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Sea Phantoms and Superstitions

Sailors as a class are invariably superstitious, while their predilection herein is shared in general by fishermen, and others who dwell by the marge of the great deep. The old songs of the outer Hebrides are full of wizardry, and this figures too in many a chanty composed by bygone seamen; while Captain Marryat, a writer who understood sailors as few others have done, testified repeatedly to their firm belief in the supernatural. Nor is he the only author who has dealt with this, for, not to mention less notable names, Coleridge touched on the matter in his poem of the Ancient Mariner; while turning from literature to painting, that exquisite Scottish master David Scott, in a memorable canvas now domiciled in the seaport town of Leith, shows Vasco de Gama and his henchmen gazing thunderstruck at an apparition rising from the waves. And it is scarcely surprising, after all, that credulity, in this relation should be a salient characteristic of sailors, the mere fact that they live in constant danger of sudden death constituting a good explanation and apology. In the duchy of Cornwall, so rich in romantic associations of all sorts, quite a number of stories concerning marine spectres have been handed 'down from generation to generation, and are current and even popular to this day. One of these stories relates how, on a winter's evening when a fierce gale was raging round the Cornish headlands, a fisherman chanced to see a ship in distress; and away the man hastened at once, calling on some of his fellows to come and aid him in the work of rescuing the perishing. In a few minutes a rowing boat had been manned, for Cornish fisherfolk are accustomed to go afloat in all weathers and to face the peril of drowinng while very soon the gallant rescuers were almost within earshot of the distressed vessel, and could see her name clearly on the stern. They thought to jump on board, their idea being that, were the ship blest with a skilful pilot acquainted with the dangers of the coast, she might be steered safely into Falmouth harbour; but, just as one of the fishermen stood up in the prow of the boat with intent to throw a rope, the great vessel looming before him disappeared from sight altogether. She could not have sunk, for had that been her fate, some relics thereof must certainly have survived upon the seething foam and billows; and, vowing that the devil had conjured up a phantom to induce them to put out to sea, the rowers put their boat about speedily, and pulled for home with might and main. One and all, they were more afraid of the evil one's machinations than of the more genuine perils they were encountering; and an analogous, but more reasonable form of credulity on the part of the Cornish fisherfolk is instanced by another of their traditions, one associated with the village of Sennen Cove. This place is situate at the head of a bay flanked by two mighty capes. Sometimes a band of misty vapour stretches right across the bay, obscuring the villagers' outlook towards the sea beyond; and whenever this occurs the fisherfolk regard it with awe, believing that it warns them not to put out in their boats. At one time, so it is recorded in the neighbourhood, Sennen Cove numbered among its inhabitants a group of doughty spirits who, wont to laugh at this superstition, were minded to demonstrate its absurdity; and accordingly, when the warning band of vapour next made its appearance, they sailed off singing gaily. But their boat never returned, their fate remained a mystery; and in fine they contrived to strengthen rather than weaken the belief they had ridiculed.

Scotland also has her stories of phantom barques. Near Ballachulish, on the west coast of Argyllshire, there is a rocky island on which the Macdonalds of Glencoe were wont to bury their honoured and laurelled dead; and the lore of the district tells that once, some hundreds of years ago, a skiff bearing a beloved chieftain's corpse to this place of interment foundered ere reaching its destination. A horrible thing was this thought the Macdonalds, a horrible thing that the father of the clan should be swept from sea to sea, and be denied a resting-place beside his ancestors; while anon it appeared as though the affair had verily been contrived by supernatural agency, for invariably, just before any misfortune overtook the tribe of Macdonald, the wrecked skiff was seen drifting about the sea, its dead oarsman clinging to it, and a coffin floating in its wake. Only too often this weird vision appeared, and it is said that, on the eve of the massacre of Glencoe, the spectre boat bore a crew of ghostly female mourners who sang a loud coronach, their wails reverberating far among the neighbouring mountains.

Another Highland story contends that a large ship, wrecked off the coast of Ross at the time of the first transportation of Celts to Canada, still rises occasionally from the waves which erstwhile claimed it as their prey, and, after sailing gallantly for a few minutes, suddenly lurches and sinks beneath the ocean; while dwellers by the shores of the Solway tell how a certain craft, which went down there while conveying a gay bridal party towards Stranraer, is frequently seen driving at full speed before the gale, the bride and bridegroom clinging to the rigging as though in terror of immediate death by drowning. Nor is this the only phantom wherein the Solway rejoices, for that proverbially treacherous firth, round which Sir Walter Scott has cast so potent a halo of romance in Redgauntlet, witnessed once upon a time the foundering of two Scandinavian pirate-vessels, and these are said to rise periodically from the water, the fierce and murderous crew of each calling the while for the mercy which they themselves never accorded their victims.

Bidding adieu to British legends, and looking further afield, we find that religion plays a prominent part in stories of spectre ships. At Boulogne, for example, there is a tradition to the effect that on one occasion, at a remote date in the middle ages, the townspeople were desirous of building a church, for at this time they were without any public place of worship; but, anxious as they were to choose a site which the Almighty would approve, they found it difficult to come to a decision on this head, everyone suggesting a different place. Finally, in despair, a body of them assembled on the beach, intending to offer up prayer for a solution to the problem; and while they were engaged thus they nappened to look out to sea, when lo! a vessel was seen sailing towards them, the sacred Virgin herself on board. Standing erect in the bows, she pointed with her hand in a certain direction; and the devout Seance people realised at once that their petition had been answered whereupon the mysterious phantom vanished as quickly as it had come. Another French spectre-ship, however, was wont to remain in sight for longer periods, while its appearance invariably struck terror into the hearts of all who beheld it. Small wonder too, the vessel being manned by a crew of demons and great dogs-the perjured souls of men who had been guilty of fearful crimes; yet the pious knew that in reality they had little to fear, the priests having told them that the repetition of a paternoster was adamantine proof against molestations from the hideous vision. Somewhat akin to this story is one associated with Venice, where, one stormy evening about the middle of the fourteenth century, a fisherman was requested to row three saints to a neighbouring village on the Adriatic; and, after bending to his oars for a while, he suddenly stopped and gazed as though petrified, a galley filled with swarthy Saracens having risen beside his boat. The oarsman vowed he would put back with all speed, but his godly passengers bade him be of good cheer, and while they sang an ave maria the ominous galley was submerged by the hungry waves. So the fisherman rowed forward and reached his haven, the three saints rewarded him with a present of a gold ring, and that is why that article figures in the old coat-of-arms of the Venetian Republic.

Go where we will, to countries fringed or intersected by the sea, we find stories like this, or something like it. In Japan there are tales of phantom junks, and the Chinaman still paints a pair of great eyes on the prow of his craft, thinking that these will detect any monsters which chance to be prowling afloat; while even on the coasts of America, usually considered so very prosaic a land, traditions anent spectral vessels prevail to this day. Kindred stories are known in the Ionian Islands, and the folk-lore of Shetland embodies a wealth of matter of this sort; while round about the serried coast of Denmark, and the windswept fiords of Norway, many a phantom barque is supposed to hover; and indeed it was on the North Sea that the most famous of all supernatural ships was wont to sail, the ship known to us as "The Flying Dutchman," and to the Germans as "Der Fliegende Holländer." A sailor, so goes the romance, had loved a maiden not wisely but too well, and having wronged her he grew weary of the liaison, left his sweetheart to languish, and put forth on the high seas where he committed many flagrant acts of piracy. But he was not to go unrequited, and the fates condemned him to sail wearily and everlastingly from shore to shore, this punishment to be endured till he should contrive to win the staunch affection of a virtuous woman and prove faithful to her. So the wayfarer's barque was driven hither and thither, the guilty man longed to tread solid ground once more; but whenever he dared to put in to port, and commenced paying addresses to one whom he thought might be able to save him, the devil soon placed him on board ship again, and his interminable voyage commenced afresh. Century after century went past in this fashion, the ill-starred barque gradually becoming familiar to all who sailed upon the grey North Sea, or dwelt by its shores; and the legend was not destined to dwindle away before the onslaughts of incoming cilivisation, for betimes a great artist arose to give a new and more genuine immortality to the story. Yes! Richard Wagner evolved from it a mighty drama; and sometimes, as we listen to his music-charged so abundantly with the weirdness, mystery and glamour of the surging ocean-we can verily picture the Dutchman's craft driving before a fearsome gale, and see the criminal sitting terror-struck and hopeless at his useless helm.