Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had their sailors and crews eaten by the monsters they brought on board. However the most famous – and most frightening – story is that of the ship, Mary Celeste. It ran aground in 1872 while transporting a cargo of cedar from Genoa to New York. On board were the captain’s wife and seven other crew members. In November 1872, the ship was found drifting in the pathless seas. There was no sign of any mutiny. No one, however, had been seen by the captain’s family for weeks. When the ship was examined, there was nothing unusual found. It was presumed that the crew had been attacked and killed by some unknown horror. But what of the strange figure that appeared on board the Mary Celeste, only to disappear during the voyage? Could it have been a sprit, such as those that are said to appear on occasion on the decks of sail boats? One of the crew said that a mysterious figure of a man had been seen on the deck, before the body of a child was discovered hanging from the rigging. Others said that a ghostly woman had been seen, by several people, on the bridge, and that she was holding the wheel. The Mary Celeste was to remain unsolved until 1988, when the ship was lifted out of the water for the first time in over seventy years. During its time under water it had turned into an unidentifiable white shape. When recovered, the original Mary Celeste was found to be undamaged. Some argue that the mystery was caused by more prosaic causes – perhaps there was a flaw in the hull; the vessel had been refloated by ocean currents. Whatever happened to the Mary Celeste, the most famous of shipwrecks remains the Flying Dutchman. This ghost ship was seen so often around the coast of the British Isles that by the 18th century it had become a regular sight, earning it the nickname, “The Flying Dutchman.” Reports claimed that the ghost ship could not be boarded or avoided. The crew had disappeared in a mysterious way, and everyone who sailed with it never lived to tell the tale. Legend said that every seventh man on the ship had cursed the Dutch ship, leading to its being cursed. The curse could be lifted, the legend went, but only by the seventh son of the seventh son. That person was doomed to remain a castaway for seven years and seven nights on the ship. Some versions suggest that the ship was cursed with a curse of its own. There are many reports of ships and boats found abandoned, but nobody ever found out what happened to the people who sailed them. Some say that when it was finally given a name, the ship was called the Flying Dutchman. There was an aura of evil about it, with its ghostly appearance and its curse that it could not be sailed until the curse of its seventh son was lifted. The Flying Dutchman is still a popular sight around the coasts of Britain, especially in the area around Cape Horn. Stories abound about ships that suddenly veer off their course and disappear, as if to lead the pursuing ship onto the rocks. The Flying Dutchman is usually seen late at night and early in the morning. Many have reported seeing what seems to be a ghostly figure on board. However some believe that the figure they saw was actually the ship’s figurehead, which was long gone before it passed by. The most famous story of an encounter with the Flying Dutchman occurred in 1921. Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew were on the Endurance, the ship that brought them to the Antarctic. Shackleton was on the search for the Pole, after becoming the first man to reach both South and North Poles. The Endurance was frozen in ice, and stuck fast on the ocean bed. She began to take on water, and the crew knew that there was no possibility of their ever being able to set sail. The end had come. The ship was abandoned. Shackleton tried to lead the Endurance away from the ice, but she stayed on course. For some reason, she did not sink. The Endurance has remained there for the last seventy years, at a point where the ice flows meet the ocean. Shackleton did not live to see her wrecked by the ice. There is no name given to the figure that is seen on board the Dutchman. There is, however, a common description: The figure of a seaman, maddened by thirst. The figure was that of a man on a galleon, his body blue with cold, his eyes glaring wildly. In the hand of the ghost were a tattered white shirt and a red-hot poker. (Cooke, 1971). To read about more ghost ships, read about our research on The Ghost of the Mary Celeste and more ghostly stories, click here. *The above image, The Flying Dutchman, is in the public domain. Image courtesy: wikimedia.com