# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The Flame Sloop of Caraquette

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THE FLAME SLOOP OF CARAQUETTE
"HEAVEN save us all and shield us from harm," is the prayer of the people who live along the Bay of Chaleurs, and especially of those Brunswickers who fish upon it, when they hear that the flame sloop is on her cruise again. Never is that apparition reported but some dweller on the bay gives up his life within a week. The sloop is seldom seen except by sailors and fishermen, but the gleam of it penetrates far through even stormy air, falling over the landscape in a pale, phosphorescent glow, as if the northern lights were out, and fading while one looks about him to see where it comes from, Those who see it fairly and live to tell about it say it is a sloop-rigged craft, all made of fire,—a vision out of hot hell on the cold waters of the Laurentian gulf. Its sails are sheets of flame, its shrouds are like lightning, its hull, mast, and spars glow like brands. On the deck are the crew, charred corpses, stiffly walking the red planks, hauling at the blazing halliards, and climbing the white-hot shrouds. ​Various are the explanations of this phenomenon. Henry Hudson perished lonesomely in the vast bay that keeps his name, the victim of a mutiny, and this may be a vision of the fate that befell his crew in working southward, even though the ship itself reached England. Roberval ascended the Saguenay, and in one version of his history he never came down. Is this a revelation of what ensued among his discontented men? According to one dim rumor, Verrazzano, the Florentine discoverer, was killed by Indians near Louisburg, Cape Breton, and his crew, attempting an escape, may have drifted down the coast to meet this strange destruction. The omnipresent Kidd has infested this bay at times.
But a tale has gone the rounds of the Chaleurs villages, that shortly after the nineteenth century was born a small vessel went ashore on the south side of the bay, near Caraquette, New Brunswick. It was believed that crew and freight went to the bottom with her, until certain articles known to have been on board were found to be in the hands of a few fellows ashore, who were looked upon askance by their neighbors as men who smuggled, diced, drank too much, had even sailed in a pirate ship and set false beacons inland to lure well-freighted barks ashore. So it was whispered about that these fellows had more knowledge of the sloop's wreck than they were willing to impart. There was no direct evidence, but the circumstantial proof offered ​by their mysteriously earned property was sound enough to take a warrant on. Some leaky-mouthed villager told them that the officers were coming, and, hurriedly gathering their effects into a small vessel of their own, they stood away to sea. Had they intended any usual business they would have waited until a stout nor'wester had blown itself out, but their lives were in hazard, and their first hope was to get out of the Bay of Chaleurs. On the very next morning parts of their vessel began to come ashore in the breakers, and before the sun was down the body of every one of those guilty men had been flung upon the rocks. This the people believed to be a certain indication of their crime. What brought them to their end? Some act of carelessness? The upsetting of a stove or lamp? Or was it a stroke of lightning? Whatever it was, it worked an act of vengeance, and the souls of the wretched creatures are doomed to haunt the scene of their offence, swathed in such flames as the good priests say must be their everlasting portion.