The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-01-31
SAW DROWNED
 SAILORS GHOST Strange Tale of the Ship Mary
 WooIford MOST WEIRD EXPERIENCE Spirit of Dead comrade Returns To Visit Fellow-Members on the Yes
 sel-eraphic Story of the
 Boys Tragic Death.
MOST WEIRD EXPERIENCE

From the New Orleans Picayune.
 Charley Langford. who for years sailed the deep sea as an A B." never will forget the voyage he made out of Lon don to Singapore on the good ship Mary Woolford in the early eighties. as the closing days of the voyage were made miserable through "hant," which per sisted in tormenting the sailors, and whose appearance ever remained a mys- tery
 Langford was in the city several weeks ago, when the seamen were holding their convention. and one night while seated in the Hotel Bush cafe he consented to tell the story.
 The Mary Woolford, so the tale goes, was a sailing ship and Langford was serving as chief bo sun. She made the run down to Gibraltar and through the straits without incident, and 1t was while she was heading under a spanking breeze 1 through the Mediterranean for the Suez canal, that Jack Moore met his death. Jack was an Irish lad, on his second voy- 1 age, and he was a gay and jolly fellow, always singing a snatch of Munster song, or telling some joke that the "byes in Dublin town used to laugh over, and everybody liked him.
 One afternoon Jack went aloft to adjust a maintree brace, which was creaking ! horribly in the gale that was blowing, and as the ship careened in C sudden gust of wind the lad lost his hold and pitched headiong into the churning sea-
 The cry man overboard sounded above the shriek of the wind through the rigging, and the sailors, springing to the lines, at once brought the ship to- The vessel strained and groaned like great l dog in leash. and Captain charnock. the skipper, at once ordered the lifeboat low cred. The boats crew went bravely to l the task and tumbled into the frail craft as she was being lowered to the madly tossing sea. It was a dangerous experi- ment, that of launching a small boat un- i der such circumstances but by some mir acle the tiny cockleshell. with it's precious human freight, foated and was kept from the sides of the vessel by the long poles l in the hands of several of the crew.
 The afternoon was well advanced, and objects in the gray haze that rested upon the watery waste were not easily to be distinguished, but for one instant, show ing above the white crest of a high bill low, was seen the paler face of poor Jack Moore The face was soon submerged in the flood and Jack was seen no more. It was found impossible by the men in the boat to go any distance from the ves- sells sde and when the attempt was made to return the craft to it's davits great difficulty was encountered.
 The sailors gradually shortened their hold on the poles, letting the skin come closer to the Mary Wolford with each rise of the pillows, but a wave of rather extraordinary force picked the boat up and dashed 1t with such force against the ships iron hull that the side of the small craft was stove in. There were eight men in the crew, and luckily all of them managed to seize dangling life lines and hold on like grim death until drawn on deck The slxiff went down to a final resting place at the bottom of the great sea- The Mary Woolford resumed her course, and the crew was a sad and de- jected one. Everybody on board, from the skipper down to the cooks boy, had
 
 life of the ship, always singing and jok- ing-and everybody mourned him.
 Captain Oharnock, who was, a man of religious tendencies and a stickler for conventions and forms, piped the whole crew on deck when the drenched mem bers of the boats crew had changed their clothes, and after delivering a eulogy on the drowned man, took his much-worr prayerbook from his peajacket and read the burial-at-sea service.
 It was an impressive scene as Lang
 ford describes it. The ship was rolling
 and plunging through the heavy sea, thu
 churning waves washed over the bow
 the salt brine in a stream ran down th'
 scuppers, and it was with difficulty tha
 the sailors retained their feet. On al
 sides of the ship was a dreary waste O tumbling, hssing waters, with the sun like a great red ball, glaring through
 rift in the somber clouds, about to bi'
 good night to a troubled world, an'
 everything was suggestive of gloom ant
 sadness. The captains powerful Yoic
 could be heard above the rush of tn
 waves and the sweep of the wind througl the creaking halyards reading the i'm pressive passages, and when the final in vocation was pronounced, thouse rough hardened men were weeping for the mos part, ana OHly lbS hcllhSiiidAi, NAS e' laboring nightly at the wheel to kee the ship before the gale, and whose at tention was claimed altogether by tn present need, had his thoughts other wise than in the deep sea with tn drowned Irishman.
 The ship weathered the gale withou further mishap or accident, and, passn ! through the Suez canal encountered fai weather in the Red sea to the Straits 0 Babel-el- Mandeb. Days had gone int weeks, and the ship, after leaving tn 1 Arabian sea, was steering northwes through the Indian ocean before the sal ors regained their former cheerfulnes and ceased to lament poor Jack Moore. I One night, when the Mary Woolfor was only three days sail from Singapore < Ben Daly, the watch on the forward decf ] had a strange experience. Ben was Irishman, with all an Irishman falt in Banshee stories and the like, and Be and Jack had been close friends. It mus have been close onto midnight when Be rushed down the deck, yelling as thous possessed, and burst into the main 9abif where the captain had his quarters. Car tain Charnock sprang out Of bed Tn \ hurry, the first Huff and the secon emerged from their cabins half attiret and the three found Da1y crouching O the floor, trembling in an agony Of Tea I and jabberlng away in manner alto gather unintelligible
 Captain Charnock reached for decar tor of r1fna fro,,, a nearby closet, emptie