Strange Tales of the High Seas

by Osie Turner, Morgan Robertson, William Hope Hodgson

  "Yes, your Honor. Failing in this, he stole, or enticed the little one from its bed, and in less than five minutes the ship was wrecked, and he must have escaped with the child in—"

  "Were you a witness of this?"

  "I was not there, your Honor; but we have it on the word of the first officer, a gentleman—"

  "Step down, sir. That will do. Officer, was this offense committed in New York?"

  "Yes, your Honor; I caught him meself."

  "Who did he steal the child from?"

  "That leddy over yonder."

  "Madam, will you take the stand?"

  With her child in her arms, Mrs. Selfridge was sworn and in a low, quavering voice repeated what her father had said. Being a woman, she was allowed by the woman-wise magistrate to tell her story in her own way. When she spoke of the attempted murder at the taffrail, her manner became excited. Then she told of the captain's promise to put the man in irons on her agreeing to testify against him—of the consequent decrease in her watchfulness, and her missing the child just before the shipwreck—of her rescue by the gallant first officer, and his assertion that he had seen her child in the arms of this man—the only man on earth who would harm it—of the later news that a boat containing sailors and children had been picked up by a Mediterranean steamer—of the detectives sent over, and their report that a sailor answering this man's description had refused to surrender a child to the consul at Gibraltar and had disappeared with it—of her joy at the news that Myra was alive, and despair of ever seeing her again until she had met her in this man's arms on Broadway the day before. At this point, outraged maternity overcame her. With cheeks flushed, and eyes blazing scorn and anger, she pointed at Rowland and all but screamed: "And he has mutilated—tortured my baby. There are deep wounds in her little back, and the doctor said, only last night, that they were made by a sharp instrument. And he must have tried to warp and twist the mind of my child, or put her through frightful experiences; for he has taught her to swear—horribly—and last night at bedtime, when I told her the story of Elisha and the bears and the children, she burst out into the most uncontrollable screaming and sobbing."

  Here her testimony ended in a breakdown of hysterics, between sobs of which were frequent admonitions to the child not to say that bad word; for Myra had caught sight of Rowland and was calling his nickname.

  "What shipwreck was this—where was it?" asked the puzzled magistrate of nobody in particular.

  "The Titan," called out half a dozen newspaper men across the room.

  "The Titan," repeated the magistrate. "Then this offense was committed on the high seas under the English flag. I cannot imagine why it is brought into this court. Prisoner, have you anything to say?"

  "Nothing, your Honor." The answer came in a kind of dry sob.

  The magistrate scanned the ashen-faced man in rags, and said to the clerk of the court: "Change this charge to vagrancy—eh—"

  The clerk, instigated by the newspaper men, was at his elbow. He laid a morning paper before him, pointed to certain big letters and retired. Then the business of the court suspended while the court read the news. After a moment or two the magistrate looked up.

  "Prisoner," he said, sharply, "take your left sleeve out of your breast!" Rowland obeyed mechanically, and it dangled at his side. The magistrate noticed, and read on. Then he folded the paper and said:

  "You are the man who was rescued from an iceberg, are you not?" The prisoner bowed his head.

  "Discharged!" The word came forth in an unjudicial roar. "Madam," added the magistrate, with a kindling light in his eye, "this man has merely saved your child's life. If you will read of his defending it from a polar bear when you go home, I doubt that you will tell it any more bear stories. Sharp instrument—humph!" Which was equally unjudicial on the part of the court.

  Mrs. Selfridge, with a mystified and rather aggrieved expression of face, left the court-room with her indignant father and friends, while Myra shouted profanely for Rowland, who had fallen into the hands of the reporters. They would have entertained him after the manner of the craft, but he would not be entertained—neither would he talk. He escaped and was swallowed up in the world without; and when the evening papers appeared that day, the events of the trial were all that could be added to the story of the morning.

  CHAPTER XVI

  On the morning of the next day, a one-armed dock lounger found an old fish-hook and some pieces of string which he knotted together; then he dug some bait and caught a fish. Being hungry and without fire, he traded with a coaster's cook for a meal, and before night caught two more, one of which he traded, the other, sold. He slept under the docks—paying no rent—fished, traded, and sold for a month, then paid for a second-hand suit of clothes and the services of a barber. His changed appearance induced a boss stevedore to hire him tallying cargo, which was more lucrative than fishing, and furnished, in time, a hat, pair of shoes, and an overcoat. He then rented a room and slept in a bed. Before long he found employment addressing envelopes for a mailing firm, at which his fine and rapid penmanship secured him steady work; and in a few months he asked his employers to indorse his application for a Civil Service examination. The favor was granted, the examination easily passed, and he addressed envelopes while he waited. Meanwhile he bought new and better clothing and seemed to have no difficulty in impressing those whom he met with the fact that he was a gentleman. Two years from the time of his examination he was appointed to a lucrative position under the Government, and as he seated himself at the desk in his office, could have been heard to remark: "Now John Rowland, your future is your own. You have merely suffered in the past from a mistaken estimate of the importance of women and whisky."

  But he was wrong, for in six months he received a letter which, in part, read as follows:

  "Do not think me indifferent or ungrateful. I have watched from a distance while you made your wonderful fight for your old standards. You have won, and I am glad and I congratulate you. But Myra will not let me rest. She asks for you continually and cries at times. I can bear it no longer. Will you not come and see Myra?"

  And the man went to see—Myra.

  END

  Editor’s Notes:

  The story was originally titled Futility when it first appeared in 1898. However, it was republished in 1912 in McClure's Magazine and Metropolitan Magazine as The Wreck of the Titan, with only two changes made to it—namely the ships weight and horsepower were increased to be closer to the real Titanic’s.

  Appendix 1

  Commentary

  One reason I am drawn to tales of the high seas is the fundamental mystery and uninhibited possibilities hiding just below the surface. There is still, from a strictly scientific point of view, a lot that we really do not know about the sea. Then there is the metaphysical, or supernatural, element that opens up an entirely new dimension. These strange tales all incorporate a balance between the former and latter, which makes them truly disturbing—the man of science coupled with the grizzled old guy of the sea, who has seen things that may sound ridiculous when repeated on land.

  “The Voice in the Night” is a very influential (and eerie) tale of a chance encounter with a man infected with a mysterious fungus. This short story was one of the first to feature a person being naturally mutated by natural means. “The Voice in the Night” has appeared in movies, television, comics, and manga. This story may have even served as inspiration for The Swamp Thing.

  “From the Darkness and the Depths” is a much overlooked tale which pairs the scientific with the fantastic. The idea that there could exist a being that lives in the depths which would be invisible to our eyes is not actually very far from reality. We now know of the existence of such creatures as the Phronima, a completely transparent shrimp-like amphipod that would be quite terrifying if it were bigger and is said to have inspired the creature from Alien (1979). There are many other transparent beings known to live in the Antarctic oceans. What other nightmarish creatures ar
e lurking beneath the tides, still undetected by modern science?

  Robertson was a visionary and was ahead of his time. While the creature in this story is obviously imaginary, it was still only an amplified and extreme version of real fish that were unknown in his time.

  In “The Sea Fit” we see the struggle and ultimate rejection of the modern world. The protagonist, Captain Errickson, is a modern Pagan in the full sense of the word. He worships the sea and revels in its indomitable power. Even today, over one hundred years after “The Sea Fit” was penned, one can still feel its power. Even with all of our scientific advancements, when out at sea, we are still dwarfed by and at the mercy of Poseidon.

  Most, if not all, of Blackwood’s works incorporate both a horror and an awe of the forces of nature into the story. The horror can be most aptly highlighted with his short stories “The Willows” and “The Wendigo,” while his novel, The Centaur, perhaps his most cohesive treatise on his idea of man regaining the lost connection to the natural world, best typifies the wonder of nature. These stories are a great representation of true Paganism, aptly displayed in “The Sea fit.”

  “Man Overboard!” is the closest to a traditional ghost story in this collection. The idea of the wronged dead seeking vindication from beyond the grave is not necessarily unique. However, Crawford makes up for this with exceptional storytelling and foreboding descriptions that make this novelette stand out. Also, it is not exactly a tale of revenge; Jack did not seem, at least to me, to be overtly hostile. It is reasonable to speculate that if Jim would not have assumed Jack’s identity, Jack’s ghost may not have haunted him, or at least would not have pulled him into the sea.

  In “The Grain Ship” we find the story of a commercial ship infested with rabies-carrying rats. Although there is nothing supernatural about this story, the idea of a group of travelers trapped with a madness inducing disease is a staple of today’s horror movies. Cabin Fever (2002) and The Ruins (2008), which features a fungus much like the one from Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night,” come to mind as two prime examples, and even films such as 28 days later (2002) are in the same vein.

  “Phantas” is a haunting, atmospheric tale of a ship lost at sea. Onions’ use of poetry and biblical imagery via Bligh very effectively offsets the monotony of the slowly sinking galleon. “Phantas” leaves one wondering of it was a story about a slip of time and space, a prophetic vision of the future, or the confused imagination of man slowly dying of exposure.

  “The Ghost Pirates” is, in a way, the culmination of all the previous tales in this collection. The ship may have slipped into another dimension, and some shadowy beings may have accompanied them back. This novel incorporates all the best details of a horror story set on the high seas. The isolation of the ship, strange shadows seen on deck but never found, unexplained deaths and disappearances of the crew, and a lone survivor whose tale is unbelievable are all elements that typify the horror at sea.

  One of the most compelling features of “The Ghost Pirates” is that it leaves the reader with no actual conclusions; the pirates are never clearly described, what they truly are is never discovered, and how the ship caused the “disturbance” between their realm and ours is also left up in the air.

  Appendix 2

  The Titan and The Titanic:

  When Life and Art Collide

  Morgan Robertson’s “The Wreck of the Titan” is most famous for its uncanny resemblance to the real life Titanic—except it was written over a decade before the Titanic sank. How is that possible?

  The similarities between the fictional Titan and the actual Titanic are simply incredible. Both sank just before midnight after striking an iceberg on the starboard side. Neither one had enough lifeboats for the amount of passengers they carried. Both had nearly the same number of passengers (the Titanic carried 2208, and the Titan had 2500 passengers), and over half the passengers died on both ships. Both ships had three propellers and two masts, were owned by a shipping company based in Liverpool, and were said to be unsinkable.

  The question remains as to how Morgan Robertson could have predicted this tragedy with such precision. He never claimed to be a psychic or to possess any type of supernatural abilities. In fact, he flatly denied having any clairvoyant powers. Still, there are too many similarities to chalk up to pure coincidence.

  Personally, I think that it was a combination of a few factors. First, Robertson knew the shipping business and could have projected the likely size and composition of the ship based solely on the direction modern luxury liners were going. That would lead to the likely maximum number of passengers a ship that size would have the ability to hold. Lastly, Robertson, as I said, knew his business, and could have predicted that greedy company heads would try to save as many pennies as possible and skimp on the lifeboats and other safety measures. The route from New York City to the U.K. was a very busy fare, so it is not surprising he chose that as the route of his Titan, and icebergs were a common hazard on it.

  That being said, “The Wreck of the Titan” is still eerily similar to the Titanic, and no amount of explanations can subtract from that. Even some of the differences between the two only serve to reinforce the similarities. For instance, the Titan was sailing from New York City to England, while the Titanic was going in the opposite direction. However, the fact remains that they were both sailing the same route, just in reverse. The Titan hit another smaller vessel without suffering any damage itself, and the Titanic did not collide with any other vessel. However, the titanic did have a near miss with the SS City of New York when departing from Southampton.

  The biggest differences are that the two ships sank in different manners—the Titan capsized, while the Titanic went down bow-first, and the Titan had already made several transatlantic passages.

  It is also fascinating to note that Morgan Robertson was not the only one to predict the Titanic’s sinking. In 1874, Celia Thaxter published a book of poetry containing a poem titled “A Tryst.” It is about a ship sinking in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. (The complete poem is included in Appendix 3.)

  Then there is the case of William Stead, a British investigative journalist who published a story entitled “How The Mail Steamer Went Down in the Mid-Atlantic, By a Survivor” in the Pall Mall Gazette in March, 1886. It is a fictional story of two passenger ships colliding in the Atlantic Ocean and the horrific loss of life due to the ships not having enough lifeboats. Stead concluded it with an endnote that read: “This is exactly what might take place and what will take place, if the liners are sent to sea short of boats.” He was later a passenger on the Titanic and is said to have been in the ship’s library, reading, when the ship went down. Stead did not survive.

  Stead’s connection does not end there, however. His 1892 novel, From the Old World to the New, described the sinking of a ship after hitting an iceberg in the north Atlantic. The survivors of that ship were rescued by a nearby passenger liner, captained by a character named E. J. Smith—the exact same name as the real life captain of the Titanic.

  Interesting fact: the first movie about the Titanic was made within one month of the sinking and was released on May 14, 1912. It starred Dorothy Gibson, an American actress and actual survivor of the Titanic disaster, hence the film’s name “Saved From The Titanic.” Gibson even wore the actual clothes she wore the night of the sinking in the ten minute long movie. Unfortunately, the only known reels of the short film were destroyed in a fire in 1914.

  A publicity photo of Dorothy Gibson for the film “Saved From The Titanic.” She is wearing the actual clothes she wore the night of the sinking of the Titanic in this photograph.

  Appendix 3

  A Tryst

  A Tryst by Celia Thaxter (1874)

  From out the desolation of the North

  An iceberg took it away,

  From its detaining comrades breaking forth,

  And traveling night and day.

  At whose command? Who bade it sail the deep

>   With that resistless force?

  Who made the dread appointment it must keep?

  Who traced its awful course?

  To the warm airs that stir in the sweet South,

  A good ship spread her sails;

  Stately she passed beyond the harbor's mouth,

  Chased by the favoring gales;

  And on her ample decks a happy crowd

  Bade the fair land good-by;

  Clear shone the day, with not a single cloud

  In all the peaceful sky.

  Brave men, sweet women, little children bright

  For all these she made room,

  And with her freight of beauty and delight

  She went to meet her doom.

  Storms buffeted the iceberg, spray was swept

  Across its loftiest height;

  Guided alike by storm and calm, it kept