ship that is doomed to wreck, It is the ghostly bark of a bridal

always coming near a and guided by a fiend. party, who were maliciously wrecked, "the shallop which always sails by the side of the ship which the sea is bound to swallow."

2

There is a Highland legend of a great ship (the Rotterdam) that went down with all on board, and that appears from time to time, with her ghostly crew, a sure omen of disaster.

A Scotch tale, related in many books of folk-lore, is of "Meggie of the Shore," a kind of witch, who saw and showed to others a spectral boat with lights in the harbor, and that night a boat was lost there.

There are also tales of spectral ships on this side of the water.

In an Ojibway tale,3 a maiden is about to be sacrificed to the spirit of the falls, by drifting her over them in a canoe. But at the last moment, a spectral canoe, with a fairy being in it, takes her place and serves as a sacrifice. Whittier, "The Cruise of the Jessie," describes a spectral canoe,

"While perchance a phantom crew,
In a ghastly birch canoe,

Paddled dumb and swiftly after."

There is a legend of a spectre-ship near Orr's Island, in Maine, embodied in verse by Whittier, in "The Deadship of Harpswell," where

"The ghost of what was once a ship

Is sailing up the bay."

1 Cunningham, p. 288.

2 Gregor.-Folk-lore of Scotland.

3 Lanman.-"Haw-hoo-noo."

The conclusion to the narrator of this tale by the Bookman

"Your flying Yankee beats the Dutch"

is good. Whittier gives us another American legend in the "Palatine," the spectre of a ship wrecked on Montauk Point, which is said to appear on the anniversary of its destruction, when

"Behold! again with shimmer and shine,
Over the rocks and the seething brine,
The flaming wreck of the Palatine.”

It is a warning to sailors, too,

"And the wise sound-skippers, though skies be fine,
Reef their sails when they see the sign

Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine."

The Palatine was a Dutch trader wrecked on Block Island, about 1752. Wreckers are said to have burned her as she drifted to sea, with one woman on board, who had refused to leave her.1 Livermore 2 gives the testimony of several persons who had heard the story from their ancestors, and stoutly maintains that the wreck was not plundered. Whittier gives as his authority a Mr. Hazard. It was long supposed that Dana's "Buccaneer" also described this deed, but the author says it is a work of the imagination. Another authority says the Palatine was not wrecked then, but afterward, in 1784. Drake, in his recent work, repeats the story of her wreck, and says she was burned by the wreckers.

1 Drake.-Legends of New England. 2 History of Block Island.

3 Legends of New England (1883),

In his poems,1 Whittier also alludes to

"The spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men in her shrouds, Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning clouds."

In an early and now scarce work,2 he tells the story of another spectral bark of Salem. In the seventeenth century a ship about to sail for England had as passengers a strange man and a girl of great beauty. So mysterious were their actions, that they were supposed to be demons, and many feared to sail in the ship. The vessel sailed on Friday, and never reached her destination, but reappeared as narrated, after a storm that lasted three days:

"Near and more near the ship came on,

With all her broad sails spread,

The night grew thick, but a phantom light
Around her path was shed,

And the gazers shuddered as on she came,
For against the wind she sped."

On her deck were seen the spectral forms of the young man and woman. This spectral bark disappears at the prayer of the minister.

3

Whittier gives us another story of a phantom ship, in a recent poem. The young captain of the schooner visits the Labrador coast, where, in a secluded bay, live two beautiful sisters with their Catholic mother. Both fall in love with the handsome skipper, who loves the younger alone. She is confined in her room by her mother, just as she is to meet her lover and fly with him. Her elder sister profiting by her absence, goes in her 1 Garrison of Cape Ann.

2 Legends of New England. See also Blackwood, Vol. XXI, p. 463. 8 "The Wreck of the Schooner Breeze."

stead, and is carried to sea in the vessel. The disappointed lover, on learning the deception, returns at once, but finds his sweetheart dead. The schooner never returned home, says the poem,

"But even yet, at Seven Isle Bay,

Is told the ghastly tale

Of a weird unspoken sail.

She flits before no earthly blast,

With the red sign fluttering from her mast,

The ghost of the Schooner Breeze."

1

Cotton Mather gives us a legend of a Colonial spectre-ship-the New Haven ship. A new ship was sent out from New Haven in January, 1647, but was never heard from again. In June, about an hour before sunset, and after a thunder-storm, a ship like her was seen sailing up the river against the wind, disappearing gradually, and finally fading out of sight, as she drew near. This vision was declared a premonition of the loss of the vessel-even from the pulpit. Longfellow

has illustrated this tradition:

2 "On she came, with a cloud of canvas,

Right against the wind that blew,

Until the eye could distinguish,

The faces of the crew."

"Then fell her straining topmasts
Hanging tangled in the shrouds,
And her sails were lowered and lifted,
And blown away like clouds."

"And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one,

1 Magnalia Christi Americana.
2 Poems.-The Ship of the Dead.

And the hulk dilated and vanished,

As a sea-mist in the sun."

Bret Harte relates a legend of a phantom ship, in one of his poems. Children go on board a hulk to play, but it breaks loose, and drifts out to sea, and is lost.

"But they tell the tale,

That when fogs were thick on the harbor reef,

The mackerel fishers shorten sail,

For the signal, they know, will bring relief,
For the voices of children, still at play,

In a phantom hulk that drifts away
Through channels whose waters never fail."

Celia Thaxter 2 has also published a poem, "The Mystery." She is a slaver, whose cargo of two hundred, penned below hatches, perish there, and their corpses are thrown overboard. The wicked captain tries to regain his port, but a calm comes up, and the ghosts of the murdered slaves come, and bind the captain to the mast. The crew hastily desert the ship.

"And they were rescued; but the ship

The awful ship-the Mystery,
Her captain in the dead men's grip,
Never to any port came she.

"But up and down the roaring seas,
Forever and for aye she sails,

In calm and storm, against the breeze,
Unshaken by the wildest gales."

Roads, in his History of Marblehead, relates tales

1 Poems.-A Greyport Legend (1797).

2 Our Continent, Apr. 5, 1882.