There is no need for me to dwell upon my solitary voyage. I steered as well as I could for the Canaries, but was picked up upon the fifth day by the British and African Steam Navigation Company’s boat Monrovia. Let me take this opportunity of tendering my sincerest thanks to Captain Stornoway and his officers for the great kindness which they showed me from that time till they landed me in Liverpool, where I was enabled to take one of the Guion boats to New York.
From the day on which I found myself once more in the bosom of my family I have said little of what I have undergone. The subject is still an intensely painful one to me, and the little which I have dropped has been discredited. I now put the facts before the public as they occurred, careless how far they may be believed, and simply writing them down because my lung is growing weaker, and I feel the responsibility of holding my peace longer. I make no vague statement. Turn to your map of Africa. There above Cape Blanco, where the land trends away north and south from the westernmost point of the continent, there it is that Septimius Goring still reigns over his dark subjects unless retribution has overtaken him; and there, where the long green ridges run swiftly in to roar and hiss upon the hot yellow sand, it is there that Harton lies with Hyson and the other poor fellows who were done to death in the Marie Celeste.
THE BENEVOLENT GHOST AND CAPTAIN LOWRIE
Richard Sale
The Flying Dutchman, a ghostly ship which is doomed to sail the oceans of the world as punishment for its captain’s blasphemy, has been a subject of interest for generations. It provided the great composer Richard Wagner with the idea for one of his most famous operas, Die Fliegende Hollander, written in 1843. The captain of the ship, generally called Vanderdecken, was said to have been a Dutchman who defied God and the elements while trying to sail through a storm around the Cape of Good Hope, and was thereafter condemned to roam the oceans until he could find another vessel willing to take letters begging forgiveness back to his home in Holland. According to legend any other ship which came into contact with the Dutchman similarly became doomed, and so sailors everywhere steered clear of the ancient sailing craft.
Although there have, of course, been lots of stories of ghostly vessels seen on the world’s oceans, none has so captured the imagination of writers and readers as The Flying Dutchman. As I mentioned earlier, both Captain Marryatt and Clark Russell took up the idea, as did the German poet Heinrich Heine, who created a very successful fictitious account in 1834. None, though, has come as near to solving the mystery as the well-known American writer and film director, Richard Sale (1911- ) in ‘The Benevolent Ghost and Captain Lowrie’ (published in 1940).
Richard Sale’s love affair with the sea has produced fine books such as Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep (1936) which was filmed four years later under the title Strange Cargo starring Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Peter Lorre. Sale also wrote the powerful screenplay for the movie Abandon Ship made in 1957. In the following tale he offers what I think may well be the best key to the riddle of the phantom ship - that is, until it finally comes in to harbour.
I
North of them, across the miles of black wet, howling night, Cape Town reposed upon the sturdy rocks of Africa, feeling the storm, too, but not the shock of the ocean.
The S.S. Mary Watson, Baltimore, Maryland, was an old ship. That did not mean she was senile. She had been with the sea a long time and she knew its foibles and handled herself with uncanny dexterity. But she had not been built originally to stand such buffeting, and her age made her joints creak when the heavy seas pounded her.
It was Bruno’s watch and he listened to the high crying of the wind as it searched with harsh fingers through every crack and cranny of his clothing. Its pressure lay against his chest and cheeks alike, binding both arms against his chest and making a relentless skirt about his legs. Pushing into the weight of the gale, he fought its thrust as he balanced like a tight-rope walker above the rise and pitch of the restless deck. His heart boomed roughly as the ship smashed forward, expert but weary and old.
It was Bruno’s watch, and he did not like it. Only once before, east in the Caribbean Sea, after a sore and foggy dawn, had he seen a wind with such velocity. They would soon be in trouble, and he knew it, and so called up the old man and put the responsibility where it belonged.
The night was black, yet they could see some of it because the bridge was even blacker. Where the combers burst upon the
forepiece and swept the Mary Watson’s deck to the beam, there to be spit back into the sea through the scuppers, the water exploded alternately white and green against the tapestry of darkness.
Outside, as Captain John Lowrie soon found, the night was filled with the wind and the ocean, the rain had slackened perceptibly, but the wind hauled southwest the port side, and it nearly blew his teeth into his throat.
He gripped the rail and went up the stairs toward the bridge, catching a glimpse of the Mary Watson’s lonely funnels staggering overhead in the dark. Forward, he was barely able to discern the bridge wingtips with their glass weather-breaks. The high howls of the wind on the boat deck smothered the deep thunder of the raging seas alongside as they swept by, white, mad, hungry.
He stepped off the bridge and slammed the door shut behind him, shaking his shoulders, soaking with rain. He stared across the darkness of the bridge at Bruno, and said, ‘It’s a fine night to call a man out.’
Bruno said nothing. There was nothing to say. The weather conditions spoke for themselves, and even a seasick landlubber could tell by the way the Mary Watson pitched and rolled that all was not well.
Captain Lowrie walked over to the helmsman, who clung to the wheel nervously, his eyes wide as he peered through the rain-studded window. The helmsman’s name was Murphy, and he was young. He was nervous because he was having his first taste of a whole gale.
‘How does she go, Mister?’ asked Captain Lowrie.
‘She goes hard and heavy, sir,’ replied Murphy, his voice flat.
Bruno said, ‘I’ve been in communication with Mr McNulty, sir, in the engine room, and he reports excessive vibration in the shaft. I changed speed to dead slow, but that seemed to make little difference. To my way of thinking we should heave to for the night, until this blows out.’
‘To my way of thinking, there’s little sense in that,’ said Captain Lowrie. ‘Change your course, mister. Due southwest,
nothing off. Look alive now. *
There was thunder in the seas as the helmsman brought her over. Her blunt prow dug in hard and firm, the blows running through her body. The starboard bow vanished under the weighted seas, but in another moment it was clear and she was dead in the wind, pitching and tossing, the sickening rolls now gone.
They could all feel the difference at once. The strain went out of her rusty plates. Her fore and aft motion was short and sharp, as a good pitch should be. Mr Murphy at the helm relaxed.
‘Well, now,’ said Captain Lowrie, ‘that was a small thing to get a man out in this kind of night for. How did you expect her to go easy with the waves on her beam?’
Bruno did not mind the jibe. Indeed, Captain Lowrie did not mean for it to be taken seriously. They both knew that the course could be changed only with the captain’s permission. And for all the heartiness in Captain Lowrie’s voice, there was still a troubled look around his eyes. Bruno noticed it and knew what it meant. For dead in the wind, her blunt bow rebuffing the staggering blows of the giant waves, the Mary Watson was safe enough. But there were many things that could happen: a broken screw, a burned-out bearing, or another ship out there in the darkness, unseen. Power was the thing. Without it, they were lost.
Captain Lowrie said, ‘What does Sparks report?’
‘Sparks was in touch with Cape Town half an hour ago, and he reports there ain’t a ship within seventy miles of us. The nearest one is the Nichyo Maru. She’s due west of us, so we’ve nothing to worry about in the way of a collision.’
‘It’s nice to know,’ said Captain Lowrie
. ‘A lookout couldn’t sight the devil’s own seven masters on a night like this. ’
Bruno shivered. ‘Aye, sir,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen a night like this only once in fourteen years at sea. And I never want to see another. It’s the son of black dark night when seamen’s yams come true. Mr Franklin was telling me a while back that he saw St Elmo’s fire on the mast.’
Franklin was second officer of the Mary Watson.
‘St Elmo's fire!’ Captain Lowrie exclaimed. ‘And what’s so mythical about St Elmo’s fire? I’ve seen it many a time at sea, and not a stormy night needed for it, either. When I was mate of the schooner Chaffy fishing the Grand Banks out of Gloucester, a long time ago, I seen St Elmo’s fire time and again. Little crackling flames, sharp and clear, dancing across the yardarms. St Elmo’s fire is no myth.’
Murphy at the helm stirred uneasily and opened his mouth. But he shut it again without saying anything.
Captain Lowrie stared at him. 'Was you goin’ to say something, mister?’
Murphy wet his lips, swallowed hard. 'You were talking of seamen’s yams, Captain, and it was just that I was remembering some others I’ve heard. Tales of the Sargasso, the mystery of the Marie CelesUy and of the Flying Dutchman.’
'Ah,’ said Captain Lowrie. 'The Dutchman!’ He rubbed his hand through his shaggy mustache, and the bristly sound of it filled the bridge. 'The Dutchman indeed.’
He said it with such fervour that Bruno turned and stared at him. ‘Surely, sir,’ he said, ‘you don’t believe them old wives’ tales?’
Captain Lowrie did not reply at once. He stared out through the storm window above the faint miserly glow which illumined the compass card, and he locked his hands behind his back and swayed easily with the motion of the freighter.
‘Old wives’ tales, eh?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘You’re young, Mr Bruno, and maybe that’s the reason; but me - I’ve been a seaman nigh on twenty-five years, and there’s strange things happen in the seas. Strange indeed.’
Mr Murphy swallowed again, so hard this time that he made a clucking sound. There wasn’t much light on the bridge, but the little there was showed his face pale and white. The sound of his gulp drew the old man’s eyes.
'Feeling seasick, mister?’ the captain said.
‘No, sir,’ replied Mr Murphy. ‘I was just rememberin’.’
'Rememberin’ what?’
‘I was rememberin’, Captain, that we’re off the Cape of Good Hope in a blow. And that’s just about what happened to the Flying Dutchman, isn’t it?’
‘Mind the helm!’ Mr Bruno said sharply. He glanced at the quartermaster with some contempt. ‘You’re nervous enough, mister, without getting scared about a ghost. ’
‘Yes, sir,’ Mr Murphy said.
II
‘Aye,’ Captain Lowrie ruminated soberly. ‘There’s strange things in the sea. You, Mr Bruno, you don’t believe in sea serpents, I take it. There’s more things in heaven and earth and ocean than a man could ever dream about.
7 believe in sea serpents. I believe there is things in the ocean no man has ever seen. Why, bless St Christopher, it was near this very spot that a trawler hauled a fish out of the sea that was supposed to have been dead for fifty million years. Them scientific fellows have been reconstructing it from fossils they found some place in Europe.
‘And right here, near Cape Town, a smelly trawler hauls it topside. Extinct for fifty million years, and yet not dead at all! I tell you, Mr Bruno, no man knows what’s under the sea. And for that matter, no man knows what’s above the sea, either. So who’s to say the legend of the Flying Dutchman ain’t true?’
Bruno sniffed. ‘Personally, sir, I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he said.
Captain Lowrie snorted gruffly. ‘And I suppose you don’t think it’s bad luck to kill an albatross or a gull? I suppose you don’t think a ship is a “she”. I suppose you don’t think a shark following in the wake is bad luck. Silly superstitions for old fools like me, eh?’
‘I didn’t say that, sir.*
‘What’s the difference, man, if you think it?’
Bruno shrugged. Captain Lowrie continued:
‘When I was mate aboard the S.S. Gulf City - she was a Standard Oil tanker in the coastwise trade - we had two seamen die of ptomaine poisoning. We buried them at sea, somewhere off Hatteras. I’d always heard that yarn about a dead man following the ship he loved, just as easily as a rat deserted a ship
that was doomed.
‘Next day, the watch spied one of the corpses floating in our wake, right after us. He thought maybe his eyes were tricking him, so he ran to get a camera to take a picture. But when he came back, the corpse was gone. We all joshed him about it.
‘Two days later, off the Virginia Cape - now mind you, we buried them off Hatteras - the watch spied both them men floating in our wake! This time he had a camera with him, and he took a picture. He wanted to make sure that he would have something to prove his word, this time.
‘But he needn’t have been in such a hurry, because this time they didn’t disappear. They hung on our wake all day long, and every member of the ship got an eyeful of them. They were there as plain as day; you could even see their faces. From Hatteras to the Virginia Cape, mind you, and no explanation for that, eh, Mr Bruno?
‘Finally, off Cape May, they disappeared and we didn’t see them again. Every word of that story is true, Mr Bruno, and there are the pictures to back it up. So clear and good were they, that a big New York magazine published them, and lots of people tried to explain it away. But you couldn’t explain away two dead men following a ship over six hundred miles, lying there in the wake as plain as day.’
Bruno’s brow was furrowed. ‘Wasn’t there some explanation offered, to the effect that the suction of the ship’s wake might have held the corpses behind her?’
Captain Lowrie chuckled sardonically. ‘There may have been some such explanation, Mr Bruno. But you yourself at this very moment take little stock in it. ’
‘Oh, well,’ Bruno muttered. ‘I’ll admit that strange things happen on land or sea and that sometimes there isn’t much explanation for them. But the legend of the Flying Dutchman is something else again, unless I’ve got it all wrong.’
Captain Lowrie seated himself in a chair and tipped it back against the wall, balancing there precariously as the freighter pitched in the ponderous sea. He seemed quite at ease. He rubbed at his mustache with his left hand, and then proceeded to address himself to Mr Bruno.
‘The Flying Dutchman is the Wandering Jew of the ocean. Nobody knows what his name is now; it’s forgotten over the years. But a long time ago, and on such a night as this, the Dutchman was rounding the Cape of Good Hope in a three-masted schooner. She was called the Fliegende Hollander.
‘He was a turbulent and headstrong sailor, this Dutchman. The storm was against him. The winds were against him. The men on his decks begged him to turn back, but he refused. “I’ll round the Cape of Good Hope tonight,” he said, “in spite of wind or storm or Heaven or Hell.”
‘For thus defying the elements and the Devil, he was cursed, condemned to roam the oceans of the world until the crack of Doomsday. And there was only one thing could save him; the love of a woman who would be faithful to him after death.’ Captain Lowrie chuckled. ‘You can see where the poor man never had a chance. Ain’t a woman alive could redeem him. It would take a lot of faith in these streamlined days.’
Bruno grunted. ‘And do you actually believe, sir, that the Flying Dutchman exists today?’
‘I don’t say I do,’ replied Captain Lowrie, ‘and I don’t say I don’t.’
A sliver of lightning cut across the night sky, followed by a reverberating crash of thunder. Murphy, at the helm, jerked, startled by its sound, and nearly loosed his grip upon the spoke. ‘He could be here,’ the helmsman faltered. ‘He could be right here, where he made his oath that stormy night some hundred years ago.’
Bruno sprang to the wheel and grasped it. ‘Min
d the course, you fool! You’ve dropped five points.’
He turned and stared accusingly at Captain Lowrie who still perched on the chair, little bothered by the fact that theMary Watson's bow had swung off the wind.
‘There you see, sir, what good these tales of phantom ships can do. If it were only that they lent some colour or adventure or glamour to the sea, I wouldn’t mind them. But they make for terror and incompetency. They make men afraid and inefficient. That’s why I don’t believe in ghosts, Captain. And I’m a better seaman for it.’
Captain Lowrie’s bushy white eyebrows came far down over his eyes. He glowered at Bruno. ‘If it were only that such tales made men afraid,’ he said, ‘I would agree with you, Mr Bruno. But why in the name of Davy Jones this lubber is afraid of the Dutchman is more than I can see. He’s shaking like a leaf. I’ll wager he cannot tell you why.’
Murphy, his mouth grim and taut, clung to the helm and said nothing.
‘Look here, man,’ said Captain Lowrie, ‘you expect the Dutchman will be out on a night like this looking for you to take you along to Hell with himself. Were he here, the Dutchman, poor soul, would only be trying to make the same passage we are, around the Cape against the storm.
‘By the beard of St Christopher, if he has one, I’d just as leave give him a tow if we met up with him. It would be the common courtesy of one seaman to another. And like as not he’d do the same for me. But the Dutchman, God save him, is busy on another sea in this world tonight, I’ll wager.’
Mysterious Sea Stories Page 10
