“As I said, the crew were Portuguese, and they’d had a fashion of sitting on the rail in the night after fishing, and smoking their cigarettes. All captains and crews who went out on this ship after that drowning said they saw the crew sitting on the rails smoking their cigarettes. They took her to different fishing grounds but the crew were always there. They were never seen during the day, but always at night. The ship was the Clara Sylvia, and the year was 1910. Gloucester was her home port.”
One of the best known stories of haunted ships is that of the sailing vessel, the Charles Haskell. Its strange story made such an impression at the time that a song was made up about it and to this day it is sung in many ports all over the maritime provinces and the New England states. Two men from Lockeport, Nova Scotia, and one from Lunenburg, were in her crew; the rest were Gloucester men. This is her story according to an account from the Boston Globe of that time and shown to me in a scrapbook at Annapolis Royal where the vessel was well known later on.
The Charles Haskell, a fine new vessel, sailed out of Boston and was one of three hundred anchored on Georges on March 7, 1866. A hurricane and blinding storm set in. Vessels were huddled together and were torn from their anchorage. During the hurricane all hands were on deck. At one o’clock at night one of the other ships, a schooner, got adrift and out of control. She was like a runaway and was being hurled by the storm directly towards the Haskell. In order to save herself, the Haskell’s rope was cut, but she was then so storm-driven that she was completely at the mercy of the wind. Another craft lay in her path and she ran through it like a cheese, standing the shock herself without losing a rope yarn. Thus the Charles Haskell unwittingly transferred to the Andrew Jackson of Salem what would have been her fate.
In time the Charles Haskell returned to the same fishing grounds.Then a strange thing happened and all the crew testified that it was true, for when they sailed over the place where they had rammed the Andrew Jackson, the crew of that schooner came up over the sides in their oilskins and manned the Haskell. After that the Haskell became known as the Ghost Vessel, and the owners were unable to obtain a crew. She was finally purchased by Captain David Hayden of Port Wade, Nova Scotia, for whom she sailed out of Digby, transporting wood along our coast. As far as I can gather, she never went to Georges again, and therefore had only the one visitation. I have talked to men who had heard the story personally from the crew, and I too heard it confirmed from one who saw it happen, Captain Ammon Zinck of Lunenburg. The song however is perhaps the best source of information. This was my introduction to the story, and it is still the way that fishermen prefer to tell it. I first heard it in 1928 from the lips of Mr. Gordon Young. He sang sitting on a log on the Devil’s Island beach with his friends around him nodding sympathetic approval as the theme unfolded. The evening light was growing dim and men and women moved about quietly in the late twilight, intent upon the words they knew so well. His voice was soft and musical, and his only accompaniment came from the waves lapping gently against the shore and the small fishing boats rocking at their moorings. Here are three of the verses:
Last night as we were sailing, we were off shore a ways, I never will forget it in all my mortal days,
It was in the grand dog watches I felt a thrilling dread Come over me as if I heard one calling from the dead.
Right over our rail there clambered all silent one by one A dozen dripping sailors, just wait till I am done,
Their faces were pale and sea wan, shone through the ghostly night,
Each fellow took his station as if he had a right.
They moved about before us till land was most in sight, Or rather I should say so, the lighthouse shone its light,
And then those ghostly sailors moved to the rail again And vanished in an instant before the sons of men.
This is not the only instance of a sunken crew taking over. North Port Mouton also has a story of a man who was at sea when his ship rammed a vessel, but only the captain’s ghost of that sunken craft appeared. Digby Neck tells of a freighter that rammed a dory with the result that her sailors came aboard and took over when the freighter returned to that spot.
Occasionally a single ghost turns up on a ship. This story from Glen Haven is one of my favourites. I would like to think it really happened, and perhaps it did. Ben Smeltzer was a West Dover man and one of the crew of a vessel fishing off Georges in winter. It was snowing and there were no fish, and they were getting all iced up and the captain had decided to take the ship to Boston. At this time Mr. Smeltzer went down below and, when he went into the cabin, there was a strange man sitting at the chart-table writing on a slate—a large, healthy looking sea-faring man.
For readers who are not accustomed to the sea and its ways, I might mention that it would be impossible in the limited space of a sailing vessel for a person to stow away for any length of time, if at all, and this vessel had been at sea for some weeks.
“Who can this be?” Mr. Smeltzer thought.“What does it mean?” He had heard of strange events at sea, and he scratched his head as he went up the companionway to talk it over with his captain.
“There’s a strange man down below,” he said. “Never see him before.”
“You’re crazy,” said the captain. Then observing that Mr. Smeltzer was serious about it he decided to humour him and added in a voice that had in it more than a hint of sarcasm, “What did you say to him?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Mr. Smeltzer declared. “He can’t be human.”
“Well,” said the captain, who began to have misgivings him–self, “you come down with me and show me your man.” So down they went and there was no one there. However the captain was a thorough man and Mr. Smeltzer had stated specifically that the stranger had been sitting at the chart table writing on a slate. He therefore strode over to the table and picked up the slate. The top side was clean, just as he had left it. Without really thinking what he was doing he turned the slate over and there he was amazed to see a message. It read: “Change your course to nor’nor’west and steer so many hours and you’ll come to a vessel turned on its side and the crew hanging to it.”
He put the slate down and snorted.
“Tricks. Sailors must always be at their tricks,” but Mr. Smeltzer insisted it was not a trick and he grew even more serious as he too read the message. More to satisfy him than anything, the captain called his crew down one by one and had each one write something on that slate. No script resembled the mysterious handwriting. By this time the crew all knew the story and they were as one in concluding that they should follow the slate’s directions. Against his own wishes and judgment the captain changed his course. And sure enough, they had not gone far on their way when they came upon an upturned vessel. Men were still clinging to the hull, and they were in time to save them. They supposed then that the stranger who had appeared in the cabin had been one of the first to succumb and that he had taken this means of saving his fellow seamen.
No reader will doubt the next story although why should it be more credible than the last? If a message could be conveyed in one way, why not in another? And would the first captain, a stubborn man, have paid attention to anything less startling than a physical appearance? Well, here is the story of a dream, told to me in the 1930s by Capt. Joe Boyd of Yarmouth, a man many of my readers will remember.
“I was mate and my brother was captain on a trip from London to New York and it was blowing a heavy gale. There were terrible seas running and we were under lower topsails. We had been that way for nearly a week.
“At breakfast one morning my brother, the captain, said, ‘I had a peculiar dream last night. It was so vivid I couldn’t sleep.’ I just laughed and said, ‘Didn’t you ever have a dream before that you couldn’t get rid of? One like that keeps coming back all night.’ But he wasn’t being put off like that and so he told me his dream. It bothered him. He had seen a ship with only one mast light and he could even see the faces of people lashed to the deck. He was a quiet chap and
not given to any funny stories.
“Well, you know, I couldn’t get rid of it either and it pestered me so that after a while I went up in the mizzen rigging, a thing I wouldn’t have thought of doing without the dream on my mind, because there wasn’t any reason for going up. I looked over the stormy water and I saw the wreck. I called for the marine glasses and there was the ship, exactly as he had told of it. This was a couple of hours after I’d heard his dream and I sighted her a long way off.
“We changed our course and, when we reached the wreck, hove our ship to and we found sixteen men in the last stages of exhaustion lashed to the rigging. They had put ropes from one side of the vessel to the other and they were in a network of ropes to keep them out of the water. This kept them up some twenty feet. All the masts were gone but this short one.
“I manned one boat and the second mate the other. There was an awful high sea, but we managed to get them down without hurting anybody.The ship had capsized and filled with water and, as soon the deckload of heavy timber went, she righted. Four or five of the crew were swept off and, when the timber went, it took the deckhouse and everything with it.
“Getting them off the wreck was awful because we had to tie them in a boatswain’s chair and let them swing when there was a roll. We made four or five trips. It took an hour to get up to her, and we were the whole afternoon till dark getting them off. All they wanted was water, but we wouldn’t let them have it except a little at a time. Then we gave them a little in canned milk and fed each one like a baby. After that we fed them on gruel for about three days.
“Later I was talking with Rev. Mr. Gibson and I said, ‘Can you give me any good reason why a man should dream such a thing?’ and he said it was part of God’s will that the thought should be put in his head. Anyhow the men said they had prayed for help with hands held out just as the captain had seen them. When we reached New York, reporters came aboard and I gave them the story. Cleveland was President at the time, and my brother received an inscribed gold watch for saving the lives of the men, and the crew all got medals from the life-saving society.”
Our next story embraces features of the two preceding ones. It happened to Captain George Albert Hatfield of Fox River, and was brought to my attention by his grand-nephew, Mr. G. D. H. Hatfield of Halifax.
It happened in March, 1874, that Captain Hatfield was sailing from Cuba to New York when his ship ran into very bad weather. When he felt that he could safely leave the bridge and get some rest he went to his cabin, keeping his clothes on in case of a sudden call. He was no sooner asleep than he was awakened by someone tapping his shoulder and he heard a voice saying, “Keep her off half a point.” He supposed it was his mate and went back on deck to ask what he meant by such presumption. The mate gazed at him in astonishment and said, “Why sir, I haven’t left the deck since you went below.” Captain Hatfield was embarrassed then, and surprised that a dream should be so vivid.
For the second time he fell asleep but not for long. Again he felt a tapping on his shoulder and heard the same voice saying, “Keep her off half a point.” This time he was doubly annoyed, but the mate assured him neither he nor anybody else had gone to his cabin. Too tired to argue he made a third attempt to sleep but his head had no sooner touched the pillow than the hand on his shoulder went tap, tap, tap. This time it was not a request that he heard but a command. The captain opened his eyes and saw distinctly a strange man walk out of his cabin and go up the companionway to the deck. He particularly noticed his clothes because they were different from any of those on board. This time when he approached the mate he had a different question. He said,
“Did you see a man go out of my cabin just now?” The mate said no, and began to wonder if the captain were losing his reason. The captain then gave the order to keep her off half a point and once more went below, this time to sleep the night through peacefully. He said afterwards that he had acted like a man in a dream or one who was sailing under sealed orders. The mate kept the altered course and, when the captain returned to the deck in the morning, he ordered a strict lookout to be kept. It was no great surprise to him when a wreck was sighted and, of course, his ship went at once to the rescue. Captain Amesbury of the United States schooner D. Talbot, his wife, child, and all of his crew, were transferred safely over the stormy seas. Just one hour after she was sighted the wreck went down.
Later when they were sitting together Captain Hatfield told why he had altered his course and, when he was through, Mrs. Amesbury asked him to describe the stranger who had left his cabin. As she listened she was obviously shaken with emotion and, when she could trust herself to speak she said, “That was my father; he’s been dead for ten years.”
When they reached New York the rescue was reported by Captain Amesbury with the result that the Hatfield family still has in its possession the gold watch presented to the gallant captain by the United States government. The inscription reads in part, “for humanity and courage in the rescue.”
These three stories of rescue came, as you have seen, from different parts of the Province, and two of them directly from the families concerned. They must actually have happened as they have been related, and they are entirely separate incidents. The first is the only one that I cannot be sure about because I have never talked to any of the Smeltzer family. It is conceivable that it is true like the others.
We have had several stories already from Mr. Horace Johnston of Port Wade, so let us visit him again. He was a tall lean man who loved the sea until the day he died. When I met him with another retired fisherman, Mr. Norman McGrath, they were spending part of their summer in a shack on the shore of Victoria Beach. They spent their time fishing and re–calling events from their adventurous younger days. They were delighted when I came along because mine was a new ear to listen to the yarns they loved to spin. Some were very funny, some were folk tales from out of a far distant past, and others were personal experiences, true or concocted. The trick was to distinguish between them. This one about the Vesta Pearl was given in all seriousness by Mr. Johnston, and he assured me it was true. Again we have brothers sailing together.
“About fifty years ago when my brother was captain of the Vesta Pearl I sailed with him as mate. The captain takes care of the after end of the ship and the mate the forward end. Well, this vessel was built in St. John, and that’s where we bought her and, after we got her, they said she was a hanted vessel. One old fellow said, “‘You can’t run her, she hanted.’ So I said, ‘If she’s hanted now she’s hanted so bad she’s got to keep moving.’ (The word hant is often used here for haunt.) The crew didn’t want to stay aboard after the word got around. Someone told them the last captain had been knocked overboard when she was new and on her first trip and that he’d been drowned, but none of us knew the whole story. All we knew was that he was always around. He’d be there in a gale of wind when we were reefing the sails. If four men were reefing and one was at the wheel, there would be one man at the wheel and five men reefing, but you had to be at the wheel to see him.
“He didn’t bother us until we’d been out four months. We got caught in an easterly wind going to Boston and we were bobbing in the sea and when we went to reef, here was Mr. Extry Man. My brother called me to come and take the wheel. He said, ‘I’d rather go and help reef,’ but he didn’t tell me why. It was then I found out about the extry man. I saw him for myself.
“One time when we were in Annapolis we got rigged up (dressed up) and went ashore. It didn’t take much to dress you up in those days. On account of the tide the boat was high up in the water and we figured out the tide to see what time we should come back. Tides are mighty high here and when it was out we could walk right up to the boat, but it would be muddy going. Then you could climb up the ladder and on to the ship’s deck. If we stayed ashore too long we couldn’t walk back to her. I had my rubber boots waiting on the shore and, when I got back I put ’em on, and made my way to the ship. The tide was getting pretty well up to the vessel when I g
ot there, and I figured that the other men wouldn’t be able to get back without a boat till the next tide. I shook my feet to get the mud knocked off my boots, and scraped them on every rung of the ladder.
“It seems that anybody going to sea, it makes no odds whether they’ve had their supper or not, because when they come aboard they always have to have a mugup, hot or cold. This night I was the only one aboard and I was having a mugup. Tea, it was. They had a lot of salt horse (salt beef) aboard this vessel and I was quite hungry because I’d gone without eating from six to eleven. Well, I was having my mugup and salt horse when I heard another fellow coming stomping same as I did and, when he reached the deck, he seemed to go forward. So I says, ‘My gracious, he just made it,’ because the tide was pretty well around the vessel. I could tell because while I was setting there the ship riz and I could feel her come up out of the mud. I said to myself, ‘Who’s that come aboard?’ because after I heard him stomping I didn’t see no more nor hear nothin’, but I’d heard him all right because he’d scraped his boots oft the same as I done. So I took the lantern to see where he walked, because I knew the mud would show his tracks, but nothing showed.
“Well, the watch had gone off when I come aboard, and I knew I was alone and I don’t know whether I was frightened or not, but it was a little bit of a strange kind of feeling. I thought somebody might have gone overboard, but I couldn’t see nothin’ with the lantern and, when the others came back, I asked and it hadn’t been them. So it must a been him—The Extry Man.”
Bluenose Ghosts Page 14