Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1914 — A Modern “Flying Dutchman” [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Modern “Flying Dutchman”

HANTOMS of the deepstrange shapes that come in the darkness on missions of terror and death —these are among the visions that haunt the brain of every old sailor man. It is when the few remaining sailing vessels come into port from their long voyages that these

tales are usually forthcoming. The bark Annie M. Reid of New York is the last vessel to bring in a tale of mystery. “We were standf&g by the mizzen topsail halliards when the shackle broke and the yards crashed down,” said the sailor who told the story. "We came up. into the wind and hove to, and it was at that moment that we saw the strange trader —at least we thought it was a trader, probably to the Western islands, off which we were. We aignaled for help, for we did not know how we were coming out of the squall. The strange steamship—a tramp we took her to be — was not more than an eighth of a mile away, but she made no reply whatever and kept right on her course. If there had been anybody alive on the tramp he certainly would have seen us, as there was no fog to Interfere. There are only two things to think of, either every soul on board was dead or we had seen one of those phantom ships they tell about It couldn’t have been a warning of death, however, for we came out of it «n right**

—4k chip that aalla by In the moonlight and does not answer when spoken, nor show any light or sign ot life on board, is an even stranger apparition of the deep than those many phantom vessels which have loomed upon the sight of sailor men from out the fog or darkness. The crew of the Hengist, out of Liverpool, Captain Thearston of Liverpool in command, once saw such a specter. Capt. J. C. Norton, who was first officer of the bark Hengist, when the phantom ship passed her by, tells the story of the weird vision: \ ’lt was in the Indian ocean that we saw her —the strange ship that I have never forgotten,” said Captain Norton. '"We were out of Calcutta, bound for New York, and although there was a haze the moon shone and the base was so light that we could -see perfectly well across the water. The haze was just enough to make a nice, pretty silvery veil that made eveiything look sort of mysterious and interesting without closing us in at all. ‘‘There were no lights on the vessel and we couldn’t see a soul on board. We spoke to her, but she didn’t answer. She passed right under our >stern about a biscuit’s toss away, and we thought she was going to foul us. She was so near that -we could feel the wind of her sails as she passed, but not a sign did she make to all our signaling—just sailed away into the hazy moonlight. Next day we had a terrible gale, one of the worst -that I remember while I was at sea, and everybody thought the phantom ship had come to give warning. Why we should have been favored I don’t know; but, of course, there is always ia reason why those ships are seen by lone vessel and not by others. Some'times they mean harm for everybody >on board, and sometimes they come simply to give a friendly warning. 'There was one man on board who 'believed that our phantom ship came 'to warn us of the gale because her •captain had been a friend of our own captain, and when his ship went down with all on board he continued to haunt the sea. Naturally, as he felt friendly, he would show himself or his ship before a storm. I can’t say I believed all that myself. All that I know was that the phantom ship did come just as I’ve described it.” One of the most thrilling tales of the fateful appearance of phantom ahips is told by a retired first mate, who in his youth sailed under Capt. John Stebbins on the steel tramp Marietta, bound from Madeira to Brazil. “Captain Stebbins was a bluff, direct, matter-of-fact person*" said the mate, “and he had little tolerance for what he declared was merely superstition, so the crew were not apt to speak over loud of their supernatural experiences. That they had them, however, was sure enough, and as I wad a bit more approachable than most men in my position, they were very wont to tell their stories to me. “There was one Yellow among them named Gould, whom I could not help watching because of the strained and almost hunted look on his face. I made friends with him on purpose to get at the reason for his queer look and one day when I caught him white and shuddering on the forward deck 1 got it ont of him. “It seemed that a couple of years before he had been on the bridge of a passenger vessel running between Kingston and New York when they

had run down a ship in a fog. The ship had gone down with all on board before anything could be done to save them,, and this man had seen the lastof her crew leaning over the side and cursing at him horribly, just before he was sucked into the water. “ ‘He promised to find mahout ahdto do for me wherever I should go,’ said the shuddering wretch, ‘and he’ll do it, too. I look for him every night and I know he’ll get me before long.’ “I warned him to keep quiet about his fears and not mention his story to Captain Stebbins nor to any of the crew, for as luck would have it, with such a captain, we had on board about as superstitious a lot as I have eveV seen. Italians most of them, and so bound to tell their stories of apparitions that the captain had already caught one of them at it and had him flogged as an example to the others. “My man didn’t look any more contented as the days passed and.. I caught him more than once whispering with some of the Italians. I asked at first he mumbled that it was nothing, but at last he admitted that the sailors had several of them seen strange sights during the night watch. They all decided that again and again they had seen a figure with wildly waving arms appear from the darkness. The man was always cursing horribly, but he was gone in a second and they could not tell exactly what he said. “I tried to comfort Gould with the idea that since the man had not appeared to him there was no reason that he should regard the apparition as that of the man he had run down, but he would not let this ease his mind in the slightest. It was just the night after our conversation when he was on watch that the climax of the thing came. “I heard a terrific scream from the bridge, and so did everybody else on board. I was the first up there, but the poor fellow, who was whiter than any human being I have ever seen, could not tell me what had happened before Captain Stebbins had run up on the bridge and was shaking him, declaring that be had a relapse -of the fever, which we all knew he had suffered after coming off the voyage when he had run down a vessel. “The fellow had been too much startled, however, this time to be managed even by Captain Stebbins. “T did see him,’ he declared, ‘and he was cursing and waving his arms at me just as he did when he went down. The ship came up Just like it did before out of the fog. There it was all of a sudden a great gray thing, and there was he waving his arms and screaming curses at me. And then we kept right on, running straight through the ship.’ “That was all of it, and so far as I know he never saw the apparition again and he had no more hard times than fall to the lot of most sailors. But here was the remarkable part of the thing. If he had been the only one to know that anything strange had happened, then you might think Tt -Just the ffgmenf Of a brain overwrought with fever. But it wasn’t only his scream that brought captain and crew running to his side. Just at the time when he saw the phantom ship and as our own vessel went through It, every man on board felt a peculiar sensation. It was something like an earthquake and something like the shock that might come from running a vessel down.” It was on board the Marienne Nottebohm, a freighter sailing between

New York and Liverpool, that a specter appeared with such persistency that for a long time, until the vision vanished -forever, no member of the crew ever consented to make a second voyage. The Nottebohm wits one el the old Liverpool packet ships, which carried steerage passengers as well as freight. During one of her pro vious voyages the captain anil several of her crew had had a terrific struggle, in the course of which the captain had been so injured that he had died as a result of his wounds. No matter what the skeptical might say, crew after crew which shipped on the Marianne Nottebohm after this tragedy left the vessel at the end of the voyage swearing that every night a spectral figure appeared from the pilot house and wandered over the vessel, seeking everywhere apparent ly for something or somebody. There was a terrific storm one night and the apparition was for once in a way pretty well forgotten in th* more pressing perils of the moment The night was very black and no on* felt any too secure as they slipped on through the darkness. Suddenlj they felt the ship come about sc swiftly that they knew something strange must have happened. “Unusual as it was,” said Capt. F C. Norton, who tells the story, “wc could not stop to find out about i> that night, for every man was toe hot on his own part of the work tc pay much attention to any other’s. “After everything was all over and we could take time to talk about ii the next day the helmsman told us that a spectral figure he had at first thought to be the captain had stood beside him, showing him. how to laj his course. It was not until th< helmsman had handled a charm his daughter had given him that he dfa covered his visitor was a spirit. The power of the wraith was broken al that and the helmsman put about jusl in time to avoid an uncharted reel the spectre had evidently been, guiding him onto. “But the Swede and his Italiai mate must have seen something o> the vision that night, also, for in the morning they looked like dying mer and they could" not be persuaded *tc ship again stir the next voyage. Afterward wq heard that they had beer members of the crew which attacked the former captain of the Marianne. No doubt the murdered captain came back looking for some of his old assailants and when he found then sought to drive the vessel on the reef.”

THERE WAS NO SIGN OF THE ON THE PHANTOM SHIP