Bluenose Ghosts (17 page)

I hate to spoil a good story by such a logical explanation, but this probably accounts for many of the
Teazer
's appearances. It is usually seen before a storm, and fishermen tell that there is nearly always a storm within three days of the full moon.

However all stories of the
Teazer
are not dismissed that easily. We must go back now to the twenty-sixth of June, 1813, when a privateer, the
Young Teazer
, was trapped by British warships in Mahone Bay on our southwestern shore. She would have been captured if a young officer had not set her afire rather than swing at the yardarm. I have talked to people whose parents witnessed the event when they saw a huge explosion as she went up in a blaze of fire. Windows were broken at Blandford, so strong was the blast. From that time, and never before, her apparition has been reported. The old people would tell about having her sail to within a couple of yards of their boat and filling them with fear because they were sure they would be run down. In one case a fisherman told how she stood directly in his way and he could hear the ropes creak in the blocks. From Boutilier's Point it was reported that the ropes were all on fire. It was seen then coming to East Chester from Quaker Island at two o'clock in the morning. Again some St. Margaret's Bay men were in a boat near Clam Island when they had to get out of the Teazer's way, and they said they could see the crew in the rigging. I have never heard of any calamity following the appearance of this burning ship, but it often seems to have had a frightening effect.

One day I went to call on Mr. Joseph Hyson of Mahone Bay, a kindly old retired sailor of eighty-eight who had sung me several sea chanties. Our conversation turned to the Teazer and he said, “My mother was a Mader from Mader's Cove and she saw it different times, and I've seen it too. One Christmas Eve we were coming from Halifax in a southeast wind. It was dark and a storm was coming up. There was a man up forward looking out, and the skipper had to go forward, too. I had the wheel and one of the men said, ‘What's that?' and here was a big red light coming up. It looked like an explosion. Could it have been the moon? No, it couldn't possibly have been the moon, not on a night like that and seeing it as we did.The moon!” (Great disgust in that last word.)

As one man said, “I have seen the Teazer light as often as I have fingers and toes,” and I could say that I have heard that many stories about it. Its last appearance to my knowledge was in 1935. They tell me it must not be confused with a ship that used to take oil to an island off Westhaver's Point where it caught fire and sank. When they see a phantom of a burning ship there they do not think of the Teazer, but of this other ship.

I have often been told of old-fashioned boats and their crews being seen, relics of an earlier day. This happened to a pilot who was accustomed to being on the water at all hours. He was rowing home one day from Steel's Pond to Bear Cove in Halifax County when a four-oared gig rowed with him.The Bear Covers all talked about it, and many of them saw it. The row took about two hours, and the other boat was so close that sometimes their oars tangled. The boat rowed stroke for stroke with him. No further description of the event was given.

As late as the turn of the century a man from Schwartz Settlement was passing Red Bank when he saw a boat coming towards him with eight men rowing and one in the bow and one in the stern.They had big hats on with turned up brims, and they followed closely along beside him.When they came to shore they went ahead of him and moored their boat and then stood in front of him but never spoke. He said they were large men and looked like pirates, so it was thought they had buried treasure there. He rushed past them, for he knew they were not human, and he would never go that way again.

At Tangier they told of a phantom ship that used to sail in the shoal at Pleasant Harbour. She had often been heard before on clear moonlight nights coming in and dropping her anchor, but she had never been approached. One calm evening she was seen so clearly, and with her sails apparently filled with wind, that some of the braver fishermen went out to meet her. When they arrived they reported all hands on deck and they said the men were drinking and talking in a foreign language. As they watched, she went right up to the shore and disappeared in the woods, and they concluded her appearance had something to do with treasure buried there. From that time she was never seen again.

Wise men do not tempt the fates as you will see by the testimony of a man from Seabright. “There were a lot of vessels fishing off the Banks and it was all shoal water. A big sou-easter came and they all turned back but one vessel and the captain said he'd go on no matter what happened. He said he'd stay there if it was the last thing he did, and he dared the Lord to stop him. The vessel was lost in the storm. After that its light was often seen by the other vessels and it would disappear at daylight. When a vessel would tack, it would tack, and you'd see it first on the port and then on the starboard side. You couldn't see the vessel, only the light, but you'd know it was the vessel by the feel of it.” (I suppose a sailor could feel a vessel, just as we sometimes feel a person nearby.)

A fisherman at Port Medway had this experience. “One time I took a load of fish to Lunenburg in September. We left in the middle of the night. When we got down to Hell Point my boy was asleep in the cuddy. It was as pretty a morning as you could see. Here come a boat, no spars, just a hull. It looked to be all sparklin' like there were little sparks all over it. I put my head in the cuddy to wake my son to tell him it was going to run us down and when I looked back it was gone. Next day in Lunenburg I mentioned it and the Dutchmen laughed at me. They said they'd seen it lots of times, but they didn't say what it was, and that's all I ever knew about it.”

An Ostrea Lake man had what he interpreted as a forerunner in the shape of a phantom ship, although at the time he could not explain it. “One September day I was laying to my mooring when I saw a vessel coming straight towards me. I was so sure I'd be rammed that I untied my mooring so I could get clear of it, but I had no sooner done that than the vessel disappeared. It happened I had a brother at that time on a vessel that had sailed to Turk's Island for salt. Lots of them did that at one time, you know. I puzzled over it for quite a while until word came that my brother's vessel had gone down in a September gale. As far as I was ever able to tell, it must have been lost just at the time when I saw it coming towards me.”

Most phantom ships are presumed to be connected with buried treasure. A man from Spry Bay said, “I had an uncle at Mushaboom, and one winter the water froze over and there was a foot of ice. Over the bay he heard a noise and he looked and saw a full-rigged ship coming across the ice. It was the fourth day of February.You can still hear the anchor being dropped at times and the same ship has been seen by lots of people. My brother Henry lived on the west side of Mushaboom. He used to see a ball of fire come up past his place from the same direction as the full-rigged ship. They 'lowed there was pirates' money on the island. They've seen people there with their heads off. On Blackmore's Island on the western shore of Mushaboom there are marks on the rocks, and they think pirate money is buried there.” This reminds me of a boat that was said to have landed at Ballast Cove near Port Medway. The crew, who had no heads, left the boat and walked across the beach and vanished in the woods. There were people who would never pass that way at night again.

It must be about eighty years ago that a strange sight was witnessed in Halifax Harbour by two residents of that city. Mrs. King told me that when she was a young girl she was in a boat with a number of other people returning from a picnic. Fog was rolling in and there was a light breeze. Suddenly she saw a boat with square sails set which passed close beside their boat and they could see a crew at work as it passed them. Mrs. Turnbull, sitting beside her, turned to her and said, “Did you see that?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I thought it must be a mistake.” On talking this extraordinary experience over, they concluded this must be one of the boats of d'Anville's ill-fated expedition. It had suffered death and destruction, and the pay-ship was supposed to have been sunk in Bedford Basin. Others had told of seeing it in the vicinity of Navy Island.

It is a custom for vessels to speak each other as they pass, just as we on our city streets greet one another with a nod of the head. On a long cruise a vessel might go well out of its way to dip its flag to another ship, just for the pleasure of its company on the mighty deep. Some Tancook men were on the Banks off Newfoundland one night when they saw a ship bearing down on them with masthead lights showing. She was full-rigged and had all the lights she was required to carry, and no more and no less. The captain and his watchmen stood uncertainly as she approached, waiting to see what she would do.They were tacking at the time, and the ship passed them like a ball of fire. They knew then that this was no friendly gesture, but that they had seen a ghost ship. They feared it was a forerunner of disaster and they were nervous until they got back to their home port.

Similarly a Seabright man was on a vessel off the Gaspé coast when another vessel showed up ahead. Then the Seabright boat passed it. Telling of it later the captain said, “I was going to speak it because it was so close and I could see the lights and the sails. Something told me to wait till morning and I did. It stayed in sight of us all night and, just before daybreak, one of the crew said, ‘Where's the vessel?' It wasn't there. We learned later that we weren't the only ones who had seen it, for it had often been reported there. It was a good thing we didn't speak it, for that would have been the end of us. You see, if we had spoken it, not realizing she was a ghost ship, that would have been our doom.” That, as a Lunenburg fisherman once expressed it, was the fairy of the time—the belief.

Bringing our stories up to date, a small ship whose name I had better not mention on account of the implications in the story, was lost off the eastern shore. To this day people often look out at ten o'clock at night and see a white light. It is about the size of a car ‘light, but not as bright, they say. There was supposed to have been a mutiny on board and the cook was murdered. Hence the light.

A Norwegian barque once lost its way in Petpeswick Harbour and was sunk. Since then it has often been seen before a storm entering the harbour either as a vessel, or as a huge light like a big star. It has been seen as recently as twenty years ago. Like the vessel at Pleasant Harbour, it comes in and disappears in the woods.

A Spanish ship used to be seen about once a year. It came up the eastern side of St. Margaret's Bay from Peggy's Cove, across from Croucher's Island, then to Red Bank, and from there to North West Cove and out the Bay. Two men told that when they were out fishing and saw it, the ship was on fire, and they could see men going up the rigging. Suddenly it vanished and they had just got over that astonishment when it came up on the other side. People at Cape Negro used to see a full-rigged ship with lights on and nobody aboard, but they have no explanation for its presence. And from Hall's Harbour there is a story of a ship's lights going up the Bay of Fundy every seven years in winter. No voices are heard, nor is there any known reason for its appearance, although in these turbulent waters many a ship has foundered in days gone by.

“When I was eighteen years old,” said Mr. Stanislas Pothier of Pubnico, “I was in a boat and, coming along Canso way it was dark and there was no moon. By and by we saw a ray of fire but no blaze. We looked at it and the engineer said, ‘That's the burning ship they see all the time.' This same ship is seen at Port Hood where the masts and sails are seen through the fire. A woman watched it one dark hazy night not long ago, and she said she could distinctly see the masts and sails burning. There was a mutiny on board and it is seen on a certain date. I don't know what its name was.”

Years ago a vessel was built at Diligent River between Parrsboro and Port Greville and she soon became known as a bad luck vessel. “Once a ship gets a name like that,” said Captain Hatfield, “there are not many men willing to ship on her as crew. She was owned and sailed by Capt. Roberts, and two of my sailors went aboard. She was loaded in Jacksonville and when found, the double reef mizzen sail and the fore staysail were laying with their sails set. Boats and men were gone and were never heard of again. She was taken ashore and then sent out again and of course this time she had an entirely different crew. What do you suppose happened then? She took on a load of salt and must have been sailing home when the whole of this second crew abandoned her. We never could figure it out but it was always supposed they had seen something aboard so terrible that they didn't dare remain. Maybe a ghost, we thought, or a crew of ghosts. Who knows?”

Oyster Pond had its full-rigged ship that used to be seen coming up the harbour. “One beautiful calm night without a ripple on the water a woman saw it from the road and stopped to watch it. It was coming up so quickly and the sails were so pretty, you'd think they were in full breeze. She met Mr. Nelson Webber on the road and he saw it too. He thought it was a handsome ship, but he wondered as he watched if it was real. The woman went into the barn and milked her cow and when she came out she expected to see the beautiful ship again.” Here in the soft light of early evening with its white sails billowing it would be something to look forward to but, though she looked over the full length and breadth of the harbour, it was no longer there.

This was not the only occasion of this ship being seen. “It used to tack across the channel to Salmon River and then come across to Mitchell's Point. She must have known her route and had some purpose in mind, we always thought. The old timers could hear people talking on board, but it was always in some outlandish tongue they couldn't understand. They could see and hear her drop her anchor, but in the morning she'd be gone.They thought she must be a pirate ship that had buried treasure here. The last time she was seen was in 1904.”