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Halloween Revives Sailors’ Stories of Fear

Jim Hancock, president and founder of San Francisco Sailing Science Center, has been busy thinking about Halloween. And as it’s 2020, anything might happen on this night — more so than usual. To help you prepare, here’s a story Jim wrote about some spooky phenomena that put have fear into the hearts of sailors.

With Halloween just off our bow, it is time to apprise you of ghost ships, those vessels that sail on the sea, absent of living crew: portents of doom. The most famous of these, the Flying Dutchman, a stout man-of-war that sank with all hands, is said to appear during storms, all sails and hull aglow.

Of course, we know these are just sailors’ stories, and merely the making of the mariner’s mind. The fatigue and monotony of long stints at sea are known to cause tricks of the temporal lobes. Apparitions in fog, dim light, and clouds make it easy to ‘see’ the source of these visions.

The singing of sirens is something again. Auditory pareidolia is the term science gives to voices or music that come through the rush, like that from the waves that wash down the hull. I have heard this myself on countless occasions, and in a state of half sleep have thought to command that we come about at once to save the lost soul, though the voice is no more than a dream.

So too, is the wind in the rigging as it conjures our fear. At 25 knots there appears an effect that may be given to ghosts, but is just the voice of vibrations as vortices shed from our lines. A ‘sound’ explanation for sure, and notably not paranormal, but something that might be the basis for an exhibit on the science of sailing. So you see, when it’s all said and done, there really are no ghosts at sea.

 

4 Comments

  1. Mark Howe 3 years ago

    How about St. Elmo’s glowing light descending from the top of the mast?
    Or the mythical Sirens, the mermaids that attracted sailors to their destruction on the rocks. [Sirenia]

  2. milly Biller 3 years ago

    When I sailed in the Galapagos Islands as a kid, we had to hunt goats for food, and our Galapagueno skipper always hung a goat meat offering in the rigging for the gods of the sea. I slept on deck 5′ away and the offering was always gone in the morning.

  3. Mark Wheeles 3 years ago

    Wasn’t it Bernard Moitessier who wrote of having a conversation with someone while he was doing a single-handed circumnavigation ? If not a ghost, who / what was it ?

  4. I Sargin 3 years ago

    Our marinas are full of ghost ships. The 90% or so that are never sailed They just sit there, many growing moldy, some staying shiny despite nobody ever tending to them. Some emit a faint light at night. Is someone onboard? Alive or dead?

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