Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany (25 page)

In Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice
, Antonio has ‘a ship of rich lading wracked on the narrow seas; the Goodwins, I think they call the place; a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship lie buried.’ Herman Melville mentions the sands in
Moby Dick
, as do R.M. Ballantyne, the Scottish writer, and the poets W.H. Auden and G.K. Chesterton.

Local stories tell of vessels claimed by the sands sometimes reappearing on the anniversary of their disasters. On 13 February 1748 Captain Reed
aboard
Lady Lovibond
was toasting his recent marriage. His new wife and her mother, along with wedding guests, had joined him for a voyage to Portugal. However, First Mate John Rivers was consumed with jealousy at the match and after murdering the helmsman turned the ship into the sands. The bridal party below was too preoccupied to notice the change in direction until it was too late. On a number of occasions, in multiples of 50 years to the day,
Lady Lovibond
has been seen again and the sound of female voices has been heard coming from below deck.

Another sighting dates from the Spanish Armada. On board one of the galleons the Spanish captain prepared to surrender. One of his junior officers, rather than see the ship given to the English, turned on his captain and killed him and was then cut down himself. General fighting broke out among the other officers and the ship caught fire. Aflame from stem to stern, she was driven on to the Goodwin Sands, where she broke up and the crew perished.

Over 100 years later, in the Great Storm of 1703, four Royal Navy frigates,
Mary
,
Northumberland
,
Restoration
and
Stirling Castle
, all went to their doom on the Goodwins and hundreds lost their lives. A survivor from
Mary
reported: ‘A great warship of Drake’s day, her sails tattered, burning from fore to aft and her guns firing served by demented seamen bore down on us, sailed right through our ship and finally disappeared before our eyes into the depths of the sands.’

On 28 November 1753 the captain of an East India clipper inward bound for London saw the spectre of
Northumberland
. He recorded in his log that he watched the phantom ship go to her doom a second time on the sands. Some of the men aboard
Northumberland
leapt into the sea but made no splash as they entered the water; the cries of the remaining crew and the firing of her guns every half minute for assistance filled him with dread and terror.

To this day some say that the strange sounds borne on the wind around Deal are the moans of the waking dead devoured by the Goodwins.

Sailors sometimes wore a gold or silver earring in one or both ears. They believed this improved their long-distance vision in the opposite eye. Earrings were also thought to guard the wearer against drowning. A pair of gold earrings would be purchased, one to be worn in the ear, the other to be thrown over the larboard side of the ship with the words, ‘Protect me, O Davy Jones.’ However, if the worst happened and a sailor drowned at sea despite his ear adornment, when his body washed ashore he could be assured the finder would provide a proper Christian burial in return for the gold earring.

At the turn of the nineteenth century a Cornish lass called Sarah Polgrain had an affair with a sailor known as Yorkshire Jack. When Sarah’s husband died he was initially thought to be a victim of cholera, but it was later found that she had poisoned him with arsenic. Sarah was condemned to death by hanging.

She was granted her last wish that Yorkshire Jack be allowed to accompany her to the scaffold. Just as the rope was about to be placed around her neck, Jack kissed her and the two embraced for the last time. Spectators nearby heard Sarah say, ‘You will?’ and Jack agree.

After Sarah’s execution Jack went back to sea, but the once jovial seaman became ill-tempered and agitated. His shipmates often saw him nervously looking over his shoulder.

One morning, as Jack’s ship neared home, he confided to one of them, ‘When I was on the scaffold that morning talking to Sarah Polgrain, she made me promise on my oath that on this very day, at midnight, I would marry her. Thinking to humour her, and supposing trouble to have unhinged her mind, I agreed. But I know now that she was quite sane and much in earnest. Not being able to wed me in the flesh she means to bind me to her for ever in the spirit.’

That night, eerie footsteps were heard in the vicinity of Jack’s hammock. Jack arose as if in a trance and went on deck. He calmly walked to the bulwarks, then leapt into the sea. The shocked watch on deck saw two white faces in the dark waters for a brief moment, and then they were gone.

TOE THE LINE – keep within the limits of defined behaviour.
DERIVATION
: the space between deck planks was sealed with a mixture of pitch and oakum. These formed a series of parallel lines 15 cm apart, running the length of the deck. When the crew were ordered to fall in for inspection they mustered in a given area of the deck and stood with their toes just touching a particular seam.

The region of Patagonia in South America first came to European notice through an account of Ferdinand Magellan’s 1520 expedition. He probably took the name from Patagon, an uncivilised character in a Spanish tale of chivalry he was known to enjoy reading.

Antonio Pigafetta was a wealthy Venetian scholar who accompanied Magellan on his expeditions as a supernumerary and kept a detailed account of his adventures. Pigafetta reported meeting with the inhabitants of Patagonia, who he claimed were over 3.5m in height. This supposed race of giants coloured European perceptions of the strange and remote area for well over two centuries. On early charts of the New World the name Patagonia is sometimes accompanied by the legend
regio gigantum
, region of the giants.

This belief in a race of Goliaths was re-inforced by other reports. One of these appeared in the book
Voyages Round the World in His Majesty’s Ship the Dolphin
, an allegedly official account of Commodore John Byron’s voyage of circumnavigation aboard HMS
Dolphin
, which became an overnight bestseller.

In 1773 on behalf of the Admiralty John Hawkesworth published a sober and analytical three-volume account of English explorers’ journals of Patagonia, including those of James Cook and Byron. This work showed conclusively that the people Byron and Cook had encountered were tall, around 2m, but by no means giants.

Young Teazer
is a ghost ship which locals say blazes, explodes and vanishes around the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada. Usually seen at sunset or moonset, it is a darkling forerunner of storms.

The original
Teazer
was an American privateer commanded by Frederick Johnson that sailed out of New York under a letter of marque (a licence for a privately owned ship to cruise and make prizes of enemy vessels) in the War of 1812. She was captured and burnt by the Royal Navy. The seamen were imprisoned and her officers were paroled awaiting prisoner exchange. As part of the parole the officers gave their solemn word they would not take part in privateering again.

Johnson violated this and sailed in
Teazer’s
successor,
Young Teazer
. This second ship, which sported a figurehead of a carved alligator with jaws agape, was a more powerful privateer; on her maiden voyage from Portland, Maine, she caused considerable destruction to trade and commerce.

On 27 June 1813 she was chased by three British naval ships and finally trapped in Mahone Bay, west of Halifax. The wind died, and boarding parties in five naval cutters were launched to take her, but before they could do so she exploded and flew apart in a sheet of flame. Preferring death to capture, Johnson had put a firebrand to the powder magazine. Of the crew of 38 only eight survived.

Each year during Mahone Bay’s Classic Boat Festival there is a re-enactment of the chase and the burning of
Young Teazer
.

FIRST-RATE – of the highest quality.
DERIVATION
: in a scheme dating from the mid-eighteenth century, the mighty warships of the Royal Navy were rated (classified) on a scale from one to six, based on the ordnance they carried. First-rates were the largest of the ships, carrying 100 or more guns.

One of the abiding images of the grand sailing ship is her majestic curtseying to Neptune as she enters his domain, outward bound, her figurehead standing out proudly. The origins of the familiar carved and painted ornamentation on her bow are to be found in the very early days of seafaring and are probably twofold: homage to the gods to ensure
a
fair passage and the treatment of the ship as a living thing who needed eyes to find her way across the water.

Figureheads have always been held in great affection by sailors and a ship without a figurehead was considered unlucky. It was believed that a ship with a figurehead could not sink.

In the Royal Navy the lion was almost the standard figurehead for the first three decades of the 1700s. By the middle of the century, the human figure had displaced the lion as the most popular emblem, at least for smaller vessels. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty from 1771 to 1782, introduced many classical names for ships in the Royal Navy and their figureheads reflected this.

In 1796 figureheads were prohibited on new ships and had to be replaced with an abstract scroll or billet head. This order was not strictly observed, however. In fact, figureheads were still being fitted right up into the twentieth century. On 8 December 1900 the last Royal Navy ship with a figurehead, HMS
Espiegle
, was launched at Sheerness. She proudly bore a carved female figure in garments of blue, green and gold.

One famous figurehead is that of HMS
Victory
. The design features two cupids supporting the royal coat of arms surmounted with the royal crown. The arms bear the inscription of the Order of the Garter, ‘Shame to him who evil thinks.’ During the Battle of Trafalgar the starboard figure had its leg shot away, and the port figure, its arm.