Maritime Mysteries (7 page)

Whenever customers step inside the Brooklyn general store, they're greeted warmly by Gloria Burbidge and her staff, Some sniff the air—the familiar smell of pipe tobacco is everywhere. They nervously steal a glance towards the stairs that go up to the attic, wondering if the ghost of Hector is coming down…

Chapter Three
Sea Stories

Jerome—A Man of Mystery

T
he tides of the Bay of Fundy wash against the Digby shores and leave behind familiar, and sometimes strange and peculiar, flotsam and jetsam, but nothing as strange as what two fishermen found early one morning in the mid 1860s.

The day before the discovery, local fishermen watched intently from the deck of their vessels, from the shores and houses of Digby Neck, as a mysterious ship sailed back and forth close to the coastline. It was not like any ship they had ever seen. They agreed that it must be from some foreign land. That night, discussions at their supper tables revolved around why this mystery ship was staying so close to the Digby shore.

The next morning, two local fishermen were walking along the beach at Sandy Cove and may have unknowingly solved the mystery of the ship that had stayed just offshore the day before. What they found was a strange-looking man, perhaps in his mid twenties, sitting in the sand with his back against a large boulder for support. When they got closer, they noticed that his legs were gone. The remaining stumps just above the knees were wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. The fishermen attempted to communicate with the stranger, but he did not, or could not, speak. They realized if he didn't receive immediate medical attention, he would surely die.

The two men carried the stranger to the Gidney home, not far from where he was found, and immediately put him to bed and provided him with medical attention. Officials questioned the stranger as to his identity and asked how and why he ended up on Sandy Cove Beach. It was evident from the start that any attempt to establish a dialogue with this man of mystery was futile. The only word he uttered sounded like “Jerome.” From that moment on, he was known by that name only.

It was decided that perhaps if he were sent to the Acadian region of the bay, someone there may be able to converse with him in his own language. It was thought that because of “Jerome's” dark complexion, he was perhaps either Italian or Portuguese. The logical home for him, then, would be in Meteghan with the Nicholas family. John Nicholas was a Corsican who spoke several languages and certainly would have great empathy for this pathetic-looking young man. Nicholas fought in the Crimean war, he was captured, then escaped, and made his way to Nova Scotia and found a new life within the Acadian community.

Nicholas felt certain that Jerome understood Italian. When he spoke to him in that language, he could see a reaction to his questions in Jerome's eyes. During one period of questioning, Nicholas thought he heard a word from Jerome that sounded like “Trieste.” One thing was clear to Nicholas—this mystery man was living in great fear.

In the months to come, Jerome's health improved and he was able to move around on his stumps. He spent many hours sitting on the cliffs looking out to sea. What was he thinking? Was he expecting a ship to come and rescue him? Or was he afraid that someone out there on the high seas was coming to murder him?

Jerome's stay with the Nicholas family lasted for seven years, but when John Nicholas's wife died, Jerome was forced to move in with a Mrs. Dedier Comeau of St. Alphonse de Clare, then known as Cheticamp. At the Comeau home Jerome settled in quickly and instantly became friends with the Comeau children. According to the children, when the adults were out of the house, he would speak to them, but would fall silent again when the older folk returned. Once, the children asked him why he wouldn't talk to grownups, and Jerome shook his head, saying, “ No, no.” And when the children asked him how he lost his legs, he said, “Chains. Sawed off on table.”

The government of Nova Scotia paid for newspaper advertisements in the hope that someone might know the identity of Jerome. As a result, many people visited the Comeau home, but for the most part, these people were merely curious and only wanted to look at the mysterious “Jerome.” The government notices even reached the Mahoney family, living in New York City. The two Mahoney sisters wrote the Comeaus, thinking that Jerome might be their brother who had run away from home when he was eleven years old. The Mahoney family had spent their life savings trying to locate their lost brother. In the end, however, it turned out that the Digby County Jerome was not the Jerome of New York City. Many other theories about Jerome's identity were proposed. It was even suggested that Jerome was a ward of the province of New Brunswick, and that to avoid paying for his keep, New Brunswick officials had had him dumped on the shores of Nova Scotia.

Many of the children who had known Jerome when they were young visited him when they returned to Clare. On one of these visits, a young woman asked Jerome several questions about the early days and if he remembered her. When she begged him to speak, he raised his old head and simply said, “Je ne peu pas.”

When Digby County's mystery man was found on Sandy Cove Beach he was around twenty-five years old. He lived in that area for over forty years and when he died in 1908, he carried to his grave his name, the name of his country, the reason for his legs having been amputated, and the answer to the mystery of his abandonment on that beach so long ago.

The Ghosts of Devil's Island

L
ocated at the mouth of Halifax Harbour is a barren and treeless piece of land called Devil's Island. It lies there, desolate, with only the wind and ghostly voices of the past sweeping over it.

During World War II it served as a military lookout and blockade against Germany's U-Boats. Before, and in between the two world wars, it was home to a dozen families who were all fisher folk, and all highly superstitious. From its past come stories of hoofed strangers, forerunners, haunted houses and drowned fishermen.

If I was to do justice to this story I needed to get on the island; to feel for myself what it was like now and what it must have been like back then. Unfortunately, access isn't that simple. There are no wharves to ease your boat up against; you either swim from a boat anchored off shore, or use an inflated rubber boat, such as a zodiac, to run straight up on the rocky beach. As you move in from the beach, walking can be difficult in the knee-high grass. The island is a pot mark of deep holes; some call these holes rat nests. And watch where you step, the place is a graveyard for sea gulls.

Standing by itself on the island is what remains of an abandoned home—gutted by time, weather, and people. Some say the last resident of this home was the island's caretaker. What happened to all the others homes? At its peak, there were over fifty people living there. Standing there in the middle of that desolate place one can imagine hearing above the wind the voices of children at play. Where are they now? And do they still remember the way it was? Do they remember stories the old people told of forerunners and ghosts—like the story of Henry Henneberry? Am I standing where old Henry stood? Is his spirit still here? Perhaps in that abandoned house.

Henry was a young fishermen who went out on the sea at sunrise to cast his nets. His wife stood in the kitchen window overlooking the waters below, and saw her husband wave from his boat. What she didn't see was Henry taking a wrong step, falling overboard, and drowning. While this happened, Mrs. Henneberry was going about her housework upstairs. At the exact moment her husband fell into the ocean and drowned, Mrs. Henneberry heard footsteps in the kitchen. She thought it strange to be hearing the footsteps of her husband! Why was Henry back so soon, she wondered. When she went downstairs, however, there was no one there. But there were wet footprints left on the wooden kitchen floor. Henry, it is said, was no sooner in his watery grave, when he rose up and came home to his beloved wife.

When old Mrs. Henneberry passed on and her children moved away, another Henneberry family, who scoffed at such things as haunted houses, moved into the old Henneberry homestead. One evening, young Mrs. Henneberry was sitting in her rocking chair with her infant daughter, Henrietta, in her arms. The young wife and mother kept her gaze on the ocean watching for her husband's boat. But what came in from the sea that evening was not her husband, Dave, but an ill wind. Fishermen told her that her husband had stumbled and fallen overboard. His body was never recovered. During her short stay on Devil's Island, the young widow heard the voice of her husband calling for her to join him. Not long after his tragic death, young Mrs. Henneberry became gravely ill and soon died. When family and neighbours returned from the graveyard, they found the infant daughter, Henrietta, who was a happy and healthy child, also dead!

The island folk gave the Henneberry house wide berth when they passed by. It remained empty for a long time. There were several reports of people seeing the ghosts of Henry and David Henneberry in their oilskins moving about the old homestead.

Some islanders thought they had the solution in ridding the island of the haunted Henneberry homestead—they decided to tear it down board by board. That was a mistake, of course. The island families that used the wood from the Henneberry home lived to regret it. Their homes became new homes for the Henneberry ghosts!

To this very day, the granddaughters of Henry Henneberry have never set foot on Devil's Island and because of what has happened there, never will!

The Sea-going Coffin

O
ne of the strangest Maritime Mysteries I know is the story of a coffin that washed up on the shores of Prince Edward Island. The waters that wash against these shores hold forever the secrets of this strange tale.

The person that was inside that coffin was Charles Coughlan, an actor of the late 1800s. He was tall, handsome and had a magnetic personality; the John Barrymore of his day. There are no available records of exactly where he was born. Some say Dublin, others, Paris. Some loyal Islanders claim him as a native son.

He and other American actors of the Broadway stage often vacationed at Bay Fortune, Prince Edward Island—a popular summer retreat for artists. Charles was the centre of that famous colony of creative types and the darling of everyone, especially the ladies. A rapscallion of the first order, some would have said.

While appearing on a Galveston, Texas, stage in 1899, Charles Coughlin was suddenly stricken by a fatal illness. Against his wishes, to be buried at Fortune Bay, Coughlin was buried in a Galveston cemetery. The following year, 1900, a violent hurricane swept in from the Gulf of Mexico, destroying everything in its wake. The flood waters that followed not only washed away homes, but also the cemetery, sending hundreds of coffins into the gulf, including Coughlin's.

The currents of the gulf carried Coughlan's coffin up the Florida coast and eventually into the waters of the Northumberland Strait, where the currents, or some unexplained power, carried it into Fortune Harbour, a distance of two thousand miles! Coughlan was home—eight years after having been swept into the gulf!

Two fishermen hauled the coffin onboard, and saw the nameplate: Charles James Coughlan 1841–1899. In the end, Charles Coughlan got his wish and was buried on his beloved Prince Edward Island.

The Phantom Ship
of Northumberland Strait

T
here are many unexplained mysteries that, I expect, will remain so. And there are, on record, several accounts of these mysteries, including that of the phantom ship that was, and is, seen from the Bay of Chaleur to the Northumberland Strait and many waters in between. Numerous witnesses have testified that they have seen this nautical phenomenon.

Of all the accounts of phantom or ghost ships, the burning ship seen plowing the waters of the Northumberland Strait seems to be the one most frequently reported. With that in mind, here's one version of the tale of the phantom ship that sails ever eastward.

Some time during the year 1880, a local fisherman, for no apparent reason, lifted his eyes from the shore and looked out over the strait. There, riding high on the water, was a three-masted schooner. Pufflike flames climbed the rigging until the whole ship was eventually engulfed in fire. The fisherman watched the burning vessel as it sailed at a high speed in an easterly direction. Suddenly it was gone—it vanished as if into thin air. Actually, as would later be reported, it had plunged beneath the frigid water.

Ernie Rankin, a life-long resident of Pictou Island, remembers the first and only time he saw the burning vessel. He was sitting in his favourite chair, looking out of the kitchen window. Ernie smiled when telling me what he saw on the Strait. “I was just a little boy and I remember it was at night and all the family were outside in front of the house looking southeast—watching the burning ship. I remember it was a mass of flames.”