For the ship was black, her masts were black,
And her sails coal-black as death;
And the Evil-One steered at the helm, and laughed,
And mocked at their failing breath.
Swedish sailors have a vessel of this kind. She is so large that it takes three weeks to go from poop to prow, and hence orders are transmitted on horseback. Danish folk-lore has its spectral ship, and a Schleswick-Holstein tradition relates how a maiden was carried off by her lover in a spectral ship, as one day she sat on the shore bewailing his absence. In ‘Mélusine’ for September 1884,[245] it is stated that, ‘in many localities in Lower Brittany, stories are current of a huge ship manned by giant human forms and dogs. The men are reprobates guilty of horrible crimes; the dogs, demons set to guard them and inflict on them a thousand tortures. Such a vessel wanders ceaselessly from sea to sea, without entering port or casting anchor, and will do so to the end of the world. No vessel should allow it to fall aboard, for its crew would suddenly disappear. The orders, in this strange craft, are given through huge conch-shells, and, the noise being heard several miles off, it is easy to avoid her. Besides, there is nothing to fear, if the “Ave Maria” is repeated, and the Saints appealed to, especially St. Anne d’Auray.’
Stories of phantom ships are found, more or less, all over the world, and are associated with many a romantic and tragic tale. Bret Harte[246] relates how some children go on board a hulk to play, but it breaks away from its moorings, drifts out to sea, and is lost. Yet at times there are heard:
The voices of children, still at play,
In a phantom hulk that drifts away
Through channels whose waters never fail.
And Whittier[247] tells how the young captain of a schooner visits the Labrador coast where, in a certain secluded bay, two beautiful sisters live with their mother. Both fall in love with him, and, just as the younger is about to meet her lover and fly with him, she is imprisoned in her room by her mother, whereupon her elder sister goes in her stead, and is carried to sea in the vessel. The disappointed lover, on learning the deception, returns only to find his loved one dead. But the schooner, adds Whittier, never returned home and:
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.
In Dana’s ‘Buccaneer,’ the pirate carries a lady to sea, who jumps overboard, and on the anniversary of her death:
A ship! and all on fire! hull, yards, and mast,
Her sails are sheets of flame; she’s nearing fast!