Evening star., 1932-03-27

In Queenstown, Ireland, after a passage
OF five months from Australia (the long
est passage In two years. has been dis
naasted twice, wrecked three times and
posted as missing. Once in three years,
regularly, she may be depended upon to
feature herself In the news columns of
marine casualties. Yet she always COM
pletes her voyages, she always comes into
port, even If it Is sometimes behind sal
wage tug. The ship Wray Castle was an
other of the same breed. There were,
many of them, indeed; all sailors knew
them. They were the "hoodoo" ships.
This feeling about "hoodoo" ships was
very real and still stands. Nobody has
managed to explain it away as yet; prob
ably no one ever will. FocsI Jack is con-
vinced that spirits and such have some
thing to do with it, and he avoids the
"hoodoo" ships if he can. Sometimes a
ship goes "hoodoo" just for one voyage
and returns to normal afterward. But
mostly they begin "hoodoo" and stay
that way. Some of them have killed
somebody in their crews on almost every
voyage they have made. At least one OF
these is still afloat, in active commits
sion. She was In London quite recently
and reported the loss Of two boys over
board somewhere near Cape Horn.
CAILORS- sailing ship sailors-still be-
- lieve that the spirits of those lost on
a voyage remain with the ship, at least
for the remainder of that voyage. This
belief does not frighten them; they mere
ly accept 1t as a simple fact that if any
or their focs1 friends be washed over the
side or killed aloft, he stays with the
ship for the rest Of that voyage. Some
times 1t happens that if sailor becomes
very attached to ship and dies after he
has left her his spirit returns to the ship.
In this regard a very curious story, for
the truth of which I can personally
vouch, comes from the Herzogin Cecilie.
When we were of Cape Horn, racing
from Australia to England with grain,
an extraordinary thing happened about
which, at the time, we knew nothing at
ALL On this voyage we had girl stow
away, Miss Jeanne Day. Her presence,
OF course, filled the crew with foreboding,
and when 1t was first known that she
was aboard everybody from the skipper
down Immediately gave up all hope Of
winning the race and expected any dire
calamity to overtake the ship. The whole
crew cursed and said no luck could come
to the ship while woman was aboard.
They recalled, very ruefully, that on the
last occasion on which the ship had
woman passenger the vessel had gone
ashore in a fog on the Danish coast.
However, before very long the girl
fitted well enough into the life OF the
ship. She worked as cabin boy, the ship
having sailed without one. Miss Day
early made up her mind that a great
deal of the objection of the sailing-ship
sailor toward women in his ships had
very real basis inrfaet=-his fears being
largely based on the danger of high
strung and somewhat nervous females,
with their "intuitions" and so forth, hav-
ing a bad effect on his nerves. The
sailor must have no nerves; the woman
always has them.
Therefore, Miss Day, when she found
a spirit in her cabin one evening, decided
to say nothing whatever about it. The
captain, the six-foot chief mate and all
the sailors would have scoffed in her face,
but very likely they would also have been
secretly afraid.
So it was not until the anchor was
down in Falmouth Bay that Miss Day
told Capt. de Cloux and me about it.
zone night" she said, "as the ship was
racing around Cape Horn with a fine
westerly breeze and everything set, I
came below to turn in after spending a
happy hour hanging over the stern
watching the phosphorescent wake Of the