(waves crashing) - With dropping sail and pennant that never a wind may reach, They float in sunless waters Beside a sunless beach. Their mighty masts and funnels Are white as driven snow, And with a pallid radiance Their ghostly bulwarks glow. Here is a Spanish galleon That once with gold was gay, Here is a Roman trireme Whose hues outshone the day. But Tyrian dyes have faded, And prows that once were bright With rainbow stains wear only Death's livid, dreadful white. (soft music) Everyone knows the sea is full of ghosts. As long as humans have
been traveling on water, people have lost their
lives in the depths. The sea is beautiful and full of life, but it is just as deadly and unforgiving. And yet, despite her wrath and blood lust, we go to her nonetheless in
search of any number of things: fortune, food, adventure, home. But what happens to those who
go to sea but never return? And perhaps, worse, what
happens when they do, but no longer among the
world of the living? For hundreds, even thousands of years, people have reported seeing ghost ships or otherwise ghostly phenomena at sea. Specifically the term "ghost ship" was used by old mariners
to refer to any ship found at sea without its crew, something that actually
wasn't all that unheard of in the 1800s due to a
wide number of reasons. Sometimes the crew abandoned ship, other times a storm took
them all to a watery grave without harming the boat, and sometimes everyone died
in a mutiny or other fight or sometimes kidnapped by pirates. But today, ghost ship is a term that also refers to
literally a ghostly ship or a ship inhabited by ghosts. Today we'll take a dive into the depths of some of those stories. Some you may have already heard of. Thousands of people have seen
haunted apparitions at sea, but surely not all of these eyewitnesses were lying about what they saw. Odds are they really did see something, but if not a ghostly ship
from beyond the grave, then what was it? There's actually a scientific explanation. Come learn with me. But first, let's hear from
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for sponsoring this video. And now let's get back to
learning about some spooky stories of the haunted seas. (soft music) I want to preface answering the question in the title of this video with setting the scene a little bit. We'll get to the reasons and explanations in the last section. So first, allow me to take you on a tour of some dark tales of famous ghost ships, starting with the ghost ship Palatine. Samuel Adams Drake once wrote in 1883, "I would rather be wrecked
anywhere than upon Block Island." Block Island, which lies off
the coast of Rhode Island was smack dab in the middle of a number of high traffic shipping lanes, meaning that it was an extremely easy wrecking ground for ships. In fact, people called "wreckers" often stayed on the island,
luring ships into shore and then killing the crews, after which they would split the cargo and the money amongst themselves. In 1738, The Palatine, which was really called
The Countess Augusta, was voyaging from southwest
Germany towards Philadelphia and Virginia carrying
240 German immigrants. The ship was plagued with bad
luck from the very beginning. First, they had contaminated water causing many aboard to become gravely ill, and then a number of storms
drove them off course northward, losing time, after which
Captain George Long died and First Mate Andrew Brook took over. As food on the ship became scarce, he started charging the
ailing passengers for rations. At last the coast of America drew near but a raging snowstorm blinded Brook, and the ship wrecked on Block Island. This is the part of the story where things get a little bit confusing. According to the surviving
crew of the ship, Brook took everyone ashore in a lifeboat, abandoning the passengers. The residents of Block
Island pleaded with Brooke to go rescue the passengers,
and eventually he agreed, after which the Islanders
took the near dead passengers into their homes, nursing
them back to health and personally rowing out
to save what belongings they could still find. And then they buried the 20 dead. No one's sure if the wreck
of the ship was burned or repaired and sent to Philadelphia, but the stories don't end there. According to a man named Joseph
P. Hazard, fantastic name, it was the Block Islanders
themselves who were actually wreckers who lured the ship to
its demise with fake lights, after which they murdered the passengers and then burned the ship. Some Block Islanders say that
a woman named Mary Vanderline died protecting her possessions and that between Christmas and New Year, you can see her ghost on
the burning ship out at sea and hear her screams. Or maybe it's only the wind. Who knows? For obvious reasons, the Block Islanders didn't appreciate this account of events. Regardless of what
actually happened though, it seems that the
Palatine didn't stay dead. In 1811, a Block island named
Dr. Aaron C. Willey wrote, "The people who have always lived here are so familiarized to the sight that they never think of
giving notice to those who do not happen to be present, or even of mentioning it afterwards. The light looks like a blaze
of fire six or seven miles from the northern part of Block Island. Sometimes it's small, like the
light from a distant window. Sometimes it's as big as a
ship and wavers like a torch. It was large and gently
lambent, very bright, broad at the bottom and
terminating acutely upward. I saw it again on the
evening of December the 20th. It was then small, and I
supposed it to be a light on board of some vessel,
but I was soon undeceived. It moved along, apparently
parallel to the shore, for about two miles, in the
time that I was riding one at a moderate pace." Some said that this ghostly
light on the sea was God sending the palatine back
to punish the wreckers responsible for her passenger's deaths. But others who lived on Block Island had a different explanation. On the ship were two passengers
simply named Short Kate and Long Kate who survived the wreck and settled on Block Island. According to Block Island historians, one of them had strange
beliefs and behaviors and was casting spells to
bring the ghost ship Palatine back from the grave. The Palatine isn't the only ghost ship believed to have been
an omen or a punishment. In fact, the most famous one
you may have actually heard of. Yes, the Flying Dutchman wasn't
just a ship in "SpongeBob" or "Pirates of the Caribbean",
it was allegedly a real ship. The first written mention
of it cropped up in 1790 in John MacDonald's "Travels,
in Various Parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, During a Series of Thirty Years and Upwards." (chuckles) God, those 1700s book titles never understand brevity, do they? John wrote, "The weather was so stormy that the sailors said they
saw the Flying Dutchman," but after the book was published, dozens and dozens of sailors began writing down that they
too had seen the ghost ship. In actuality, the legend
of the Flying Dutchman had been floating around the Seven Seas for years before this, in particular, around
the Cape of Good Hope. (child crying) Okay. (chuckles) They say she is a ghostly scholar. Scholar? I'm the ghostly scholar. They say she is a ghostly schooner, immersed in foggy rough waters that she travels fast
no matter the weather. But of course, most of the sightings occurred during a storm. The Flying Dutchman is widely
considered to be a bad omen, a sign of death to come. The most famous sighting happened in 1881 when the English naval
ship the H.M.S. Bacchante recorded a sighting. The man who later became King George V serving as a midshipman,
spotted the Flying Dutchman with Prince Albert Victor at 4:00 a.m. off the coast of Australia. They wrote, "A strange red
light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of
which light the masts, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as
she came up on the port bow. The officer of the watch from
the bridge clearly saw her, as did the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at
once to the forecastle; but on arriving there was no
vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship was
to be seen either near or right away to the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm." Another crew mate who had
actually seen the ship first then fell to his death
off of the top mast. In another incident in 1835, another British ship nearly collided with the Flying Dutchman, which was sailing at
top speed towards them only to disappear to
thin air before impact. This seems to be a trend
with the Flying Dutchman because in 1939, a group
of people in Cape Town claimed that they saw
her sailing towards shore before vanishing suddenly. But how did the Flying Dutchman become a ghost ship in the first place? Well, apparently she was, in life, a part of the Dutch East
India Company's fleet. While sailing to Amsterdam along the route between the Netherlands
and the East Indies, which traded in spices, tea and fabrics, the Flying Dutchman
encountered a terrible storm. Going by the most widely accepted lore, the Flying Dutchman's captain was a man named Captain Hendrick Van der Decken, who was filled with, not only
gumption, but a lot of hubris. As the ship plowed through the storm, many on the crew begged him
to turn the ship around. Some stories even say
that the crew mutinied, but Van der Decken wouldn't listen. Notoriously declaring that
the ship would make it around the Cape even if it
had to sail until doomsday. Those words acted like a curse because indeed the ship
would do just that. According to legend, the Gods, or some say the devil himself,
infuriated by his resistance trapped the captain's soul on the ship. But some say the devil said to the captain that he could free himself
from his watery prison by earning a woman's love. And so once every seven years, the Flying Dutchman's captain
is free to walk ashore in search of his true love. Considering that no one has
seen the Flying Dutchman since World War II, who knows? Maybe he finally got lucky. The problem with the Flying
Dutchman story though is that we have no proof that the Captain Van
der Decken ever existed, but plenty of captains just
like him absolutely did. The Cape of Good Hope was a
notorious bad weather zone, but it was also a very valuable shortcut. Uncountable ships lost
their lives in its waters due to their overzealous captains. Any one of them could
be the Flying Dutchman. The Flying Dutchman has been
seen all over the world, but oddly enough not seen
much if at all in New England, a notoriously superstitious
coastal region. The late 1600s through the 1700s we're kind of New England's
heyday for supernatural mayhem, which we'll get more
into in the next video. Good old Salem,
Massachusetts is most famous for it after all, what with
all the witch murders and such, but Salem has its own ghost ship too. I could have sworn I'd
mentioned Reverend Cotton Mather in a video before, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out which one it was. Turns out I got him mixed
up with his weird father, the Reverend Increase
Mather that I talked about in last year's Christmas video. Lots of weird first
names, lots of Mathers. Anyway, Cotton Mather was just as weird as Increase Mather was. For one thing, he was a prominent voice in the Salem witch trials, which we won't get into today too much, but Cotton Mather, though
he later claimed disdain for the witch trials after they were over, still had a major hand in
some of the executions, most infamously that of
Minister George Burroughs, who was accused of witchcraft by people who were angry with him
over his debt issues. One of the eyewitnesses
to Burroughs' execution, Robert Calef, wrote in his book, "More Wonders of the Invisible World," "Mr. Burroughs was carried
to the cart with others through the streets of Salem to execution. When he was upon the
ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his innocency, with such solemn and serious expressions as were to the admiration of all present. His prayer, which he
concluded by repeating the Lord's Prayer, was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness, as such fervency of spirit, as was very affecting
and drew tears from many, so that it seemed to
some that the spectators would hinder the execution. The accusers said the black
man stood and dictated to him. As soon as he was turned,
Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a horse, addressed himself to the people, partly to declare that he, Mr. Burroughs, was no ordained minister, partly to possess the people of his guilt, saying that the devil
often had been transformed into the Angel of Light. And this did somewhat appease the people, and the executions went on." Mather went to great lengths
to justify Burroughs' execution in order to reinforce
his own righteousness. While on a tour of the Witch
History Museum in Salem, the tour guide included a factoid that I'd never heard before, that Mather had dug up
Burroughs' body after he was dead and boiled his skull to keep for himself as a sort of scientific prize that he had the skull of the devil. Well, unfortunately,
basically the only mention of that tidbit that I can find online is, well, in reference to the
Witch History Museum tour. So no idea if it's true
or not, but if it is, I wouldn't be surprised. Mather later on went to
seek presidency at Harvard, which he failed at multiple times, and so instead went and helped
to establish Yale University, which also happens to be the
alma mater of a certain, hmm, guy. Not that Bed Baulmer has anything to do with the Salem witch trials, but I'm not saying he doesn't either. But beyond the witch trials, Mather considered himself something of a New England historian. Today we need to look at
one of his 400 stories that he wrote in his lifetime, writing apparently nonfiction tales of life in America for
readers in England to enjoy. This story in particular
took place in 1675 and followed a young couple
arriving in Salem, Massachusetts aboard the ship the Noah's Dove. People in town are
suspicious of the couple, but a group of colonists headed
home to England for a visit, aboard the Noah's Dove's
return voyage, go anyways. As they board the ship, a
raven flies over the wharf and lands on one of
the town clock's hands, which pushes it forward 10 minutes. The superstitious townspeople
who were already nervous became irate and fights
broke out between passengers and their friends and family
over whether to stay or go. At this moment, the weird young couple steps aboard the ship, the wife is crying and as she wails, the wind comes in and carries
the Noah's Dove out to sea where it is caught in a terrible storm. The people of Salem are
sure that the ship has sunk. But on the fourth day when the storm ends, a ship is spotted a
ways out on the horizon. Despite high winds that
should be keeping it offshore, the ship flies straight towards shore. Reverend (laughing) Zebeity Stepin, another
extremely normal name, begins reciting the 46 Psalm to quell the towns people's fears. The ship, now visibly the Noah's Dove, continued towards shore
and once near enough, the strange young couple
could be seen on its deck holding each other, their
faces devoid of fear. Then right as the ship may run aground, its mass collapse amidst a
crash of thunder and lightning and the Noah's Dove sinks beneath the sea. Alas, its wreck is never found, and so the ship everyone
saw in Salem that day was surely an apparition
from beyond the grave. The Mary Celeste is a stranger
case than the rest of these. For one thing, it was one
if not the first ghost ship to give the new world its
own genre of nautical myth. Brian Hicks writes in "Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True
Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew: "For some time, the Mary Celeste became arguably the most infamous ship in the world, inspiring countless stories, radio plays and, eventually, movies. It has taken its place
alongside the legend at the Flying Dutchman, but ultimately a
comparison of the two ships is not a fair measure: the
saga of the Mary Celeste is infinitely more frightening because there is no question
that this legend is true." On December 5th, 1872, the crew of British ship the Dei Gratia spotted a ship 400 miles east of Azores. When they discovered it
was the Mary Celeste, they were shocked, not only
because it had departed New York a long time ago and was
supposed to have landed in Genoa, Italy by now, but also because everyone
on board was missing. When searched, the Dei
Gratia crew discovered the ship's charts and crew
belongings were still on board as well as its cargo and a six month supply of food and water. While there was three
and a half feet of water in the bottom of the ship, everything else appeared
to be completely normal. As soon as the story reached
the news, people were confused. The Captain Benjamin Spooner
Briggs was a levelheaded, respected and extremely
well trained captain and had thought the journey so safe, he even brought his own
family on board with him. The ship logs final entry
was on November 25th and discussed how they had
endured some bad weather. Given that the cargo and ship were intact, pirates clearly weren't the culprit and there was no evidence
of onboard foul play either. Recent researchers have deduced that the most likely explanation is that the crew was probably
using a faulty chronometer and ended up going in the wrong
direction into rough seas. Plus, on its prior voyage, the Mary Celeste had been carrying coal and had been newly renovated, which could easily mess
up the ship's pumps, which would explain the
disassembled ship pump that the Dei Gratia search
party discovered on board. This would've made it nearly
impossible for the crew to know how much water
that the ship was taking on and with land nearby the
risk of possibly sinking may have prompted Captain Briggs to command everyone to abandon ship, but there are other theories too. Some theories blame a sudden
water spout, an iceberg, a submarine earthquake, noxious fumes from the leaking
alcohol cargo on board. But in the end, we'll never
truly know what happened to the ship and her passengers. Brian Hicks continues, "There has never been a clear
consensus on any one scenario. It is a mystery that has
tormented countless people, including the families of the lost sailors and hundreds of others who tried in vain to solve the riddle. The Ghost Ship may be the best example of the old proverb that the sea
never gives up its secrets." The tale of the Mary Celeste
was largely popularized by friend of the channel,
Arthur Conan Doyle, in one of his earliest
published short stories, and in doing so, he added new
and interesting spicy details to the story that definitely weren't true, but helped to rocket
the legend even further into permanent immortality. Details like the lifeboats and
knickknacks left on the ship or a still warm meal on a table. Some later authors claimed
that the crew was eaten by the kraken and some
claimed that it was aliens. Others blamed the not even
nearby Bermuda Triangle. It wasn't until 1942
when Charles Eddie Faye in collaboration with
the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts
publish an actually truthful book of research on the story. Side note, while on my trip
to Salem, I was informed that it's apparently pronounced
pub-ety. (sighing) Anyway, you may remember me mentioning the Peabody Essex Museum
in my video on Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet because they allegedly have Blackbeard's skull, but
tragically they weren't open when I was there for me to find out. The mystery remains I guess. Well, not all legends of the haunted sea are restricted to ships that sank. Of course, some ships
populated by the dead are still with us. One of the most famous is
Long Beach's own Queen Mary, which unfortunately has been closed since the pandemic began so I can't go show you the
inside myself like I plan to. It's also closed because
she's literally sinking and currently undergoing
desperate renovations to keep her afloat. But anyone who's ever
heard of the Queen Mary has probably heard of her in the context of her many ghost stories. The Queen Mary first
sailed in 1937 from England and later carried troops
during World War II under the moniker the Gray Ghost, because well, she was painted gray and sailed so quietly and quickly. The nickname would prove prophetic. She took her final voyage in 1967 and has lived in Long Beach,
California ever since, serving instead as a tourist attraction banking off of her many,
many ghost stories. Before the pandemic, you
could stay onboard the ship in one of her many state rooms resulting in a lot of tourists
reporting seeing ghosts. Apparently over 150 different spirits have been reported on the ship along with temperature fluctuations, the smell of perfume or cigars, disembodied laughter or
talking or whistling, and of course, full body
apparitions or ghost lights. One commonly cited ghost
is a man in blue overalls and a large beard named Half-Hatch Harry, who haunts a certain doorway
because apparently in life he was a fireman who was
crushed under that very door, a true story. Another ghost is that of an
engineer in the engine room or women and children
near the first class pool who leave watery footprints on the ground where there's no way anyone alive could possibly be swimming. There's something so
captivating about the idea of haunted marine vessels
that just hits you in a way that haunted
buildings on land don't in quite the same way, but why? (dramatic music) In December, 1950, an old
man named Marcheen MacDonagh spoke to the United
Press ominously saying, "The bay is full of ghosts, ships of the dead, lost ships come back. I remember the other night, a
little boy from the cottages down yonder ran to me in terror
and said he saw a white ship moving out of the water,
strange music coming from it. We all hoped he was just
trying to give us a start. but the next night Paddy
O'Laughlin, the fiddler, saw the same thing. And believe you me, it sobered him. I don't like it when those ships that should be at rest put into port. It means trouble for
the world's sea-lanes. They are putting in again,
there's no doubt about that. What's going to happen, I don't know, but something bad is brewing." I suppose if we're
getting really technical, we have to ask the question,
if ghost ships are real, then how If they don't have a soul in order to become a ghost? We hear sometimes about ghost trains, even ghost cars, but beyond that, the world of ghostly inanimate
objects is quite slim. Is it restricted then to vessels? In 1863, a ship builder named Samuel Guppy had some interesting
thoughts on this quandary. "It appears very clear that something comes out of the human hand, and that something affects
the piece of living wood, as the sensitive plant; and
of dead wood, as a table." He suggests that the act of
building and creation itself lends human life to the objects we create, therefore, in a way, giving them a soul. This train of thought
may be a big part of why so many Victorian ghost legends
involve haunted objects. Candlesticks, utensils, instruments, and chairs being thrown through the air. In fact, many spiritualist
claims of paranormal phenomena often involved these objects
or the building itself, such as the wrapping sounds used to communicate with the dead or moving tables or
slamming doors and windows. The "Fetishism of the Commodity
and Its Secret" describes "The form of wood is altered
if a table is made out of it. Nevertheless, the table
continues to be wood, an ordinary sensuous thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which
transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with
its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its
wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if
it were to begin dancing of its own free will". Even so, when haunted
objects exist within a house, we usually don't think
of the object as haunted. We attribute haunted
nest to the house itself because the object is not the
vessel for the human soul. The home is. The homes we create become
the vessels of our souls so long as we live there, and therefore can be used
by us even after death. And so, as ships become our homes at sea, it's no wonder that they continue to do so taking on a ghostly spirit
long after the ship has wrecked or its passengers are gone. A factor in why we're
so attached to the idea of these old and decrepit,
formerly populated places is a concept called "angstlust" which causes us to be
simultaneously repulsed by and drawn to places that
are no longer inhabited by the people that built
them, nor anyone after. Ghost towns, abandoned buildings, the ruins of ancient places,
and of course, shipwrecks. All of these things have
now built an industry upon people who go
explore them and show us the crumbling remains of
what used to be a home or a bustling place full of life, a place where people fulfilled their hopes and dreams or lost them. They remind us how fickle
and temporal the things and lives we build are. Wrecks and haunted ships for us are an even more stark
and isolating source of that angstlust, because
when those people died, they were often far, far from home in search of something,
returning to something, just trying to survive or
being taken against their will. There is a deep significance
here in particular for the enslaved people
being trafficked from Africa on the Middle Passage, thousands of whom never saw land again and were committed for
eternity to the sea. Over the years since the fall of the transatlantic slave trade, many ships in those same
waters have reported seeing the specs of former slave ships. In fact, the legacy of slavery
has had an immense impact on the idea of sea hauntings at large, having produced mythos
of ghost slave ships being driven by the ghost
of the enslaved people it once imprisoned. Many of these sightings
come from a place of guilt in slavery's wake with many white seamen, especially those who formerly
sailed on slave ships, being haunted by them still. It makes sense when you think about it, as sailor lore often believed that a ship and its crew were one. A ship you once sailed
never truly leaves you, for better or for worse. In the book "Middle
Passage" by Charles Johnson, the narrator observes just
before the ship sinks, "It was impossible to
tell where the ship ended and sailor began or, for that matter, to clearly distinguish what was ship, what sailor, and what sea, for in this chaosmos of
roily water and fire, formless mist and men flying everywhere, the sea and all within it
seemed a churning field that threw out forms indistinctly." All this can explain why
so many people at sea would easily have been in a head space to mistake certain sea
phenomena for ghosts while out on the ocean. But over the thousands of years people have been going to sea, they've been seeing spooky
phenomena on the water. And there's no way that all of them were just lying about what they saw. Were they? While it may seem strange, there's actually a number
of scientific reasons why people may have seen
what they saw while at sea. The first one that would
easily explain a number of ghost ship sightings
is an optical illusion called a Fata Morgana. Fata Morgana is actually a mirage that can be seen either on land or sea. It's named after a friend of the channel, Morgan le Fay from Arthurian Legend because according to the stories, she would use those illusions to lure sailors into her schemes. Fata Morgana gives the illusion of things floating above land or water
as if literally flying, and only comes about when very specific weather conditions occur. Basically, a layer of cold
air near the ground or water is topped with a layer
of warm air above it, and then light rays going
through the two layers are bent in interesting ways, causing the illusion of empty
space in the cold layer. This illusion has caused
people to not only see flying ghost ships, but also
mountains and cities at sea. There's actually a theory
that a Fata Morgana caused the iceberg that sank the Titanic to appear invisible, resulting in the ship being unable to see it in time. But who knows? Other scientific explanations are, well, the same reasons a lot of
people see ghosts on land. Sometimes it's a trick of the
sunlight or a weather anomaly. Sometimes they're literally just seeing another ship in the fog. Sometimes they're super drunk, a thing that sailors are
well known for being, and sometimes they're sick from eating spoiled or contaminated food. But sometimes there
really is no explanation, and all we're left with
is endless questions that will never have
answers because, well, the sea really does never
give up her secrets. I think in general, people at sea are in the perfect head
space to see a ghost ship. They're far from home in an environment that is inherently hostile to human life. Many people who went to sea
didn't want to be there. They may have been lonely or
homesick or literally sick, and many, many, many of them died there in horrible, tragic ways. We're all fascinated by shipwrecks. It's the reason we're so
obsessed with the Titanic or why the Flying Dutchman
was such a key star in "Pirates of the Caribbean," or why so much of our media
involves a broken ship filled with forgotten treasures
at the bottom of the sea. It's the cold, lonely romance of it all. The sea is as blood
thirsty as she is is fierce and she can take as much as she gives. And honestly, when you're
stuck on a ship for weeks or months with not much to do, it's no wonder a few
people may have decided to spin a spooky yarn or two
about seeing a ghost ship. Other stories were built
into something unbelievable over the years by writers
who weren't even even there, who were looking to
cash in on an old myth. And still, others really
did see something out there. Maybe you will too if you just keep your eyes on the horizon. Thank you for learning with me about some ghostly ships of yore. Let me know in the comments if you've got a favorite
haunted ocean legend. Bonus points if it's
one from your hometown or where you live. I'll see you at the end of the month for some more Halloween fun. This time a lot bloodier. But until then, wash thy
hands, wear thy mask, or else meet me at 5:00 at Davy Jones's locker for
an ass kicking. (laughing) (upbeat music)
