:

‘A rich Spaniard of Peru, one Don Lopez d’Aranda, dreamed he saw his son, Don Sandovalle, who had sailed with his bride for Spain, on board his ship with a ghastly wound in his head, and pointing to his own form, bound to the mainmast of the vessel. Near him was water, just beyond his reach, and the fiendish crew were mocking him and refusing him drink. The crew had murdered the young couple for their gold; and the curse of the wandering Dutchman had descended upon them. They are still to be seen cruising off the entrance to the Rio de la Plata.’

A Purgatorial Phantom

The French version of the time-honoured legend is given by Jal, in his ‘Scènes de la Vie Maritime.’ He says: ‘An unbelieving Dutch captain had vainly tried to round Cape Horn against a head gale. He swore he would do it; and when the gale increased, laughed at the fears of his crew, smoked his pipe, and drank his beer. He threw overboard some of them who tried to make him put into port. The Holy Ghost descended on the vessel; but he fired his pistol at it, and pierced his own hand and paralysed his arm. He cursed God; and was then condemned by the apparition to navigate always, without putting into port, only having gall to drink, and red-hot iron to eat, and eternally to watch.

The Phantom Ship, drawn by Frank Brangwyn. (The Graphic, 15 July 1893)

‘He was to be the evil genius of the sea, to torment and punish sailors, the spectacle of his tempest-tossed barque to presage ill-fortune to the luckless beholder. He is the sender of white squalls, of all disasters, and of storms. Should he visit a ship, wine on board turns sour, and all food becomes beans – the sailors’ particular aversion. Should he bring or send letters, none must touch them, or they are lost. He changes his appearance at will, and is seldom beheld twice under the same circumstances. His crew are all old sinners of the sea, marine thieves, cowards, murderers, and so forth. They toil and suffer eternally, and get but little to eat and drink. His ship is the true purgatory of the faithless and idle sailor.’

The Italian Version

The Italian legend is a local one, as old as the year 1339, when Venice was first wedded to the Adriatic by the ceremony of a ring being dropped over the prow of a gondola into its limpid blue waters. During a tempest, a fisherman was bid to row three mysterious men first to certain churches in the city, then out to the entrance of the port. The boatman with terror beheld a vast Saracen galley rushing in before the wind, crowded with most fearful-looking demons. The three men in his boat, however, caused her to founder before she could get near the city, thus saving the city.

When they stepped ashore again, one of them handed the waterman a ring, by means of which these three strangers were discovered to be St Mark, St Nicholas, and St George. Giorgione has painted this phantom vessel, with her crew of spectral demons leaping overboard, affrighted by the saints; and the picture may still be seen in the Venetian Academy …

Instances of traditions and superstitions founded upon the idea of a phantom ship might be multiplied until this article assumed the dimensions of a stout volume; but want of space forbids that the list should be further extended. It is not difficult to conceive the paternity of the romantic old legend. The sudden disappearance of a distant ship through some subtle, imperceptible wreathing of mist upon the horizon, would be sufficient to suggest the notion of a spectral vessel.

Herman Melville, in his admirable work ‘Typee,’ has a quaint idea, out of which might easily grow a tradition of a phantom ship. ‘I heard,’ he says, ‘of one whaler which, after many years’ absence, was given up for lost. The last that had been heard of her was a shadowy report of her having touched at some of those unstable islands in the far Pacific whose eccentric wanderings are carefully noted in each edition of the South Sea charts. After a long interval, however, the Perseverance – for that was her name – was spoken somewhere in the vicinity of the ends of the earth, cruising along as leisurely as ever, her sails all bepatched and bequilted with rope-yarns, her spars all fished [tied together] with old pipe-staves, and her rigging knotted and spliced in every possible direction.

‘Her crew was composed of some twenty venerable Greenwich pensioner-looking old salts, who just managed to hobble about deck. The ends of all the running ropes, with the exception of the signal-halyards and poop-downhaul, were rove through snatch-blocks, and led to the capstan or windlass, so that not a yard was braced or a sail set without the assistance of machinery. Her hull was encrusted with barnacles, which completely encased her … What eventually became of her, I never learned; at any rate, she never reached home.’

Nor is the belief in the Flying Dutchman a superstition of the past. Sailors in this age give just as great credence to the ancient legend as they did a couple of centuries ago. Indeed, no race is more persistent in credulity than seamen. They continue to cling to traditions that have come down from mariners of a date when the ocean was still shrouded in mystery and romance. Friday’s sailing is as unlucky as ever it was; the St Elmo’s Fire is yet full of significance; and a Finn amongst the crew ruins the prospects of a voyage at the very outset. It will take many generations, even in this prosaic age of iron and steam, for the sailor to abandon his old beliefs; and it may be safe to predict that the very last fragment of superstition he will be willing to give up will be the legend of the Phantom Ship. (Chamber’s Journal, 16 June 1894)

Sally G.’s Encounter with the Flying Dutchman

In April 1881 an American vessel, the barque Sally G., en route from Sicily to New London, Connecticut, encountered an anonymous Dutch brig in mid-Atlantic. The Sally G.’s master, Capt. Prodgers, went on board the stranger where he found ‘a weather-beaten old man in command of her’. Communication was unintelligible to both men. Could it have been the, or at least a ‘Flying Dutchman’? Capt. Prodgers was in no doubt:

The Flying Dutchman

There can be little doubt that Captain Prodgers, of the American barque Sally G., has actually met the Flying Dutchman. On the arrival of Sally G., at New London [Connecticut] last Wednesday [6 May 1881], from Palermo, with fruit to consignee, her captain told the following remarkable story:-

On the 11th of April last, and at about 10 o’clock in the morning, the barque being then in latitude 42° 18’, and about fifteen hundred miles from Montauk Point [north-east tip of Long Island; Sally G. was just north of the Azores] – there being a light breeze from the south-south-east, and the barque running dead before it with all her square sails set, and the mate having just ordered the studding-sails booms to be rigged out – a sail was reported a little on the starboard bow. In due time the Sally G. came up with what proved to be a Dutch brig, so far as could be judged from her spars and green deck-house, which backed her maintop-sail and launched a boat.

It was evident that her captain wanted to speak to the Sally G., and accordingly the latter was hove to, her captain being a humane man and not being in any particular hurry. The brig was old-fashioned, and from her appearance had been at sea a long time, so long that her name had faded from her stern, unless, of course, it had been designedly scraped off. Still, she seemed to be in good enough condition, and Captain Prodgers naturally wondered what the Dutchman could want.

The latter’s boat hooked on to the main chains – there being very little sea at the time – and the man in charge of her boarded the Sally G., and made a long speech to the captain in an unknown tongue. The gallant American crew of the Sally G. consisted of eighteen men, among whom were eight Irishmen, three Scotchmen, two Englishmen, a Swede, and four ‘Dagos,’ who were either Portuguese, Spaniards, or Italians. The word was passed forward for some one of the crew to come aft, and act as an interpreter, but it was found that there was not a man on board who could understand what the alleged Dutchman wanted.

In these circumstances Captain Prodgers told the mate, Mr. Anderson, that he had better take a boat and board the brig and find out what was the matter. The mate promptly launched the quarter-boat and pulled to the brig. He found a weather-beaten old man in command of her, who seemed greatly pleased to see him, but to all Mr. Anderson’s questions, although they were asked in the loudest and clearest voice the latter could command, the captain replied at great length, but in perfectly unintelligible words.

When the mate chalked the latitude and longitude on the after-hatch, thinking that the brig’s chronometer might be out of order, the Dutch captain shook his head with great emphasis. Mr. Anderson then sounded the well to find if the brig leaked, looked into the harness cask and into the steward’s pantry to see if there was any sign that provisions were low; searched through the cabin and forecastle, thinking that perhaps the cholera had broken out among the crew, and satisfied himself that the water-casks on deck were reasonably full.

With all his efforts he could not find that there was anything wrong about the brig or her people, and when he said to her captain, ‘So far as I see, there ain’t nothin’ the matter no more than what a sailor-man would expect to find aboard a Dutchman,’ the latter smiled serenely and began another long speech, after which Mr. Anderson thanked him, and said it wasn’t worth mentioning, and so returned to the Sally G. Both vessels then filled away and stood on their respective courses, the Dutchman steering about south-east, as if he were making for the Bermudas or, say, the Spanish Main [i.e. northern South America].

It is Captain Prodgers’ firm belief that this mysterious Dutch brig was the genuine Flying Dutchman. He was strengthened in that belief by the fact that within eighteen hours after leaving her he experienced a violent hurricane from the westward, which drove him more than a hundred miles out of the course. What the Dutchman wanted will forever be a profound mystery. If the captain of the brig was really a live man, it is inconceivable that he should induce an American barque to heave to merely in order to make polite speeches in unknown tongues. If, on the contrary, he was the Flying Dutchman, he would naturally do all sorts of mysterious things.

Other vessels will do well to keep a look-out for a strange Dutch brig with single topsail yards and stump royal masts, and ascertain, if possible, her true character. (The New Zealand Herald, 30 July 1881)

A ‘Queer Yarn’

An old sea-dog of ‘an advanced age’ – a marine pilot, as it happened – steadily filling his sea-boots with rum until ‘his face gradually began to assume a carmine tint’ lubricated his storytelling faculties such that ‘his companions knew that a yarn was coming’. And so it did. About an old derelict ship that fired his imagination of a close encounter with the Flying Dutchman.

Saw the Flying Dutchman – The Queer Yarn Spunby an Old Sailor When Off Duty

A group of bronzed pilots sat in an office lately testing the age and qualities of a bottle of rum. One was a retired [marine] pilot, whose advanced age rendered him unfit for the perilous life, but it did not seem to impair in the least his powers for consuming rum, as a greater portion found its way into his glass and his face gradually began to assume a carmine tint. The continued effects of the hot rum and the fire gradually got in their work, and from the sparkle in his eyes his companions knew that a yarn was coming.

‘It’s a long time ago, when I was on the old Blunt,’ he said, ‘that I saw for the first time that terror to all sailors, the Flying Dutchman. Many and many a night around the galley fire, when I was a boy, I had listened open-mouthed to the tales told of the ghostly craft. One night in June, somewhere around the ’60s, I had the last turn on the Blunt, and had just turned in when the boat-keeper sung out that there was a ship in sight. I went on deck, and sure enough, heading our way, about two miles to leeward, was a full-rigged ship with all sail set. That in itself was peculiar, as we had just an occasional puff, while the ship seemed to be holding a twenty-knot breeze; but I was so anxious to get it that I did not notice it at the time, but jumped into the cabin to dress.