Angel of the Storm

There was undeniably something fearsome about angels in the original vision of the Bible - they were Heaven's mighty warriors, indomitable forces fighting against evil - but nowadays they've become figures to be featured on the front of twee Christmas cards and shown in children's nativity plays. If you asked someone about an encounter they might've had with an 'angel' today you would likely receive some corny (but nonetheless intriguing) story about a guardian angel or something of that nature - but if you look further back into history you can still find reports of angelic encounters which ring much more true to the original source material. A shipwreck took place in November of 1883 near Port Greville Harbour, Nova Scotia - and if the tale told by one of the two survivors is to be believed then it might've been the work of an avenging angel...

## The Wreck of the *Zebenia*

The Bay of Fundy lies between Canada's Nova Scotia and New Brunswick provinces, and on this popular shoreline are nestled two ports which were once buzzing hives of activity during the heyday of sailing ships. These two ports are Port Greville and Advocate Harbour - and it was close to the former that the mighty two-masted brigantine christened the *Zebenia* met her final resting place. She was a 251 tonne vessel, but at on the 13th of November 1883 she was in need of new rigging, new sails and new masts. Thus, she and her crew - captained by one Bill Parsons - made their way to Hantsport, Nova Scotia for maintenance and then on to Hillsborough, New Brunswick to load up the last of their cargo. After this, they decided to go to Port Greville to gather a crew for their coming journey - and it was here that they would hit a fateful storm which would ultimately run the ship aground and cost the lives of three out of five of the crew-members.

On this night, a man who would later become known as Captain Hatfield was among the crew of the ill-fated ship. One hour before the ship capsized, he was coming out of the cabin when he suddenly saw something fly past him through the ebony skies of the Nova Scotia night. Despite the darkness, he said that he could '*see it plainly*' and that it looked like an angel. From this description we can only assume that it was a winged humanoid of the kind classically associated with Biblical angels. He was watching it through the galley doors, and he could see it coming '*right down*' over the ship. The entity had slanted down towards the observing Hatfield, and so he logically thought that this bizarre and terrifying being was coming for him. He put his hand out to stop it, and it can be assumed that he retreated from the scene promptly and didn't see what became of the angel. One hour later, Hatfield would be among the only survivors of the disastrous wreck.

As it neared Port Greville, the *Zebenia* was suddenly overwhelmed by a vicious storm with waves that completely overtook the ship - killing three men who were in the cabin at the time and sending the capsized vessel up the Greville River near to Fox Point. She had been so near the Greville shore at the time that her sails wouldn't draw in time, and thus she rolled over in the water so that her spars were horizontal on the water's surface. The three drowned men were later found floating in the waters of Fox Point. Hatfield was able to let himself out of the ship's skylight and leap over the edge of the stern of the boat into the freezing waters below. The water was 10 or 12ft high due to the time of year, but despite this the beach had remained level and so Hatfield was able to grip onto the sand to keep crawling to shore. He wandered through the darkness for half a mile before he came to a house which could offer him help, and by that time his socks had been cut to shreds.

From that day fowards, nobody wanted to sail with Captain Parsons due to their superstitious belief that he was beleaguered with bad luck - and this paranoid fear quickly extended to surround the *Zebenia* itself, especially since its floating wreck acted in a rather unnerving fashion on the day when the three departed sailors were due to be buried. Instead of drifting up and down the Bay of Fundy as it had previously done, it inexplicably stayed outside Port Greville for a full three hours.

## Some Notes on Credibility

This sort of bizarre tale could usually just be chalked up to maritime folklore - but in this case I was able to track down precise information about the situation surrounding the *Zebania* from various maritime data websites. This wreck really did happen and three souls really were lost that day. No mention of any angel sightings are to be found on these official sites, of course, and the only thing which slightly throws the legitimacy of the account into a position of debate is the fact that Hatfield got the month of the event wrong. He said that it took place in December when talking to a Canadian folklorist by the name of Helen Creighton - while the factual maritime websites I have looked at list the date as specifically being the 13th of November 1883. I suppose that it is likely that Hatfield might've been mistaken about the month due to telling the story several decades after it happened (it was featured in a book by Creighton which was published in 1957). Another interesting discrepancy surrounds the number of men on board the vessel when it ran aground. Hatfield clearly states that Parsons was the captain of the ship, and one can reasonably assume that the captain would've been on his ship - and yet Hatfield also says that there were four men on the boat including himself, and that three of those men died in the accident. This would of course mean that Parsons can't have been on the boat. The only explanation I can think of for this is perhaps that Parsons had disembarked in Port Greville to find potential crew members at the time of the accident.

## Sources

*Zebenia Brigantine* on wrecksite.eu

'Bluenose Ghosts' by Helen Creighton