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
