The Washington times., 1901-07-21
GHOST SHIPS or THE SEA.
Strange Stories Told Of the Mys-
teries of the Ocean.
The "FiyinE Dutchman" the Best
known OF the Many Spectral ves-
sels-A Phantom Craft which
Haunts the New England Coast.

1
| Landsmen boast OF their haunted houses
and the weird spirits that dance In coun-
| try graveyards at midnight. But there's
| not a house. no matter how black and dis
NAL and how far back from the public
| road 1t may be sitting, nor how many
murders may have been committed within
Its walls years ago. that can compare In
supernatural terrors with the haunted
ships with their crews of dead men that
| haunt the trackless waves of the ocean,
ANA there's not ghost on land, no mat
ter how many graveyards he may prowl
| around. nor how many old mansions he
| may rattle chains in and groan and dis
port himself, that can hold up his head
for one minute in the presence OF one of
the gristly, grinning, matted. dank ghosts
that ship as A. B. on a ghost ship.
There Is an air of vagueness and unreal
ity anyhow about the ocean that makes it
naturally more fit abiding place for
ghosts than the prosaic shore The great
trackless. unfathomed. mysterious deep.
with its centuries of nameiess horrors
still locked :.-ruly in its silent bosom. Is
the proper place for ghosts. And so it Is
no wonder that they who go down to the
sea in ships believe as firmly in spirits and
spirit ships and rowing hulks with crews
| OF men dead centuries agone as they be-
| lieve in their own existence.
One of the spectral ships best known to
landsmen generally is the Flying Dutch
man. with which Captain Marryat made
his readers acquainted. The Flying
Dutchman was trying to round the
Horn some time in the early
part of the seventeenth century. The
ship was repeatedly driven back by con-
trary winds and tides. until the ships
captain, Vanderdecken, swore a fearful
oath he would round 1t IL 1t took till
Judgment Day. vanderdecken was taken
at his word, and now for three centuries
he and his worn crew have been battling
to round the cape. Sailors watch with
fear and trembling when their ships are
rounding the Horn. afraid that every mo-
ment may bring into view the spectral
Flying Dutchman. II Is believed that ev-
cry appearance of the Flying Dutchman
will be followed by death or misfortune
to some of the crew of the ship that sees
the ghost vessel
In the private journal of the late Duke
Clarence and his brother. the present
Duke of Cornwall and York. during their
cruise on the Bacchante in 1s79-lSs2 an
account is given in their experience with
with near Sydney. The Duke wrote:
July II, 1881. at a m. the Flying
Dutchman crossed cur bows A strange
red light, as of a phantom ship all aglow,
in the midst of which light the masts,
spars, and sails of the brig, 2oo yards dis
tant, stood out in bold relief. As it came
up the lookout man on the forecastle re-
ported it as close the port bow. The
night being clear and the sea calm, thir-
teen persons altogether saw 1t, but
whether it was Van Diemen of the Fly
ing Dutchman or who else must remain
unknown. The Tourmaline and Cleopa-
ira, which were sailing on our starboard
bow. flashed to ask whether We had seen
the strange red lights. At a quarter to IL
a. m. the ordinary seaman who had this
morning reported the Flying Dutehman
fell from the foretopmast crosstrees and
was smashed to atoms At the
next port we came to the admiral also
was smitten down"
on the stern, rock-bound coast OF New
England is not infrequently seen the
ghost of the ship Palatine, whose appear
ance scudding in the teeth of a gale is al
ways supposed to betoken disaster.
The PaIatine was Dutch trading ves-
sci that was wrecked on Block Island in
1l52. The wreckers, who by means Of
false beacons along the shore had lured
the ship TO its doom made short work of
the vessel. They stripped the ship of
everything movable and then set fire to
the hull to conceal the traces of their
work. AS the boat. lifted up by the tide,
foated away down the channel a piercing
scream was suddenly heard from the
cabin and woman clad in white, but
bod IN efarx
standing in front of the mainmast She
had been a passenger on the ship and
had hidden below to escape the wreckers
She burned to death in sight OF the people
along the shore. and since that time the
ghost of the Palatine. with the figure of
a woman in white standing in front of
the mainmaSt, has been seen hundreds of
times by sailors cruising in those waters
The Dead Ship of Salem is well known
off the Massachusetts shore. Just 200
years ago the ship was ready to sail to
England, when TWO mysterious people,
whom none in the village had ever seen
before, came hurriedly aboard and secur-
ed passage. They were a young man and
woman of strange but forbidding beauty.
The ship was detained so long by adverse
winds that the townspeople began to sus-
pect witchcraft and prophesied disaster.
But the skipper ieered at their fears. and
when the wind changed put out to sea
on Friday morning.
No word or sign of that ship or its liv-
ing freight was ever seen or heard again
But later that same year incoming ves-
sells reported having met craft with
shining hull and luminous spars and sails
spinning along with every cloth drawing
in the teeth of one of the widest gales.
A crew of skeletons manned the ship,
while on the quarterback stood arm in
arm a handsome pair, a young man and
a woman.
Down deep in solitude of the lonely
everglades the sailors say is a ghostly pi-
rate ship doomed to forever cruise about
in the muddy bogs and shallow grass
grown lakes of the great swamp.
Three centuries ago a buccaneering
crew that raided the Spanish main cap
tured n merchant brig Off Cape Florida
and speedily rihed 1t of its rich cargo.
Furious at the length OF the chase and
the brave resistance of the gallant crew
of the merchantmen the pirate captain
cruelty forced everyone of the crew to
walk the plank. with fiendish ingenuity
keeping the shippers wife TO watch their
fate and that of her brave husband
New York Commercial Advertiser.
Temperature and Marine Life.
&C. C. Nutting. in Seience.)
The general impression that high tenn
perature is moro favorable than a low
one for the best development of animal
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