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Yar, Ghost Ships!

Rebecca, one of the best books debunking the whole Bermuda Triangle/ghost ship/unexplained-forces-from-Dimension-Bunkum is Larry Kusche's "Bermuda Triangle - Mystery Solved". Mr Kusche takes the radical step of actually *investigating* alleged mysteries, instead of merely repeating previously-written woo, and thoroughly deflates the balloon of baloney (I'm not mixing metaphors too much here, am I?).

Broadly put, his investigations reveal a Myth founded on inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable data that is frequently confounded by contemporary records, where it isn't complete fiction in the first place.
 
The whaler Charles W. Morgan at the Mystic Seaport Museum is supposed to be haunted. Investigated by the R.I. Paranormal Research Group (whoever they are) last year I believe. Don't know what they found. Several links around on this.
 
Don't forget Longfellow's "The Phantom Ship," which is said to have been based on an existing New England legend reported by Cotton Mather.

In Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
That is here set down in rhyme....etc
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An old story in my family says that the captain of this ship was actually named Lambert, rather than Lamberton, and that Longfellow changed it to scan better. Needless to say, this was a popular notion among the Lambert side of the family. Unfortunately, descendents of the Lamberton family demur.

More notes on this particular apparition and its chain of references can be found here: http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/bibliog/bibliog.html . Look under "New Haven Ghost ship File," or use your browser search for the keyword "winthrop."

There's a flying dutchman novel, also called The Phantom Ship, by Captain Marryat, which you can have copyright free: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12954
 
Sugriva said:
This may stray a bit from your OP but the first thing that popped into my head (well, not the first, I think the Mary Celeste and the Bermuda Triangle were first... then I thought about what to have for lunch, then porcupines 'cause they're cute, then the Sargasso Sea...) was the whole series of weird coincidences between the Titanic and the novel Futility which was published 1898. In the novel, a ship dubbed the Titan strikes an iceberg and sinks- with many details eerily similar to the real life Titanic disaster. Gardner edited a book on the subject as well: The Wreck of the Titanic Foretold?
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There has been a recent thread on this specifically (or several posts in a thread) - supposedly, the "weird coincidences" are close to non-existant when you do an item-item comparison.
 
Very little of the supernatural actually occurs on the "high seas." Most sea-related ghost stories, beings, etc, are associated with the shore. If you want to here "real" ghost stories, talk to fishermen, not deep-water sailors.
 
hey tell everyone why you have to become an expert in a few days!

It's cable people! And let's face it, she's going to look good.
 
Rebecca,

Don't you think it's very irresponsible of you to pass yourself off as an expert on this for a national television program?

G6
 
Spektator said:
Long before Sherlock Holmes was born, his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote a fictional account of the "Marie" Celeste: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/to...modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=2&division=div1.
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Thanks for the link to the full text! I read it ages ago and couldn't find it in my personal library anywhere, so that's a big help. I've always found it interesting that Doyle's made-up details concerning the ship have lived on while the actual story he puts forth for how things went down (blacks wish to destroy the white race) has been dropped.

Thanks to everyone else, again. I'm reading through a great amount of info.

Girl 6 said:
Rebecca,

Don't you think it's very irresponsible of you to pass yourself off as an expert on this for a national television program?

G6
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Don't you think it's presumptuous and rude to make such catty remarks about a situation you are completely ignorant of?
 
A Real-Life Ghost Ship ...

Well, okay. It was really a boat, not a ship. But "ghost ship" sounds so much better.

The Teignmouth Electron is a 40-foot trimaran, now decaying on a sand dune on the island of Cayman Brac. But in its early years it had quite a history as a real-life ghost ship of sorts.

In October 1968, Donald Crowhurst set out from Teignmouth, Devon, England on the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed around-the-world sailing race in his brand-new boat, the Teignmouth Electron. In June, 1969 it looked like Crowhurst would win the race. But then in July, the boat was found in good condition ghosting along out in the middle of the Atlantic with no one aboard.

Good detective work pretty clearly demonstrated a sad, but all too real-world, explanation. Crowhurst seems to have faked his voyage. Instead of going from the UK around the Cape of Good hope, across the Pacific, around Cape Horn, and then back to the UK like everyone else, Crowhurst sailed to the South Atlantic, toodled around for a while, and then turned north once again. Ahead (in terms of elapsed time) of the remaining competitors. When it became probable that he would win, it appears he committed suicide, taking most of his real log books with him. (Actually, of course the story is much more complicated and interesting than this.)

There are many books, videos, etc. on the subject, most of which I haven't read or seen. I enjoyed

Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall (1995). The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst.

It's been reprinted in paperback.
 
rebecca said:
Don't you think it's presumptuous and rude to make such catty remarks about a situation you are completely ignorant of?
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I don't think I am as ignorant of this as you may think I am. It's a simple question--not a catty remark. A catty remark is something like, "I think I'm hotter than you are." I would never presume to make such a statement.

So, will you please answer the question? Perhaps, I am wrong in my perception of what is going on. I'm more than happy to be shown otherwise. And, you know that I will apologize if that is the case.

Are you or are you not trying to pass yourself off as an expert on this for a National Geographic television show?

thanks!
G6
 
Girl 6 said:
I don't think I am as ignorant of this as you may think I am. It's a simple question--not a catty remark. A catty remark is something like, "I think I'm hotter than you are." I would never presume to make such a statement.

So, will you please answer the question?

Perhaps, I am wrong in my perception of what is going on. I'm more than happy to be shown otherwise. And, you know that I will apologize if that is the case.

Are you or are you not trying to pass yourself off as an expert on this for a National Geographic television show?

thanks!
G6
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You changed the question. The original question was "Don't you think it's very irresponsible of you to pass yourself off as an expert on this for a national television program," which is the equivalent of asking me why I beat my cats. So, no, I won't answer the question as anyone can see it is loaded with venom, and I have no reason to prove anything to you.

I have a wide breadth of knowledge concerning mythology as well as paranormal claims made about oceanographic phenomena. I started this thread in the hopes of deepening my knowledge on a very specific topic with help from fellow forumites - if you don't have anything constructive to add, the thread will be a lot more informative without your posturing. I'll be ignoring any more posts in this thread not related to the OP. Thanks.
 
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