foresaken him to marry his captain, Simon Reed. The entire wedding party

perished with the ship in the midst of the celebrations, but the remarkable

thing is that the scene made a phantom reappearance once every fifty years

– until 1948, when the “Lady Lovibond” at last failed to re-enact the

drama.

Another fifty - year reappearance concerns the Nothumberland; she

was lost on the Goodwind sands in 1703 in a storm, along with twelve other

men – of - war, but in 1753 seen again by the crew of an East Indiaman –

sailors were leaping in to the water from the stricken vessel though their

shouts and screams could not be heard.

The Nothumberland was under the command of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, to

whom is attached a further tale. Three years afterwards, the admiral’s

flagship, the Association, was wrecked on the Gilstone Rock near the Scilly

Isles. The fleet was homeward bound after a triumphant campaign against the

French and some maintain that the crews were drunk. But the story which

Scillonians believe to this day is that a sailor aboard the flagship warned

that the fleet was dangerously near the islands, and that for this he was

hanged at the yardarm for unsubordination, on the admiral’s orders. The man

was granted a last request to read from the Bible, and turned to the 109

psalm: “ Let his days be few and another take his place. Let his children

be fatherless and his wife a widow”. As he read the ship began to strike

the rocks.

The admiral was a very stout man and his buoyancy was sufficient to

carry him ashore alive, though very weak. However, official searches found

him dead, stripped off his clothing and valuables, including a fine emerald

ring. The body was taken to Westminster Abbey for interment, and his widow

appealed in vain for the return of the ring. Many years later a St Mary’s

islander confessed on the deathbed that she had found Sir Cloudesley and

had “squeezed the life out of him” before taking his belongongs. The hue

and cry had forced her to abandon the idea of selling the emerald, but she

had felt unable to die in peace before revealing her crime.

A commemorative stone marks the place where the admiral’s body was

temporarily buried in the shingle of Porth Hellick, on St Mary’s Island. No

grass grows over the grave.

THE WRECK OF THE RAMILIES

Many hundreds of shipwrecks have their own songs and stories. Although

the Ramilies, for example, was wrecked well over 200 years ago, tradition

perpetuates the event as clearly as if it had happened only yesterday. In

February 1760 the majestic, ninety – gun, triple decked ship was outward

bound from Plymouth to Quiberon Bay when hurricane – force winds blew up in

the Channel and forced the captain to turn back and run for shelter.

Sailing East , the master thought he had passed Looe Island, and had only

to round Rame Head to reach the safety of Plymouth Sound. In fact the ship

was a bay further on and the land sighted was Burgh Island, in Bigbury Bay.

The Promontory was Bolt Tail with its four hundred foot cliffs, and beyond

lay no safe harbour at all, but several miles of precipitous rocks. As soon

as the sailing master realised his mistake the ship was hove to, but the

wind was so violent that the masts immediately snapped and went overboard.

The two anchores that were dropped held fast, but their cables fouled each

other, and after hours of fierce friction, they parted and the ship was

driven to destruction on the rocks.

Of more than seven hundred men on board only about two dozen reached

safety. Led by Midshipman John Harrold, they scrambled up the cliffs, by

pure luck choosing the one place where this was possible. Next day a

certain William Locker travelled to the scene to try to find the body of

his friend, one of the officers. Locker himself would have been aboard the

“Ramillies” but his lieutenant’s commission had come from the admiralty too

late, arriving just a few hours after she had sailed. He found the shores

of Bigbury Bay strewn with hundreds of corpses, their clothing torn away by

the sea’s pounding, their features unrecognisable. The village nearest to

the scene of the wreck was Inner Hope, and some there still maintain that a

Bigbury man aboard the “Ramillies” pleaded with the captain to alter

course; but he was clapped in irons, and went down with the ship. They say

that only one officer survived because others were prevented from leaving

the stricken vessel.

Most of the bodies were washed ashore at Thurlestone, a few miles to

the west. There used to be a depression in the village green which marked

the place where many of the seamen had been buried in a mass grave; this

has now been asphalted to make a carpark. Then in the mid – 1960s a child

digging in a sand dune found a bone. He showed it to a man on the beach who

happened to be a doctor and identified it as human. Further digging

revealed the skeletons of ten men, small in stature and buried in five –

foot intervals -- perhaps these had been washed up after the mass burial.

No scrap of clothing or equipment was found, and finally the bones were

thrown into a lorry and consigned to a rubbish tip. Even though two

centuries have elapsed since their deaths, one feels that the men of the

“Ramillies” deserved better. The ship still lies six fathoms down in the

cove which which has borne her name since 1760, and Wise’s Spring on the

cliffs is called after one of the seamen who scrambled ashore with the tiny

band of survivors.

PORTENTS OF DISASTER

Great pains are taken when first launching a vessel so as to ensure

good fortune, and one of the most important portents is the ritual bottle

of champagne which must break first time ( the liquid may be a substitute

for the blood of a sacrifice ). It is interesting that the various ships to

bear the name “Ark Royal” have always been lucky; for example when the

World War 11 vessel sunk there was minimal loss of life. The original ship

dated from Elizabethan times and had a crucifix placed beneath the mainmast

by the captain’s mistress; this apparently secured the good fortune for all

her successors. On the other hand there are vessels which seem perpetually

unlucky, some even jinxed and quite incapable of escaping misfortune.

Brunel’s fine ship the “Great Eastern” was launched in 1858 after

several ominously unsuccessful attempts. She ruined the man in whose yard

she was built, and caused a breakdown in Brunel’s health – he died even

before her maiden voyage. And despite her immense technical advantages, she

was never successful as the passenger - carrying vessel.

In 1895 she was in port in Holyhead. When the “Royal Charter” sailed

by, homeward bound from Australia, the passengers expressed a desire to see

her and their captain was only too pleased to oblige. However, the ship

strayed off course and a wild storm blew up. The ship was wrecked, with

great loss of life. Some of the trouble was attributed to the story of a

riveter and his boy who were said to have been accidentally sealed to the

famous double hull. Unexplained knockings were heard at various times but

although searches were made, nothing was found. When the vessel was broken

up at New Ferry, Cheshire, in 1888 it was rumoured that two sceletons were

discovered, their bony fingers still clenched round the worn – down hammers

which had beaten in vain for rescue.

The “Victoria” was commissioned on Good Friday, the thirteenth of the

month – and if this were not ill-luck enough, the fact that her name ended

in ‘a’ was considered another bad sign. In 1893 she sank with heavy losses

after a collision during the manoeuvres in the Mediterranean off Beirut,

and interestingly, various things happened which indicated calamity: two

hours earlier a fakir had actually predicted disaster, and at the time of

the collision crowds had gathered at the dockyards gates in Malta, drawn by

an instinctive apprehension of impending doom. At the same time during

lunch at a Weymouth torpedo works the stem of a wine glass had suddenly

cracked with a loud retort; and in London’s Eaton Square the ship’s Admiral

Tryon was seen coming down the stairs at his home. He was in fact aboard

the “Victoria”, where he survived the impact but made no effort to save

himself. As he sank beneath the waves he is said to have lamented: “It was

all my fault” – and so it was, for he had given the incorrect order which

led to the collision.

Generations after her loss the “Titanic” is still a byword for

hubris. In 1912 the “unsinkable ship” struck an iceberg on her maiden

voyage and went down with 1 500 passengers and crew. Again, a variety if

omens anticipated the disaster: a steward’s badge came to pieces as his

wife stitched it to his cap, and a picture fell from the wall in a stoker’s

home; then aboard the ship a signal halliard parted as it was used to

acknowledge the ‘bon voyage’ signal from the Head of Old Kinsale lighthouse

– and the day before the collision rats were seen scurrying aft, away from

the point of impact. After the calamity Captain Smith, who went down with

the ship, is rumoured to have been seen ashore.

One cause of the “Titanic” disaster is said to have been an unlucky

Egyptian mummy case. This is the lid of an inner coffin with the

representation of the head and upper body of an unknown lady of about 1000

bc. Ill-fortune certainly seemed to travel with the lid – first of all the

man who bought it from the finder had an arm shattered by an accidental gun

shot. He sold, but the purchaser was soon afterwards the recipient of the

bad news, learning that he was bankrupt and that he had a fatal disease.

The new owner, an English lady, placed the coffin lid in her drawing –

room: next morning she found everything there smashed. She moved it

upstairs and the same thing happened, so she also sold it. When this

purchaser had the lid photographed, a leering, diabolical face was seen in

the print. And when it was eventually presented to the British Museum,

members of staff began to contract mysterious ailments – one even died. It

was sold yet again to an American, who arranged to take it home with him on

the “Titanic”. After the catastrophe he managed to bribe the sailors to

allow him to take it into a lifeboat, and it did reach America. Later he

sold it to a Canadian, who in 1941 decided to ship it back to England; the

vessel taking it, “Empress of Ireland” , sank in the river St Lawrence. So

runs the story, but in reality the coffin lid did not leave the British

Museum after being presented in 1889.

The former prime minister, Edward Heath, in his book “Sailing” (1975)

revealed that he too had experienced the warnings of ill omen. At the

launch of the “Morning Cloud 1” the bottle twice refused to break, and at

the same ceremony for the “Morning Cloud 111” the wife of a crew member

fell and suffered severe concussion. This yacht was later wrecked off the

South coast with the loss of two lives, and in the very same gale the

“Morning Cloud 1” was blown from the moorings on the island of Jersey, and

also wrecked. Meanwhile, the Morning Cloud 11” had been launched without

incident and was leading a trouble free life with the Australian to whom

she had been sold.

As recently as December 1987 a strange case came to light as a result

of a Department of Health and Social Security enquiry into why members of a

Bridlington trawler crew were spending so much time unemployed. In

explanation, Derek Gates, skipper of the “Pickering”, said that putting to

sea had become impossible: on board lights would flicker on and off; cabins

stayed freezing cold even when the heating was on maximum; a coastguard

confirmed that the ship’s steering repeatedly turned her in erratic circles

and in addition, the radar kept failing and the engine broke down

regularly. One of the crewmen reported seeing a spectral, cloth-capped

figure roaming the deck, and a former skipper, Michael Laws, told how he

repeatedly sensed someone in the bunk above his, though it was always

empty. He added: “ My three months on the Pickering” were the worst in

seventeen years at sea. I didn’t earn a penny because things were always

going wrong”.

The DHSS decided that the men’s fears were a genuine reason for

claiming unemployment benefit, and the vicar of Bridlington, the Rev. Tom

Wilis, was called in to conduct a ceremony of exorcism. He checked the

ship’s history, and concluded that the disturbances might be connected with

the ghost of a deckhand who had been washed overboard when the trawler,

then registered as the “Family Crest”, was fishing off Ireland. He

sprinkled water from stem to stern, led prayers, and called on the spirit

of the dead to depart. His intervention proved effective because the

problems ceased, and furthermore the crew began to earn bonuses for good

catches.

SAILORS’ LUCK

Sailors used to be very superstitious – maybe they still are – and

greatly concerned to avoid ill-luck, both ashore and afloat. Wives must

remember that “Wash upon sailing day, and you will wash your man away”,

and must also be careful to smash any eggshells before they dispose of

them, to prevent their being used by evil spirits as craft in which to put

to sea and cause storms.

Luck was brought by:

- tattoos

- a gold ear-ring worn in the left ear

- a piece of coal carried

- a coin thrown over the ship’s bow when leaving port

- a feather from a wren killed on St. Stephen’s Day

- a caul

- a hot cross bun or a piece of bread baked on a Good Friday

The last three all preserved from drowning. David Copperfield’s caul

was advertised for sale in the newspapers “for the low price of fifteen

guineas”, and the woman from the port of Lymington in Hampshire offered one

in “The Daily Express” as recently as 23 August 1904. One Grimsby man born

with the caul has kept it to this day. When he joined the Royal Navy during

World War 11 his mother insisted that he take the caul with him. Various

other sailors offered him up to L20 – a large sum for those days – if he

would part with it, but he declined.

For over two hundred years now a bun has been added every Good Friday

to a collection preserved at the Widow’s Son Tavern, Bromley – by –Bow,

London. The name and the custom derive from an eighteenth – century widow

who hoped that her missing sailor son would eventually come home safely if

she continued to save a bun every Easter. Some seamen had their own version

of this, and would touch their sweetheart’s bun (pudenda) for luck before

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