WEIRD SIGHTS AT SEA.

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 62, 10 October 1930, Page 3

WEIRD SIGHTS AT SEA.

SEEING SHIPS THAT AREN’T THERE. “Oh, she’s gone!” cried a woman passenger aboard the Mauretania, as the big cargo steamer, which she and others were watching in mul-Atlantic, appeared suddenly to turn turtle. But a moment later there she was again. Only how she was double, with her double turned upside down in the Air above her. “Mirage,” said an officer, and that was, of course, the true explanation. Mirages hare been unusually common of late in the Atlantic, for this spring people aboard a liner steam-, ing acToss a, .perfectly calm sea suddenly perceived what appeared to he a furious storm, raging 'a few miles ahead'.. Great waves rose and fell, with lines of white foam on their giant crests. It was all so realistic that some .passengers vowed they could hear the breakers. Yet as the giant steamer droVe hnwards the “storm” vanished, and flat calm stretched to the horizon. THE PHANTOM SHIP. As a hoy, our present King cruised round the world in the Bacchante, and it is entered in his log that the ship sighted that phantom of the seas known as the “Flying Dutchman.” Many who have passed the island of St. Helena have been startled at sight of the phantom ship of that island, which is, however, nothing hut a rock whitened by sea birds, and which bears a strong and strange 10semblance to a full-rigged ship. Near Cape Horn is another phantom ship so real looking that the Crown of Italy, sighting what she took for a ship in distress, wont to her help and was herself wrecked. This phantom lies among the black, jagged rocks which line the Strait of La Mai re.

One of the strangest of sea spectacles is the electric display known as St. Flmo’s fire. The Exeter City was cutting her way through a northwest gale when these lights appeared, lining the stays and every hit of her rigging with pale bine flame. On the fore and main masts were great balls of blue -fire. When a squall came, the lights would dance and waver, suddenly vanish, then reappear. At midnight a lend explosion was heard; aloft, the whole ship was shaken, then the lights vanished for good.