Bluenose Ghosts (19 page)

When they reached New York the rescue was reported by Captain Amesbury with the result that the Hatfield family still has in its possession the gold watch presented to the gallant captain by the United States government. The inscription reads in part, “for humanity and courage in the rescue.”

These three stories of rescue came, as you have seen, from different parts of the Province, and two of them directly from the families concerned. They must actually have happened as they have been related, and they are entirely separate incidents. The first is the only one that I cannot be sure about because I have never talked to any of the Smeltzer family. It is conceivable that it is true like the others.

We have had several stories already from Mr. Horace Johnston of Port Wade, so let us visit him again. He was a tall lean man who loved the sea until the day he died. When I met him with another retired fisherman, Mr. Norman McGrath, they were spending part of their summer in a shack on the shore of Victoria Beach. They spent their time fishing and re–calling events from their adventurous younger days. They were delighted when I came along because mine was a new ear to listen to the yarns they loved to spin. Some were very funny, some were folk tales from out of a far distant past, and others were personal experiences, true or concocted. The trick was to distinguish between them. This one about the
Vesta Pearl
was given in all seriousness by Mr. Johnston, and he assured me it was true. Again we have brothers sailing together.

“About fifty years ago when my brother was captain of the
Vesta Pearl
I sailed with him as mate. The captain takes care of the after end of the ship and the mate the forward end. Well, this vessel was built in St. John, and that's where we bought her and, after we got her, they said she was a hanted vessel. One old fellow said, “‘You can't run her, she hanted.' So I said, ‘If she's hanted now she's hanted so bad she's got to keep moving.' (The word hant is often used here for haunt.) The crew didn't want to stay aboard after the word got around. Someone told them the last captain had been knocked overboard when she was new and on her first trip and that he'd been drowned, but none of us knew the whole story. All we knew was that he was always around. He'd be there in a gale of wind when we were reefing the sails. If four men were reefing and one was at the wheel, there would be one man at the wheel and five men reefing, but you had to be at the wheel to see him.

“He didn't bother us until we'd been out four months. We got caught in an easterly wind going to Boston and we were bobbing in the sea and when we went to reef, here was Mr. Extry Man. My brother called me to come and take the wheel. He said, ‘I'd rather go and help reef,' but he didn't tell me why. It was then I found out about the extry man. I saw him for myself.

“One time when we were in Annapolis we got rigged up (dressed up) and went ashore. It didn't take much to dress you up in those days. On account of the tide the boat was high up in the water and we figured out the tide to see what time we should come back. Tides are mighty high here and when it was out we could walk right up to the boat, but it would be muddy going. Then you could climb up the ladder and on to the ship's deck. If we stayed ashore too long we couldn't walk back to her. I had my rubber boots waiting on the shore and, when I got back I put 'em on, and made my way to the ship. The tide was getting pretty well up to the vessel when I got there, and I figured that the other men wouldn't be able to get back without a boat till the next tide. I shook my feet to get the mud knocked off my boots, and scraped them on every rung of the ladder.

“It seems that anybody going to sea, it makes no odds whether they've had their supper or not, because when they come aboard they always have to have a mugup, hot or cold. This night I was the only one aboard and I was having a mugup. Tea, it was. They had a lot of salt horse (salt beef) aboard this vessel and I was quite hungry because I'd gone without eating from six to eleven. Well, I was having my mugup and salt horse when I heard another fellow coming stomping same as I did and, when he reached the deck, he seemed to go forward. So I says, ‘My gracious, he just made it,' because the tide was pretty well around the vessel. I could tell because while I was setting there the ship riz and I could feel her come up out of the mud. I said to myself, ‘Who's that come aboard?' because after I heard him stomping I didn't see no more nor hear nothin', but I'd heard him all right because he'd scraped his boots oft the same as I done. So I took the lantern to see where he walked, because I knew the mud would show his tracks, but nothing showed.

“Well, the watch had gone off when I come aboard, and I knew I was alone and I don't know whether I was frightened or not, but it was a little bit of a strange kind of feeling. I thought somebody might have gone overboard, but I couldn't see nothin' with the lantern and, when the others came back, I asked and it hadn't been them. So it must a been him—The Extry Man.”

“The strangest things happened on that vessel. One time we got into a little river and it was blowing hard and a-raining bad. All those vessels have two anchors and, if you let one go, you have the next one ready. Well, we had the big anchor in, and when it goes out the iron windlass with the chain going over it makes an awful noise, and there's no mistaking it. Croquinole had just come in then and everybody was crazy about it. I wanted to play but I had a sore finger, so I said, ‘If I can play the same as checkers I'll play,' and I did. We was settin' there playing when away went the anchor and it made an awful noise. My brother says, ‘That anchor should have been made fast. The only thing we can do now is to heave it up again.' He was pretty cross but, when we went to look, the anchor had never moved.

“Later we were told the reason for it all. It seems that when the company was building this vessel they didn't know which of two fellows to give it to and, after they finally made up their minds, the fellow who lost went as mate. He was steering the wheel when the captain went over. He was probably working on the deck when the wheelsman gave it a sudden turn and sent the captain over the side. It was always thought he done It a-purpose.”

One day I left the two old friends at Victoria Beach and went in to Granville Ferry. There I met a man who was vacationing along this peaceful shore, but who had a tale to tell that was the antithesis of peace. He gave it to me because he had heard of my interests in ghosts and thought I might like to add it to my collection. Actually it has nothing to do with Nova Scotia beyond the fact that I collected it here. I am not sure whether the ship sailed from Boston or New York, but it was one of those cities. This is what he said.

The City of Rome was a passenger ship that sailed until about sixty years ago. As it was leaving on one of its trips a passenger came aboard at the last minute and wanted a berth. The purser said it was impossible as everything was taken. The man insisted that his business was urgent, and he cared little where he slept. He was so anxious to go that the purser consulted the captain with the result that he was told one cabin was available. But, the purser took pains to explain that the stateroom had not been occupied for some years because the last three persons who had slept there had gone over the side. This man brushed off any such suggestion as nonsense and said he had no fear of anything supernatural. So, since he had been told the facts and knew what he was facing, he was finally permitted to use the stateroom, but only on condition that the ship would be absolved of any responsibility if anything happened. To this he readily agreed.

In the morning the purser asked him how he had slept. He said he had slept very well, but he thought he was to have had that room to himself.

“Well,” the purser said, “you did.”

“No,” he said, “the upper berth was slept in. It's a strange thing, though, because before I went to sleep I bolted the door and fastened the porthole down. In the morning the porthole was open and the bed had been used.”

The captain was told about this strange occurrence and his curiosity was aroused. He said he would go with the passenger that night and see what happened. So the passenger slept again in the lower berth and the captain took the settee. This left the upper berth empty as before.

Whether the passenger stayed awake to see what occurred my informant did not say, but the captain kept his vigil and, sure enough, after a while the porthole opened. A man came through it all covered with slime and seaweed and prepared to occupy it as before. Hoping to lay the ghost for all time, the captain grabbed him and they had a terrible tussle, and all he got out of it was a broken arm. As for the passenger, like the previous occupants he went over the side before anyone realized what he was doing. After that the door was locked and bolted and as long as the ship sailed it was never opened again.

Whether the man in our next story came up out of the sea or appeared as the more usual ghosts do, I do not know, but a Seabright man told of a boat called the Sonora from whose deck a man had been drowned. Afterwards he used to be heard jumping on the deck. Nothing more was reported, just the jumping which was so characteristic of him that it could not be mistaken for anything or anybody else.

It is an old belief that a ghost cannot cross water, as we have mentioned before.You will also recall that a house built of wood from a wreck is likely to be haunted. A house at Cooper's Head was a case in point. I heard about it at Salmon River.

“My mother lived there and one time she was in bed and she heard four men talking and she couldn't understand them. They all took a turn speaking different languages. An old Mr. Dolby was there and he heard it too, and somebody said to him, ‘Are you afraid?' and he said, ‘No, but I'm very uncomfortable.' Various sounds were heard and they became so bad that it was decided to bring the house across the water to Oyster Pond.” (I have seen the house and it seemed like a sizable structure to be floated over the water.) “It was the right thing to do, because from that time the sounds were never heard again.”

Ragged Islands and Lockeport tell about a British troop ship, the Billow, that was lost with all hands. There was a snowstorm about 1830 when she struck off Ram Island and was lost. Residents at Little Harbour could hear the band playing as the ship went down. They claim that when the wind is in a certain direction in a storm you can still hear the band playing the same selection. It was “The Gay Cockade.”

If we go now to The Pond past Mr. Charlie Taylor's store at Victoria Beach we may see a place where a ship is heard landing, but nothing has ever been seen of it. One morning, however, at an early hour a man was walking down that road to go fishing when he met a sailor and remarked to himself that his coat was of a particularly good piece of serge. He looked at the stranger more closely then and realized that he was not a living man at all. By this time he had seen more than enough, and left with all the speed he could muster.

Clarke's Harbour has a strange story about a wrecked ship and the use that was made of it. “There was a ship wrecked here many years ago. In the cabin there were knives lying around and things upset which showed signs of a fight. A man who lived near the wreck took timber from it and anything he could lay his hands on, and he built a house with that timber. From the first there was a knocking that he couldn't find any reason for. He looked everywhere but it never did any good. No good at all, and the funny part of it was that it always came at a certain time of the night when the house was still. It was more of a tapping than a knocking. People would move in and then move out very soon afterwards and he found it impossible to get a family to stay there. Well now I tell you it got pretty bad. So the old timers got together to ‘get' the ghost. They all congregated there together and had prayers, but it wasn't any use. They said among other things, ‘In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,' the three highest words in the Bible. That's always supposed to lay them but the tapping still persisted and it does to this day.

“You want to know what a ghost sounds like? It sounds like somethin' soft knockin' on nawthin'. That's what it sounds like!”

At Port Hastings the old people used to help one another with their haymaking and then, in the pleasant hours that followed a well earned meal, they would tell one another stories. One of these was about cattle being shipped to Newfoundland. The man in charge of the cattle was called the supercargo. In one vessel that went from here the only person saved when she was wrecked was the supercargo and for some years after that a schooner used to be seen in the swamp. It had never been seen before, so it became quite a subject of speculation, with the final conclusion that it was this cattle boat.

One day when I was talking to a fisherman at Moser's River he told me an amazing experience that had come to his friends Albert Mosher and Will Lowe. They had gone to Toby Island in the lobster fishing season and had, as they thought, taken ample provisions for two weeks. Before the time elapsed they ran short of food, so Mr. Mosher said he would go ashore and get a fresh supply. He would then return in the morning. Mr. Lowe was therefore left alone and, after a while, he fell asleep. Some time later he was wakened by the sound of the door rattling. He supposed Mr. Mosher must have changed his mind and come back that night but, although the door was open, there was no one there. He settled down, thinking he must have imagined it, having first made sure that the door was securely shut. Again the rattling of the latch wakened him and again there was no one there. He went outside then, and there he saw a man all covered with eel grass. He laughed heartily, supposing Mr. Mosher had fixed himself up to frighten him, and thinking it a very smart trick he said, “You can't fool me Albert.” Then the incredible happened and he stood dazed and terrified as the figure dissolved before his eyes, and in a moment there was nothing left of his visitor but a pool of water and some eel grass.