HAUNTING THE SEAS.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 January 1921, Page 12

HAUNTING THE SEAS.

QUEER TALES OF PHANTOM SHIPP SPECTRE OF, DEAD MAN’S COVE. The eoast of New England has many legends concerning spectre ships firmly believed by the rugged fishermen, who assert stoutly that on various occasions glimpses of the shadowy craft have been seen, followed invariably by disaster. The spectre of the Palcntine is occasionally seen on the Sound, and is the forerunner of a gale She was a Dutch trading vessel, and was wrecked oft' Block Island in 1752. The wreckers, it is said, made short work of her, stripping her fore and aft, and setting fire to her hull.

As she drifted blazing oj' the coast (says the Sun and New York Herald) a human form was visible amid the flames, the form of a woman passenger, left to perish on the doomed craft. Since, and generally upon the anniversary of the wreck, a phantom ship, with blazinv hull, charred spars, and scorched sail and rigging, has been cruising off Block Island.

Whittier recorded the legend in graceful verse, as well as that of a ghostly cruiser that sailed from a New England port on her last voyage, which he termed “The Dead Ship of Salem.”

In the seventeenth century a ship was about to sail from Salem, Mass., to England. Her cargo was board, sails bent, and passengers on deck, when two strangers came hurriedly on board, and engaged passage. The couple were a young man and a young woman, who, tradition records, were remarkable for their bearing and beauty. Who they were and whence they came no one in Salem Town could tell. The ship being detained by adverse winds, the mysterious couple excited the suspicions of the townspeople, who viewed them as uncanny, and prophesied disaster to the vessel if they were allowed to sail on her. But the master, a gruff and stem sailor, refused to listen, and finally departed on a Friday. , The vessel never reached her destination, and was never spoken; but later in the year incoming vessels reported sighting a craft with luminous rigging and sails, and shining hull and spars. She was sailing with all canvas set against the wind, with a crew of dead men standing in the shrouds and leaning over the rail, while on the quarter deck stood a young and beautiful couple

It is said that the French fishermen from the Magdalen Islands and the mat-ter-of-faet Yankee skippers of Bangor, Me., alike shun the shores of Bal Chaleur after dark, and refuse to put in at Dead Man’s Cove under any circumstances, preferring to run the risk of foundering in a hurricane in the open sea to sharing the shelter of the cove with the phantom ship. This famous-.spectre of the sea is said to appear only in the calm preceding a grea,t storm, with every stitch of canvas Sawing, and her decks swarming with men, all running to and fro as if in a panic: Ahead of her the waiter is like glass; behind her the gale comes tearing along, beating the sea into froth, and driving her straight on through everything in her way. She is an ancient model, full-rigged, and grey all over—hull, upper works, sails, and spars—as if formed of fog. Grey, too is her ghastly crew.

The inhabitants of St. Pierre tell of a smack on a herring trip that found herself right in the track of the phantom ship. Captain and crew had heard of the ghostly vessel, but scoffed at it, and when they saw her loom up in the twilight straight ahead they thought a collision imnZnent. and the startled steersman put the helm over. The sea wraith swept down upon them, and in the space of a breath had passed right through them, and was racing madly astern in the direction of Dead Man’s Cove.

A fishing schooner from Magdalen Island, warned by the thickening sky of an approaching storm, put in at the cove to ride out the gale. Before she had reached anchorage a ship was seen rapidly behind, also heading for the cove. As it drew near the captain got out. his glass to see if he knew the stranger. Suddenly he dropped to his knees and commenced to pray. “Boys,” he said, “it’s a ghost!” I saw a 'sbagull fly right through her mainsail!” Every man threw himself on his face, afraid to look. The first to raise his head and look over the rail was the cabin boy. “Oh, get up; get up, all of you!” ho shouted. “She’s gone!” The crew lost no time in making sail out of the cove in the teeth of a black squall. Another story is that-of a smack from St. Pierre, which saw the phantom anchored just outside the cove at sunset, A small boat: filled with men, was making trips between the grey ship and the beach, at each trip unloading boxes and .barrels, while other men waiting ashore buried them in the sand. The captain did not wait, to see whether they were interring dead men or chests of treasure, but got away from the place as fast as he could.

Old sailors along the -Maine const firmly believe that the phantom ship is an old merchantman that went-down with all on board trying to reach the cove in a great storm in 1784; but at St. Pierre the fishermen will tell you that it. is a pirate haunting the spot where the buccaneer xirew hid the treasure fpr which they lost their souls.