In the night of July 14, 1886, the British ship Conqueror, fourteen days out from Liverpool, bound for the lumber and fishing ports of the Miramichi, in the Straits of Northumberland, lost overboard Robert Johnson, A. B. The fact is registered on the ship’s log. Three days after the Conqueror reached Miramichi, the Bark Adelaide, from Belfast, likewise came into port and when she was warped into her berth beside the Conqueror, the first man to step from the Adelaide to the Conqueror’s deck was Bob Johnson.
There are reasons for the sailor-men being superstitious. The crew of the Conqueror would not sail with Bob Johnson again. He was fey. But really, he had only experienced a strange and harsh adventure. The Adelaide, following the unmarked wake of the Conqueror, had picked him up after he had floated for some hours.
And there are plenty of similar incidents in the annals of those who go down to the sea in ships to match this narrative of Bob Johnson.
The men who picked me up told me that I shouted to them; but I do not remember it. They were a crew of a boat put overboard by the Seamew, and they brought me aboard and I lay in a bunk in the fo’castle all that day without knowing where I was, or how I had been snatched from an ocean grave.
About the first thing I remember clearly was that a young man stood beside my berth and looked down upon me with a rather quizzical smile. I knew him at once and thought that I must be in my old bunk aboard the Gullwing.
“I—I—. Have I been sick, Mr. Barney?” I asked, and was surprised to find my voice so weak.
He seemed surprised for a moment, too, and then I saw his face flush. He exclaimed:
“By the great hornspoon! this fellow is off the Gullwing.”