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Ghost Stories, from the days of Sail

The Spectre Whalemen

Captain Reuben Joy, a whaling ship captain from Nantucket in the 19th century, was a respected member of his community. He also wooed Mrs. Barnard, a widow, who did not want to know about him. She was much more interested in his second in command, Mr. Ray.

Captain Joy’s 13th voyage on his ship was Betsey Ann, sailing around Cape Horn to find whales had gone well, and the ship’s hold was full of valuable whale oil. The ship was preparing to return to Nantucket when a school of sperm whales was sighted nearby.

The Spectre Whalemen, by Ray Martín Abeyta, 1956-2014

The longboats were launched and the crew approached the whales. The ship’s second commander, Mr Ray, successfully harpooned one of the animals. The whale was strong and resisted by pulling Mr. Ray’s longboat into the distance. Captain Joy ordered a search for Mr. Ray’s boat after the other had returned to the Betsey Ann, but Mr. Ray and the other men in his boat could not be found. The next day Captain Joy told the crew that it was time to return to Nantucket. The men protested. They wanted to search again for the missing boat. The captain overruled them, arguing that Mr. Ray and the others had undoubtedly been killed by the whale and that they had to hurry up and return as the boat was now undermanned. Despite their concerns, the men agreed.

As the Betsey Ann sailed up the east coast of South America, she encountered another whaling ship that had recently left Nantucket. This ship was carrying letters from home, including one for Captain Joy. When Captain Joy opened the letter, his face turned pale. Mrs Barnard had died. A crew member nearby watched as the captain read the letter and heard him say, “Then I have damned my soul in vain.” Had he deliberately left Mr Ray to die?

The following year, Captain Joy again commanded a whaling ship off the coast of South America. As the ship approached the same area where Mr. Ray had disappeared, another school of whales was sighted. The boats were lowered.

Captain Joy and the men in his boat successfully harpooned and killed a whale, but the captain’s sense of triumph was short-lived. A rickety and weathered longboat appeared nearby and as it approached, Captain Joy recoiled in horror. It was the missing boat of the Mr. Ray, and it was manned by a crew of skeletons. As they approached, the captain could hear their bones rattling, and he could hear the leader of the skeleton crew shouting orders at his undead crew. Strangely, no one but Captain Joy could see or hear the terrible whalemen.

The Spectre Whaleman. Woodcut from an Almanac, 1841

Captain Joy ordered the boats back to the ship and quickly set sail. As they cast off, the captain looked back. The ghost boat followed them. With a hellish laugh, the leader of the skeleton threw his harpoon. It did not reach the ship, but the captain’s heart grew cold.

From that moment on, Captain Joy met the skeleton crew on each of his journeys. Haunted by guilt and horror, he retreated from whaling and locked himself in his house on Nantucket until he finally died alone and unloved.

– This story is from 1841, and first appeared in a publication called The Old American Comic And The People’s Almanac

The ghost ship legend of the HMS Octavius

In 1762, the Octavius sailed with a cargo to China and arrived there safely. Back to England it was unusually warm, so the Captain decided to take the route through the Northwest Passage.

That was the last thing heard of Octavius. She disappeared into the eternal ice. On 11 October, however, she was found by a whaler named Herald. A small boarding group was selected and so five unfortunate men had to board the ship. What they found made their blood freeze in the truest sense of the word.

They found the entire crew of 28 below deck: dead, frozen, and almost perfectly preserved. The captain’s body was supposedly still at the table in his cabin, pen in hand (exactly as in the Schooner Jenny legend) with the captain’s log in front of him. In his cabin there were also the bodies of a woman, a boy covered with a blanket, and a sailor with a tinderbox. The boarding party took only the captain’s log before leaving the vessel, because they were unwilling to search it.

The last entry in the log was from 11 November 1762, which meant that the ship had been lost in the Arctic for 13 years. As the log was frozen, it slipped from the binding, leaving only the first and the last few pages in.

Is this a real story or is it just a legend? The author David Meyer once took a closer look and found some very interesting things. There is a 1905, Gloriana legend that appeared in The Blue Adventure Book: A Collection of Stirring Scenes and Moving Accidents from The World of Adventure and reported that a John Warren’s captain of the the Try Again found a ghost ship with a frozen crew. Only other names and not a word from the Northwest Passage but the story seems to agree with the Octavius. Who was the source? This is not mentioned in the book  from 1905 the story allegedly occurred in 1775. The earliest version of this story appeared December 13, 1828 in a Philadelphia-based newspaper named The Ariel: A Literary and Critical Gazette. The article is entitled The Dangers of Sailing in High Latitudes. Also here the experiences of a Captain Warren with a ghost ship and its hypothermic crew are told.