Ghosts at Sea

Sailors are notorious yarn-spinners, but every now and then some mariner will tell a tale about an improbable event or apparition that simply can’t be explained by logic or the laws of physics.

Some, like the sightings of mermaids, can generally be ascribed to the appearance of unfamiliar marine creatures like manatees or dugongs, combined with foggy weather and an abundance of rum.  Since the advent of radar and binoculars with better optics than the spyglasses of old (and maybe tighter restrictions on the issuance of grog), mermaid sightings have become rarer; the same goes for sea-serpents, which used to be seen with some regularity, even here in my home town of Gloucester, which boasted a sea-serpent in its harbor that dozens of people reported seeing in the summer of 1817 and occasionally thereafter.  But no physical evidence was ever found, and gradually Gloucester’s sea-serpent became the stuff of far-fetched legend.

Gloucester's Sea-Serpent

Other stories of unnatural sightings, however, are harder to debunk or satisfactorily explain. In his classic account Sailing Alone Around the World, the single-handed sailor Joshua Slocum wrote of how he lay in the cabin of his yawl Spray off the coast of Africa on his epic 1895-1898 voyage, too ill to leave his bunk after eating spoiled cheese and fruit, while a strange seaman, dressed in 15^th century garb, appeared on board, introduced himself as the pilot of Christopher Columbus’ ship Pinta, took over the helm and kept the vessel on course for the next 24 hours.

Maryland boat designer and builder Pete Culler wrote in his memoir Skiffs and Schooners of a night in 1945 when he was sailing with a friend off the New Jersey coast and saw, less than a mile off, a square-rigged brig, a vessel type not in general use since the 19^th century, sailing on a parallel course. Culler was aware of no such vessels still afloat, and spent some time examining her closely with a night-glass before turning to call down to his companion in the cabin below to come up and have a look. When he turned to look once more at the brig, it was nowhere to be seen.

But he saw it; Slocum saw his 400-year old shipmate, dozens of people in Gloucester saw a sea serpent.

And I saw something too.

In the fall of 1984, Joy and I joined a distant cousin of mine, her son, and his newly­wed wife for a passage from Boothbay Harbor, Maine to Bermuda aboard the son’s 40-foot flush-deck cutter. We set out on a brisk late-October morning. The vessel was fast and a comfortable sailer, and we made good time.

The second night out, we were well beyond the Great South Channel when I went on watch at 8:00 p.m. It was a clear, cold night, with no moon, but the stars were brilliant. I barely needed the compass, as I could navigate handily by taking dead aim at Orion, which rose before us each night. There was a fair breeze out of the north, and with a favorable current we were bowling along with the wind on the quarter at better than eight knots. I did have to tend the wheel, as the skipper had managed to drop the Autohelm self-steering control on the deck while he was attempting to show Joy how to adjust its compass; but the vessel was well balanced, and easy on the helmsman.

By 9:00 p.m. we had sailed through a busy fishing fleet and were alone on the North Atlantic. The rest of the crew had turned in, and I was enjoying the stars and the smooth rush of the hull through a gentle sea, the only variable being the occasional flash overhead as a tern or gull flew through the glow of the masthead running lights.

And then I became aware that I had company. I knew without a doubt that there was a man, unseen but unthreatening, just over my shoulder, astern of the vessel. I turned my head to look, but could see nothing. It was an oddly comforting feeling, but one I knew I’d experienced twice before—once when sailing with a friend from Chesapeake Bay to Nantucket around 1970, and again a few years later, 40 miles off the Jersey shore, when I helped a cousin sail his big Friendship sloop from the Virgin Islands to Martha’s Vineyard. Each time the sensation was the same. Someone was out there, not aboard a boat, not in the water either, but just a benign presence a few yards astern. It seemed so absurd that I was embarrassed to mention it when I turned over the watch at 10:00, and yet I couldn’t dismiss it as a hallucination. It was unmistakable, vivid, and real.

But when I came on deck to relieve my cousin and stand watch again at 4:00 in the morning, I had to mention it to her. I felt ridiculous, and expected derisive laughter when I started to describe the experience. She said matter-of-factly, as though it was a perfectly normal event, that shortly after she had relieved Joy at 1:30 A.M. the man had climbed aboard up the swimming ladder (which in reality was totally inaccessible -- securely stowed away, folded up and lashed to the port lifelines), and had then gone forward to sit quietly on the deck throughout most of her watch before disappearing.

Neither of us discussed it further.

I don’t consider myself psychic, and am quite ready to scoff at other people’s stories of unexplained phenomena—on land. But maybe things are different at sea.