Episode 8 - Ghost Ships

You close your eyes and breath deep.

You let the salt of the sea and the air roll over your tongue.

You exhale slowly and you let your eyes drift open.

Ahead, there is water. Behind, there is water. Not a hint of land in sight in any direction.

The voyage ahead is long, all the way to the New World, and you will be many months at sea.

Your homeland lays far behind you, but ahead is your true love… Your life at sea.

The world is filled with stories of ghost ships. Phantom vessels either without a crew, or crewed only by the dead.

In general, it refers to several phenomena.

The first are ghostly vessels like those that appear in folklore and fiction. Vessels piloted by the dead, harbingers of misfortune and doom.

The term is also used to describe derelict vessels. Real ships, found adrift at sea, their crews missing or dead.

It has also sometimes been used to refer to ships that have been decommissioned and are no longer sailing, but have not been scrapped.

These are beautiful constructs, things that carried people and goods and ideas across vast distances, turned into marks of horror.

Ghost ships are a dark omen given the form of our hope.

The oceans are a dangerous place to make a living.

And as long as we have sailed the deep blue waters of the seas, ships have gone missing, vanished into the deeps, and sunk.

Taking themselves, their cargo, and their crew to a watery grave.

But sometimes, they don’t stay there. Sometimes a ship comes back…

There are a plethora of stories of ghost ships. They appear in nautical myth around the world.

Some are entirely fictional, born of folklore and fear. Others are grounded in reality and are still reported to this day.

In either case, ghost ships are omens of bad tidings. Storms, bad luck, and even death can be heralded by the arrival of a phantom ship.

Today, we look to the sea, and hope we do not catch sight of the ghostly light…

I am Andrew Eagle, and I happily welcome you aboard, as we take a voyage on a ghost ship, and pass Through the Veil.

You have heard the tales, same as any sailor.

Of course, you’re not sailing anywhere near the Cape of Good Hope, so you have no reason to worry over such stories.

The way you’ve heard it, the ship was trying to get into harbor when the storm hit. The vessel was lost.

Every soul on board perished.

The stories you’ve heard, whispered by crew mates in the dark hours of the night, claim that the ship can still be seen before a storm.

Heralding a fate like theirs.

The Flying Dutchman haunts those waters.

With a mind full of ghost stories, you watch the dark clouds gather in the distance.

If you didn’t know any better… If you weren’t so sure that the stories were nothing more than fiction…

You’d say you saw a shape under those dark clouds.

A shape like a ship, lit by a ghastly green…

You mutter a prayer under your breath as you begin to ring your watch bell to alert the rest of the crew.

A ship approaches… The Flying Dutchman approaches.

One of the most famous ghost ships, other than the Dutchman of course, is the Mary Celeste.

Stories of the Flying Dutchman are unreliable at best, and have many historical records, but none that can be substantiated.

The Mary Celeste is different. The Mary Celeste is historical fact.

Constructed in Nova Scotia, Canada in 1871, the Mary Celeste sailed under British registration for several years under a different name - The Amazon.

In 1868, The Amazon was sold to an American, Richard W. Haines.

Haines purchased the ship fresh off a wreck and spent a time restoring her to seaworthiness.

When the Amazon was ready, Haines made himself captain, registered the vessel under its now-famous name, the Mary Celeste, and for four years, she sailed without noteworthy event.

The ship changed hands several times, after Haines’s creditors claimed it. Until eventually, in October 1872, Benajmin Spooner Briggs became the new captain.

Briggs was a talented, career sailor. And when he was contracted to take the Mary Celeste on a voyage, he chose the crew with great care.

He selected a First Mate who had proven himself reliable in previous voyages, as well as several other sailors with high personal recommendations.

On the voyage, Briggs would travel with his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Cobb, and his daughter, Sophia Matilda, and would leave his older son at home to continue his schooling.

Storms delayed their intended departure, but by November 7th, 1872, the Mary Celeste had set sail.

Leaving New York with the destination of Genoa.

Those on board would never again be seen.

You and your fellow crew members scramble to prepare as the storm approaches.

As the dark clouds draw closer, you lose sight of the dread ship.

You have half convinced yourself you were seeing things, that it was just your mind playing tricks on you, when you see it again.

In a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder the shape of the Dutchman is revealed.

It is much nearer now, too close. Full sails as it pulls ever closer.

There is no time to change course, only time to stop as the ship, with no visible crew, pulls alongside your ship.

Gangplanks are lowered. You and the rest of the crew are nearly frozen in fear, even as the storm-lashed waves grow stronger.

Then you see the captain. The Dutchman’s captain standing in the center of her deck.

“Who captains this vessel?” He calls in a loud voice.

Your captain, steps forward and raises his hand in a salute.

“My crew have letters they want delivered. Back the way we’ve been, and we must make it round the Cape yet,” called the captain of the dead and the doomed.

“Could ye’ trouble yerself to deliver them?”

The rest of the crew knew better, you knew better, the captain knew better than to accept those letters.

But what choice would you have? With the captain of a dead ship staring you down and a fearsome ocean storm baring down upon you?

The captain takes the package and in a lightning flash and spray of sea water the Dutchman is gone.

The first reference ever recorded to the Flying Dutchman came from a book by John MacDonald written in 1790.

It reports that the “common story is that this Dutchman came to the Cape in distress of weather and wanted to get into harbour but could not get a pilot to conduct her and was lost and ever since in very bad weather her vision appears.”

The way this is written suggests that stories of the Dutchman were older than that, although no date can be established for the events that the story describes.

It next appeared in a chapter of A Voyage to Botany Bay by George Barrington, who described the superstition of the Flying Dutchman and the tale of the Dutch man-of-war ship that was lost off the Cape of Good Hope.

He recounts that shortly after the Dutchman sank, and the storm broke, another vessel sailed through the waters. Unnaturally quickly, a violent tempest formed.

The crew described that they saw a ghostly ship, the Dutchman itself, in the storm.

But when the clouds cleared, the phantom ship was gone.

The story spread like wildfire.

At first, stories of the Dutchman were centered exclusively around the Cape of Good Hope, but it did not take long for the ship to show up in stories that spanned the oceans.

Thomas Moore placed the vessel in the North Atlantic in the early 1800s in a poem.

For years, the ship was described as a ghostly merchant vessel. Then, in 1812, Sir Walter Scott described it as a pirate vessel. A ship loaded with great wealth and cursed from some horrid act of piracy. The image it had as an omen of doom was enhanced by the dread reputation of pirates, and the legend of the Dutchman was truly born.

While the Mary Celeste was in New York, another ship was preparing in a nearby port.

The Dei Gratia, a Canadian vessel also bound for Genoa.

The Dei Gratia was crewed by experienced sailors, and some records suggest that Briggs and captain David Morehouse of the Dei Gratia knew each other.

The Dei Gratia left port on a very similar route on November 15th. Eight days behind the Mary Celeste.

The voyage passed uneventfully until December 4th near the coast of Portugal.

A crew member spotted a vessel nearby traveling erratically with an odd set to her sails.

Morehouse immediately suspected something was wrong and directed his crew to approach the errant ship.

As they drew close, the crew of the Del Gratia spotted no movement on deck, and received no reply to signals.

Morehouse sent his first and second mates in a boat to investigate.

They identified the derelict vessel as the Mary Celeste.

Nobody speaks of the event. The apparition of the Dutchman.

Not for the rest of the voyage. Nobody is bold enough.

But when you make landfall, and you do, against all odds, make landfall…

The story spreads quickly, and it is not long before everyone in this port town has heard the tale of your crew.

The captain puts you in charge of the letters. The letters from the Dutchman.

You go into town and ask after one of the names.

Nobody seems to know the intended recipients, and you are beginning to lose hope that you will ever find them.

Then you meet an old man. His eyes widen at the mention of who you seek.

He informs you in a hushed tone, tells you why you have had no luck finding them.

The recipients are all long dead. Dead for decades, most of them.

You bear letters from ghosts for ghosts.

When the crew members of the Dei Gratia clambered aboard the Mary Celeste, they found her deserted and in poor condition.

The sails were poorly set, damaged and missing, the rigging was loose. The ship’s single lifeboat was missing.

There was a build up of water in the hold, a significant amount, but not a dangerous amount for a ship the size of the Mary Celeste.

But it got stranger still.

The ship’s daily logs were intact. The last entry was dated November 25th, nine days earlier.

It reported its position as nearly 400 nautical miles from the point where she was found. No sign of trouble was reported in the logs.

As they searched, the crew members discovered that the ship’s cargo and the goods within the cabins were all intact and in relative order.

The only things that were missing were some of the ship’s papers and the captain’s navigational instruments.

Beyond that, the ship was abandoned, entirely empty.

None of the crew, nor the captain or his family, were ever found.

Stories of ghost ships started nearly as soon as ships ventured beyond the sight of land. And they continue to this very day.

They have caught the public imagination in a way that few stories have.

Inspiring movies, television shows, books, and more.

Some are seemingly fiction. With no evidence or grounding in history. Like the Dutchman.

Others are filled with detail, and well-recorded. The ships, like the Mary Celeste, certainly were real.

It is clear, that as much as the ocean captured humanity’s imagination, beckoning us to explore and encouraging our sense of wonder, it has also captured our fear.

The ocean is a dangerous place. And we have filled it with ghosts, real and imagined.

I hope that you have enjoyed this episode of Through the Veil.

I would encourage you to subscribe to hear new episodes weekly wherever you choose to listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, ghost stories, and legends.

If you are enjoying the show, and you have topics you would like to hear covered: Feel free to email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter. You can find me @ThroughVeil

And as always, thank you, for listening.