PHANTOM SHIPS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 29 April 1927, Page 6

PHANTOM SHIPS.

HAUNT THE SEAS, IN ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD. PIRATES. PLAGUE, TREASURE AND STRANGE SIGHTS. Another legend of a phantom ship may be in,the making, even in our own day. Not long ago a cable from England told of the Norwegian steamer Raa abandoned by the crew after the collision, still plowing on in the fog of the .English Channel. The chances are that some lookout, sighting the derelict hulk in the moonlight, and seeing no sign of life on board, would think of tne Flying Dutchman. Thus so ; by word of mouth, has many a tale of ghost ships started. Every coast has its own story of a ship that sailed away, never to return, or of a vessel mysteriously appearing for a brief time, only to vanish like a cloud. Tho American seaboard is us exception. Along New England tales of lost ships are heard to this day. Longfellow, in “'The Ship of the Dead,” told of a vessel that sailed, full-rigged, from New Haven in 1647 and was never again reported except as a vanishing ghost. Whittier sang of the schooner Breeze, which became a phantom of ihc waters, and of the spectre ship of Salem, “with dead men m her shrouds.” Other legends persist. Henry Hudson himself is said to revisit occasionally his beloved Catskill haunts, while the Half Moon, with topsails showing silver in tho night, drifts down the river. A PIRATE TALE. In tho town of Medford, Mass., a dark legend harking back to the days of tho Spanish Main is told. When pirates still roamed the seas in sea roll of plunder, runs this tale, a little ship laden with gold left Medford bound for the West Indies. When she had been a few days at' sea tho wind fell. Food and water dwindled, and finally all hands perished. Shortly afterward a buccaneer found tho craft. He lightly lashed the captive to his own vessel and was the first to jump aboard. No sooner had he done so than a stiff wind whipped nil, breaking the lino a" ' driving the ship of the dead away, i a tho gathering gloom 'it was impossible for the pirate ship to close with the lightless vessel. Alone on hoard with no escape in sight, the pirate captain went mad and was condemned to cruise the Caribbean in command of his valuable but gruesome price. Greed for gold and other treasure often figures in theso stories, which, as time goes by, are usually interwoven with other realistic details. _ ■ Marines conjure up all sorts of 1 1 omens from the sight of a ghost ship. Woo to the vessel that cuts across its path. J)cath or hurricane is sure to follow. . Tho mystery' of the American collier Gvclops, whose disappearance during the World War was never explained, ’is rapidly gathering' legendary proport-ions—ill-tho shape of much imaginary data —among our seamen. Few reports of sighting a spectre ship are as well attested as is that given in “The Cruise of the Bacchante,” coinpiled from private journals of Prince Albert Victor and the Prince of V ales (now King George), who served as midshipmen on H.M.S. Bacchante’s voyages between 187 S) and 1882. 'An entry of July 31, ISBI, tells of a “strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in tho midst ol whicn light tilt* masts, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out m strong relief as she came vtp on the port bow.” Thirteen persons saw it, according to the report; and, of course, bad luck followed. Tlie lookout man who first sighted the light, fell from the foretopmast, and, in the language of the log entry, “was smashed to atoms.” At first it was thought that the' Bacchante had come across the Flying Dutchman, but if so that exemplar of phantom ships was off her course. She belongs around the Capo of Good Hope, not off Cape Horn. Of the many variants of her cumulative story' the one most generally accepted is that Captain Vanderdccken, striking unfavourable elements cfF the Cape of Good Hope in 1806, swore that lie would round the Cape in spite of God and the devil.

A plague broke out among the crew. Vainly Vanderdecken attempted to approach shore. Everywhere he went ports were closed to his ill-fated craft, which is still supposed to wander about like ail apparition, doomed to be sentossed forever and never more to make port. Disaster stalks all those who behold her. The story of the flying Dutchman served as a spark to many imaginations One of Wagner’s operas is founded on it. Short story writers have used it as a theme. Captain Marrvat, in “The Phantom Ship,” essaved a sequel to it, in which he toll® of Philip Vnnderdeeken’s successful but disastrous search for his father.