+ bermuda triangle +
Bermuda's famed ''Devil's Triangle" has no monopoly on strange accounts of spooky apparitions and mysterious disappearances at sea
Should you be one of those who believe that the infamous Bermuda Triangle has a monopoly on the number of ships which vanished within its parameters a quick look at the rest of world's unsolved mysterious disappearances at sea would be most revealing. cursory review of enigmatic episodes within Ring Neptune's realm reveals scores, if not hundreds, of vessels which have simply vanished without a trace from every corner of the globe and many inland seas as well. Though many of these events can be laid to some form of explainable phenomenon the overwhelming majority simply defy logical explanation.
By their failure to suggest a plausible reason for the occurrence the mystery of what might have happened inflames our imaginations into conjuring a host of fertile "maybes" and "what if solutions. And this is precisely why any form of disappearance as the result of unknown or unexplainable causes continues to titillate readers of every age and calling. To further dispel the myth of the Bermuda Triangle's monopoly on mysterious vanishings let's first venture into the chilled waters of the North Atlantic to explore some of the baffling riddles which abound in this region.
WHAT HAPPENED ABOARD THE SEABIRD?
Rhode Island's rocky shores are as good a region as any to start since they became the site of one of the earliest recorded ship disappearances on the Atlantic Coast. In May 1850, the discovery of the mysteriously abandoned fishing schooner Sea Bird became the cause of much speculation on the waterfront.
The seas had been unusually calm for days when the well-founded fisherman abruptly sailed onto the rocks near Newport. Spectators who witnessed the grounding were disturbed that the mishap occurred on a bright spring day without seeming explanation. How could any crew be so ham-handed? The answer was simple. There was no crew. The large vessel was totally devoid of all humanity - a "ghost ship" by any definition. The would-be rescuer's concern turned to distress when they boarded the grounded vessel only to discover the only life aboard Sea Bird to be a dog, a cat and a parakeet!
Though the ship was totally deserted, a boiling kettle was found on top of a blazing stove and the table was neatly set for a meal for eight. Sixty dollars in easily visible coins and cash was found in the captain's cabin thereby ruling out any possibility of piracy, mutiny, or foul play. On deck, a small skiff was still secured in place on its chocks. Below, the odor of tobacco smoke still hung heavy in the crew's quarters, but otherwise there was no trace of a single person, nor so much as a vague clue to their fate. To a man, eight souls had simply vanished into thin air! What had happened? Why? How? Questions were many, answers few.
A review of the Sea Bird's records indicated her captain was John ; Durham, lately of Middletown, Connecticut. Reportedly a family man with strong ties to the Methodist church, Capt. Durham was never heard from again. The last entry in the captain's log indicated a peaceful voyage; the sighting of Brenton's Reef. several miles offshore shortly after dawn. The fish hold was filled with a fresh catch of cod, sea bass and mackerel. Later, the crew of a lobster fisherman signified they had exchanged "all well" signals with the Sea Bird only a few hours before she was found derelict and abandoned on the rocks.
The mystery of the Sea Bird unexpectedly soon deepened when a Spring squall lashed the Newport area while the ghost ship's ownership was being determined prior to a salvage attempt. When the skies finally cleared and the seas calmed Sea Bird was gone like her crew, never to be seen again! Drifting off of the rocky pinnacle that briefly imprisoned her, the vessel sailed off on her own into apparent oblivion. Like a ghostly apparition she had appeared out of nowhere, swung on the rocks impaling her for a few days, and then just as mysteriously vanished from sight altogether. Sea Bird was the first of many unsolved mysteries which occurred off the North American coast.
THE ELLEN AUSTIN'S DEADLY GHOST SHIP
Farther north a few decades later in the turbulent waters off of Newfoundland an even more unexplainable puzzlement befell a ship by the name of the Ellen Austin. She was a fair-sized ship, 210-ft in length and weighing in at 1812-tons. She was a three-massed schooner built of white oak at Damariscotta, Maine, in 1854. It is possible that she was constructed for the Tucker family of Wiscasset, Maine, a community that had become very wealthy from the shipping industry.
Wiscasset was the home to Maine's richest sea captains and some the world's most magnificent sailing vessels graced her harbor over the years.
The Ellen Austin changed hands a number of times and, in 1857, was ferrying passengers between New York and Liverpool. By 1880 the schooner was a packet ship of the Grinnell, Minturn & Co.'s Blue Swallowtail line, running between London to New York. In 1883, the ship was wrecked along the American coast under Capt. AJ. Griffin.
In 1944, a retired British Naval officer named Rupert T. Gould wrote up the story of the Ellen Austin in a book called The Stargazer Talks. Captain Gould wrote several nautical narratives chock full of oddities, astronomical tips, sea serpents and the like. Gould had heard the story of the Ellen Austin from a fellow seaman and was the first to put it to paper.
According to Naval gossip, the Ellen Austin left London in 1881 bound for St. John's, Newfoundland, under the command of Capt. Baker. The Ellen Austin was halfway between England and Newfoundland when the crew sighted an unidentified schooner. The schooner sat still in the water and eventually the ships came within hailing distance.
The ship did not answer to any hails, so the captain and four of his crew boarded with weapons drawn, ready for any brigandage. Upon being boarded, the ship proved to be shipshape and in well-maintained condition. Its sails were furled and its rigging was intact. There was no sign of the crew and there was no evidence of any violence.
Mysteriously, the ship's log was missing and the nameplates had been removed from the bow.
The captain selected a crew to take the ship to St. John's, ordering them to sail the vessel in tandem with the Ellen Austin. Two days later the Ellen Austin and the nameless schooner were set upon by a storm, and contact between them was lost.
Once the storm lifted, the schooner was sighted sailing erratically. When it was boarded, investigation proved she was once again deserted, with the replacement crew having eerily vanished, with no indication of what had happened or where they had gone. The bunks had not been slept in and the new logbook had disappeared.
The captain refused to let the ship go. He insisted and forced another reluctant crew aboard the mysterious and apparently deadly ship. Shortly thereafter yet another squall sprang up. The derelict schooner was traveling behind the Ellen Austin at a distance of ten ship-lengths, but contact between the ships was again lost in the mist.
This time when the storm lifted, the strange ship was nowhere to be seen. The Ellen Austin continued on its voyage, and neither the unknown vessel nor the second crew made it to St. John's. They were never seen again.
An equally peculiar sequence of events took place only three years later, again in the waters off the coast of Newfoundland.
GONE MISSING: CAPTAIN JAMES AND THE RESOLVEN
On the 27th of August 1884, the brig Resolven left Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, for Snug Harbour, Labrador, to load up with fish. The Resolven was a soft-wood vessel, built in Nova Scotia, and weighed in at 143-tons with a crew of six. She was under the command of a Capt. James, who had arrived in Harbour Grace with a cargo of salt for John Munn and Company. She left port on that August day with three passengers.
A mere two days after the ship's departure, word reached her home port that the Resolven had been towed into another community by the HMS Mallard. The ship had been picked up, abandoned, with no sign of the crew and passengers.
When the ship was discovered, the sails were set and a fire was still burning in the galley. There was no wreckage nor sign of violence. The ship's small boat was gone, and the general condition showed the crew had left in a great rush.
The ship's log contained no clues, and no explanation for their sudden departure was ever found. When the ship was located, a large iceberg was seen nearby. Some suggested that the ship had encountered ice, the crew had abandoned ship, and then were swamped and drowned. The small boat was never found, nor were any bodies.
The steamer Lady Glover was sent to tow the vessel back to Harbour Grace. She was eventually sold at auction, and purchased by John Munn and Company. The Resolven was eventually lost, having gone ashore under the command of Capt. Fred Cole at Northport, Nova Scotia, on the 27th of July 1888.
The story could have ended there, with the strange disappearance of Capt. James and crew explained away as a freak accident. But the enigma surrounding the Resolven did not end there.
The Resolven had been lost at Northport after being sent there for a load of lumber.
The C.W. Oulton, under Capt. William Fitzgerald, was dispatched with a second load of lumber to replace that lost on the Resolven The C.W. Oulton was lost as it attempted to bring the lumber home. Following that, the brig Anastasia was given the same task. It too failed, and under Capt. T. Bransfield, was lost at the same location as the C. W. Oulton, along with a third cargo of lumber.
A fourth ship, the, SS Iceland, was dispatched to retrieve whatever lumber could be salvaged from the Oulton. In doing so, the Iceland destroyed and damaged numerous fishing traps in the vicinity of the wrecks, causing so much havoc that the owners were forced to pay heavy damages. Whatever curse had caused Capt. James and his men to vanish seemed to taint all business associated with the Resolven, even long after the ship's demise.
What was behind the curse of the Resolven? What happened to her crew, and crew of the strange vessel encountered by the Ellen Austin? No one can say. The sea guards her secrets jealously, and we may never know the answer to these questions. What does remain certain is that the North Atlantic is a force to be reckoned with, and one that will never be tamed by the will of man.
THE MYSTERY OF THE MARION
The icy waters off Newfoundland and the Grand Banks still taunt many with the saga of the vanished black fishing schooner Marion. Though its sudden disappearance might be laid to two possible fates, close scrutiny of the facts reveals neither outcome to be a realistic resolution. Marion's perplexing tale began on a balmy June day in 1915 when the 600-ton fisherman left her home port pier at Fortune Bay and pointed her jib toward the famed Grand Banks. Aboard were 17 highly experienced seasoned seamen under the command of Capt. Isaac Skinner. Sailing into a rising sun after clearing the channel buoys at St. Pierre, Manon was seen heading due east under a cloud of sail by a number of inbound passing vessels. This was the last anyone ever saw of the proud fisherman. Her crew would never see home again.
Days, weeks, months passed and no word was heard from the black schooner. The families of the crewmen began to voice concern. Where were their men? Why hadn't they returned with their usual rich harvest from the sea? Had some mishap befallen the Marion? The vessel's owner, the Burke family of St. Jacques, began to make inquiries. Had anyone seen or heard from the now long overdue Manon. No replies were forthcoming. The vessel carried no Marconi wireless.
Two of the four Burke brothers - Denis and Jon - went to St. Pierre to see what they could learn from the local waterfront denizens. Their investigation turned up one interesting bit of information. The Burkes soon learned there had been a bitter fight between Marion's skipper Isaac Skinner and the captain of a French steam trawler at the Cafe de France the night before the schooner went to sea. Brawny six-foot Skinner had easily decked the wiry Frenchmen in their brawl with the result that the bloodied trawler captain vowed to get even with the Marion's skipper. The following day, the French trawler slipped her lines and followed the Marion to sea. Five days later the French trawler limped back into St. Pierre in dire need of repairs to its damaged stern following a supposed "collision" with a channel marker.
Curious about the trawler's strange "accident," the Burke brothers wanted to know if the Frenchman had made good his threat to seek vengeance on the Marion by ramming and sinking her with a loss of all 17 hands? A full investigation was launched by the local authorities. But the French captain staunchly maintained his innocence; denying ever having gone after the black schooner on the open sea. Further, he was able to identify the iron marker his trawler had accidentally backed into. Photos revealed its flotation chamber still showed evidence of the dents and paint smears of the trawler's damaged stern.
While the formal investigation was underway another possible excuse for Marion's disappearance was offered. German U-boats had occasionally been stalking and sinking Grand Banks fisherman with their deck guns. Two fishing vessels had been sunk by U-boats in recent months, but in both instances survivors had taken to their dories as lifeboats and were soon picked up by other vessels. Had Marion been torpedoed or sunk in this manner, her crew captured and taken back to Germany to be interned? Though some seamen felt this was a plausible explanation others held the view German submariners were already too cramped and too tight on rations in their "iron coffins" to take hapless fishermen aboard for a 3000-mile trek back across the Atlantic.
As speculation raged about Marion's fate her mysterious disappearance spawned a legend that became a popular sea chanty sung throughout Canada's Maritime Provinces. With each passing year the legend grew especially because Marion's vanished crew left behind so many grieving widows and children. The end of World War One revealed no record of any fishing crew having been captured at sea and taken prisoners by any U-boat. Though the French trawler captain maintained his innocence throughout his lifetime others allegedly claimed he confessed on his death bed to having scuttled the Marion. With so much notoriety surrounding the schooner's disappearance and the Burke family's offer of a handsome reward for information about the incident it would seem one of the French trawler's crew of 14 might have been motivated to confess the truth. No one ever claimed the reward and to this day the Marion's fate remains unknown.
STRANGE HAPPENINGS ON THE PACIFIC COAST
Nor is the Pacific Coast bereft of strange evennesses. In fact America's West Coast enjoys more than its share of unexplained happenings, some of them most bizarre. The disappearance of the schooner J. C. Cousins continues to baffle seafarers around the mouth of the Columbia River even though it happened more than 120 years ago in October 1883.
Dawn broke over the picturesque Pacific northwest with clear skies and a slight wind as a group of Coast Guardsmen of the US Revenue Cutter Service, forerunner of the US Coast Guard, watched the schooner J. C. Cousins steady progress toward Clatstop Spit, near Ilwaco, Washington. Moments later the schooner suddenly swung around as if out of control and headed straight inshore for a sandy bank fringing the seaway. To the Coast Guardsmen's and other witnesses utter amazement, the ship careened to a stop as its keel bit into the silt with a full brace of wind still billowing her sails.
Rushing to the grounded vessel's aid, the sailors were astonished to discover no one aboard. The magnificent ship was lifeless, having instantly transformed into an abandoned, grounded hulk. Though the J. C. Cousins was deserted the usual macabre traces were left behind; an untouched meal on the cabin table, the galley stove still warm, potatoes boiled dry in a pot. All of the crew's personal possessions neatly hung in their crowded quarters below. There was absolutely no evidence of a fight, mayhem nor even a minor brawl. Proceeding down river toward the sea under the command of Capt. Joshua Zeiber, a notation in the ship's log made in mid-river gave only the time and location as well as the assurance that, "All's well." Yet a strange fate had somehow intervened.
Though everything was obviously not "all well" aboard the abandoned schooner no clue as to what possibly may have happened ever surfaced. The vessel, salved and later sold at auction, was the subject of a review board, but all roads led to dead ends in the investigation that followed. Captain Zeiber and his crew of twelve hail and hearty seafarers, though always in sight of the Columbia River shoreline, simply disappeared into thin air never to be seen again. Not one body nor shred of evidence of any kind ever washed ashore. Robbery or mutiny was ruled out as a possible cause owing to the fact that the schooner was heading out to sea in ballast with a freshly recruited crew containing no known troublemakers, Further testament to a non-violent phenomena was the finding of a loaded Colt revolver in the captain's cabin with six .45-cal bullets in the cylinder. In a deck box near the mainmast was a neat untouched stack of cork life preservers. A dozen possible explanations ranging from the presence of an unknown gaseous substance forcing the crew to abandon ship to the inviting lure of ladies of the night were offered as possible explanations, but none answered the question of the crew's fate. Why and how did they to a man manage to disappear on the Columbia River? No solution was ever forthcoming.
INLAND WATERS: LAKE ERIE, THE EERIE LAKE?
In 1977, Jay Gourley wrote a book called The Great Lakes Triangle which, as you can probably guess, attempted to collect various weird vanishings and bizarre incidents from the Great Lakes' region in order to "prove" that there was a place more frightening than the more popular Bermuda Triangle. Needless to say, it didn't become quite the media sensation they hoped it would.
While Gourley finds far more mystery in the Great Lakes other than Erie (especially Ontario and Michigan) he does provide a few interesting tidbits. For example: On 2 December 1942, two ships, the Admiral, a tug boat, and the Clevco, an oil tanker, disappeared within ten miles of Cleveland upon Lake Erie. Both ships had left Toledo tied to each other with a towline. The idea being that occasionally ships would run aground upon the uneven bottom of the lake and the tug would easily be able to "yank" the ship oifthe inconvenient embankment. On this occasion, the Admiral was in the lead with Clevco in tow. At 4 am, a lookout on the Clevco noticed that the towline was no longer leading out over the water, but was actually leading down into the lake itself.
The inescapable conclusion was that the Admiral had somehow sunk to the bottom of the Lake with 14 men aboard it without a sound. The crew of the Clevco was understandably shocked by their discovery. So they stopped the ship in its course and radioed the Coast Guard for assistance. Their position was almost exactly 25 miles away from downtown Cleveland. The Coast Guard dispatched two cutters and a few motorboats from Cleveland to help. When the Coast Guard arrived at the location, they found nothing. Neither ship was at the coordinates the Clevco had broadcasted. But it gets weirder.
When daylight broke, the Civil Air Patrol (remember this is WWII) joined in the search. Pilot Clara Livingston spotted the Clevco 15 miles from its original location within ten miles of Cleveland itself. She reported its location and then claimed that the ship simply disappeared as a "cloud of snow" descended upon the ship. She then claimed that her radio failed her, so she returned immediately to base. For the rest of that day, the Coast Guard was at a loss at where the ship was.
Eventually, the cutter Ossipee spotted the barge and got within 150-ft when once more a "snow storm" cut them off from the ship and they were unable to rescue it. At 3:30, the Clevco once more established radio contact with the authorities. They claimed that their ship was adrift and unable to be steered. The Coast Guard informed them to release oil into the! water in order to help the search find the barge. At 4:40 pm, the Clevco ceased radio contact and was never j heard, nor seen, again. Early the next morning, two members of the crew ' were found dead, washed up along the Cleveland shore with Clevco lifejackets and stained with oil. Neither ship was ever found and no survivors were ever reported.
The book also lists the unusual circumstances behind eleven airplanes and five other ships that have been lost upon the Great Lake Erie. Perhaps one of the most interesting is the case of the vanishir skipper George Donner. Donner was in charge of the O.M. McFarland which was sailing on Lake Erie from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Lake Michigan. The ship made it with the entire crew intact, all except for Donner who j apparently vanished into thin air. While still upon Lake Erie, the skipper excused himself and went into his cabin. The second officer testified that he had heard Donner moving about within his cabin at 11:30 pm. The next morning, however, Donner didn't answer his door when knocked upon. Eventually, the second officer had to break down the door only to discover that George Donner was not within. A quick search of the ship revealed that Donner had simply disappeared without a trace.
A little more on Cleveland...
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
There you have it - a brief review of mysterious vanishings all around the North American continent. Though one can endlessly speculate and ponder what had happened in each of these mysteries the fact remains that there is little hope we will ever learn the truth; that their secrets will forever remain shrouded in an abyss of fanciful supposition. Yet quite remarkably, there is always the odd chance that some electrifying piece of evidence will emerge to complete the story; answer an unsolvable conundrum. That such things do sometimes happen - even if all too rarely - is best exemplified in the 1997 case of the ketch Ruth which suddenly disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in September 1996.
Gone with Ruth were the yacht's German owners Ralf Schilling, 33; and his wife Britta, 31. An all out search for the couple, who were last seen in the Canary Islands on a round-the-world voyage sailing odyssey, yielded nothing but empty blue sea. Both occupants were given up for lost - the ship sunk; two more hapless souls added to the lengthy toll of the Bermuda Triangle's countless victims.
Ten months were to pass before an astonishing discovery was made. Purely by chance, the British Royal Navy frigate HMS London found the sailless ketch Ruth adrift 500-km off Bermuda in the mid-Atlantic. "She looked very strange. She had no sails, the mooring lines were listlessly hanging over the sides and she appeared water-logged and totally derelict. We put a boarding party on her to investigate," said London's skipper, Cmdr. Lian Greenlees. His officers found clothes in the bunks, a book left open with a page marker, rotted food in the refrigerator, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, as if someone had just stepped off five minutes earlier with every intention of returning.
Checking Ruth's registration with authorities in Spain, Cmdr. Greenlees discovered the Schilling's had last been seen sailing west from the Canary Islands. Apparently they had sold their house to buy the boat and planned to sail around the world. Taking the forlorn vessel in tow, Cmdr. Greenlees set about making inquiries regarding the long overdue couple.
A chance phone call by the curious officer to Dusseldorf a week later brought startling results. To Greenlees' chagrin he discovered the "missing" Schillings were happily very much alive and safely back at their jobs in Germany! In fact, they had no idea the world considered them missing or lost at sea. It seems the Schillings believed their yacht had been stolen the previous fall when they discovered Ruth missing at her mooring after having visited some friends in the Canaries for a few days. Despondent over their loss, they returned to Germany after filing a missing vessel report which unfortunately never was properly recorded. As a result, the world press erroneously believed the couple was missing with their yacht while in actuality they were forlornly winging home on an airliner. Believing Ruth to have been stolen by modern pirates they felt the boat was gone for good.
"It was such a shock to have our boat found after all these months," Frau Schilling happily reported to journalists. "Now perhaps we can continue our voyage."
Rarely is the Bermuda Triangle cheated of another victim, yet in this case a kinder fate prevailed and all ended happily. The curse of the Bermuda Triangle had been broken; the "lost" had been found, and a couple reunited with their boat were able to complete their dream voyage. One can't help but wonder if similar absurdly simple explanations can be traced to many of the mysterious disappearances at sea?
Copyright Challenge Publications Inc. Jan 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved
AUTHOR :
by James, Preston Maudry
Bermuda's famed ''Devil's Triangle" has no monopoly on strange accounts of spooky apparitions and mysterious disappearances at sea
Should you be one of those who believe that the infamous Bermuda Triangle has a monopoly on the number of ships which vanished within its parameters a quick look at the rest of world's unsolved mysterious disappearances at sea would be most revealing. cursory review of enigmatic episodes within Ring Neptune's realm reveals scores, if not hundreds, of vessels which have simply vanished without a trace from every corner of the globe and many inland seas as well. Though many of these events can be laid to some form of explainable phenomenon the overwhelming majority simply defy logical explanation.
By their failure to suggest a plausible reason for the occurrence the mystery of what might have happened inflames our imaginations into conjuring a host of fertile "maybes" and "what if solutions. And this is precisely why any form of disappearance as the result of unknown or unexplainable causes continues to titillate readers of every age and calling. To further dispel the myth of the Bermuda Triangle's monopoly on mysterious vanishings let's first venture into the chilled waters of the North Atlantic to explore some of the baffling riddles which abound in this region.
WHAT HAPPENED ABOARD THE SEABIRD?
Rhode Island's rocky shores are as good a region as any to start since they became the site of one of the earliest recorded ship disappearances on the Atlantic Coast. In May 1850, the discovery of the mysteriously abandoned fishing schooner Sea Bird became the cause of much speculation on the waterfront.
The seas had been unusually calm for days when the well-founded fisherman abruptly sailed onto the rocks near Newport. Spectators who witnessed the grounding were disturbed that the mishap occurred on a bright spring day without seeming explanation. How could any crew be so ham-handed? The answer was simple. There was no crew. The large vessel was totally devoid of all humanity - a "ghost ship" by any definition. The would-be rescuer's concern turned to distress when they boarded the grounded vessel only to discover the only life aboard Sea Bird to be a dog, a cat and a parakeet!
Though the ship was totally deserted, a boiling kettle was found on top of a blazing stove and the table was neatly set for a meal for eight. Sixty dollars in easily visible coins and cash was found in the captain's cabin thereby ruling out any possibility of piracy, mutiny, or foul play. On deck, a small skiff was still secured in place on its chocks. Below, the odor of tobacco smoke still hung heavy in the crew's quarters, but otherwise there was no trace of a single person, nor so much as a vague clue to their fate. To a man, eight souls had simply vanished into thin air! What had happened? Why? How? Questions were many, answers few.
A review of the Sea Bird's records indicated her captain was John ; Durham, lately of Middletown, Connecticut. Reportedly a family man with strong ties to the Methodist church, Capt. Durham was never heard from again. The last entry in the captain's log indicated a peaceful voyage; the sighting of Brenton's Reef. several miles offshore shortly after dawn. The fish hold was filled with a fresh catch of cod, sea bass and mackerel. Later, the crew of a lobster fisherman signified they had exchanged "all well" signals with the Sea Bird only a few hours before she was found derelict and abandoned on the rocks.
The mystery of the Sea Bird unexpectedly soon deepened when a Spring squall lashed the Newport area while the ghost ship's ownership was being determined prior to a salvage attempt. When the skies finally cleared and the seas calmed Sea Bird was gone like her crew, never to be seen again! Drifting off of the rocky pinnacle that briefly imprisoned her, the vessel sailed off on her own into apparent oblivion. Like a ghostly apparition she had appeared out of nowhere, swung on the rocks impaling her for a few days, and then just as mysteriously vanished from sight altogether. Sea Bird was the first of many unsolved mysteries which occurred off the North American coast.
THE ELLEN AUSTIN'S DEADLY GHOST SHIP
Farther north a few decades later in the turbulent waters off of Newfoundland an even more unexplainable puzzlement befell a ship by the name of the Ellen Austin. She was a fair-sized ship, 210-ft in length and weighing in at 1812-tons. She was a three-massed schooner built of white oak at Damariscotta, Maine, in 1854. It is possible that she was constructed for the Tucker family of Wiscasset, Maine, a community that had become very wealthy from the shipping industry.
Wiscasset was the home to Maine's richest sea captains and some the world's most magnificent sailing vessels graced her harbor over the years.
The Ellen Austin changed hands a number of times and, in 1857, was ferrying passengers between New York and Liverpool. By 1880 the schooner was a packet ship of the Grinnell, Minturn & Co.'s Blue Swallowtail line, running between London to New York. In 1883, the ship was wrecked along the American coast under Capt. AJ. Griffin.
In 1944, a retired British Naval officer named Rupert T. Gould wrote up the story of the Ellen Austin in a book called The Stargazer Talks. Captain Gould wrote several nautical narratives chock full of oddities, astronomical tips, sea serpents and the like. Gould had heard the story of the Ellen Austin from a fellow seaman and was the first to put it to paper.
According to Naval gossip, the Ellen Austin left London in 1881 bound for St. John's, Newfoundland, under the command of Capt. Baker. The Ellen Austin was halfway between England and Newfoundland when the crew sighted an unidentified schooner. The schooner sat still in the water and eventually the ships came within hailing distance.
The ship did not answer to any hails, so the captain and four of his crew boarded with weapons drawn, ready for any brigandage. Upon being boarded, the ship proved to be shipshape and in well-maintained condition. Its sails were furled and its rigging was intact. There was no sign of the crew and there was no evidence of any violence.
Mysteriously, the ship's log was missing and the nameplates had been removed from the bow.
The captain selected a crew to take the ship to St. John's, ordering them to sail the vessel in tandem with the Ellen Austin. Two days later the Ellen Austin and the nameless schooner were set upon by a storm, and contact between them was lost.
Once the storm lifted, the schooner was sighted sailing erratically. When it was boarded, investigation proved she was once again deserted, with the replacement crew having eerily vanished, with no indication of what had happened or where they had gone. The bunks had not been slept in and the new logbook had disappeared.
The captain refused to let the ship go. He insisted and forced another reluctant crew aboard the mysterious and apparently deadly ship. Shortly thereafter yet another squall sprang up. The derelict schooner was traveling behind the Ellen Austin at a distance of ten ship-lengths, but contact between the ships was again lost in the mist.
This time when the storm lifted, the strange ship was nowhere to be seen. The Ellen Austin continued on its voyage, and neither the unknown vessel nor the second crew made it to St. John's. They were never seen again.
An equally peculiar sequence of events took place only three years later, again in the waters off the coast of Newfoundland.
GONE MISSING: CAPTAIN JAMES AND THE RESOLVEN
On the 27th of August 1884, the brig Resolven left Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, for Snug Harbour, Labrador, to load up with fish. The Resolven was a soft-wood vessel, built in Nova Scotia, and weighed in at 143-tons with a crew of six. She was under the command of a Capt. James, who had arrived in Harbour Grace with a cargo of salt for John Munn and Company. She left port on that August day with three passengers.
A mere two days after the ship's departure, word reached her home port that the Resolven had been towed into another community by the HMS Mallard. The ship had been picked up, abandoned, with no sign of the crew and passengers.
When the ship was discovered, the sails were set and a fire was still burning in the galley. There was no wreckage nor sign of violence. The ship's small boat was gone, and the general condition showed the crew had left in a great rush.
The ship's log contained no clues, and no explanation for their sudden departure was ever found. When the ship was located, a large iceberg was seen nearby. Some suggested that the ship had encountered ice, the crew had abandoned ship, and then were swamped and drowned. The small boat was never found, nor were any bodies.
The steamer Lady Glover was sent to tow the vessel back to Harbour Grace. She was eventually sold at auction, and purchased by John Munn and Company. The Resolven was eventually lost, having gone ashore under the command of Capt. Fred Cole at Northport, Nova Scotia, on the 27th of July 1888.
The story could have ended there, with the strange disappearance of Capt. James and crew explained away as a freak accident. But the enigma surrounding the Resolven did not end there.
The Resolven had been lost at Northport after being sent there for a load of lumber.
The C.W. Oulton, under Capt. William Fitzgerald, was dispatched with a second load of lumber to replace that lost on the Resolven The C.W. Oulton was lost as it attempted to bring the lumber home. Following that, the brig Anastasia was given the same task. It too failed, and under Capt. T. Bransfield, was lost at the same location as the C. W. Oulton, along with a third cargo of lumber.
A fourth ship, the, SS Iceland, was dispatched to retrieve whatever lumber could be salvaged from the Oulton. In doing so, the Iceland destroyed and damaged numerous fishing traps in the vicinity of the wrecks, causing so much havoc that the owners were forced to pay heavy damages. Whatever curse had caused Capt. James and his men to vanish seemed to taint all business associated with the Resolven, even long after the ship's demise.
What was behind the curse of the Resolven? What happened to her crew, and crew of the strange vessel encountered by the Ellen Austin? No one can say. The sea guards her secrets jealously, and we may never know the answer to these questions. What does remain certain is that the North Atlantic is a force to be reckoned with, and one that will never be tamed by the will of man.
THE MYSTERY OF THE MARION
The icy waters off Newfoundland and the Grand Banks still taunt many with the saga of the vanished black fishing schooner Marion. Though its sudden disappearance might be laid to two possible fates, close scrutiny of the facts reveals neither outcome to be a realistic resolution. Marion's perplexing tale began on a balmy June day in 1915 when the 600-ton fisherman left her home port pier at Fortune Bay and pointed her jib toward the famed Grand Banks. Aboard were 17 highly experienced seasoned seamen under the command of Capt. Isaac Skinner. Sailing into a rising sun after clearing the channel buoys at St. Pierre, Manon was seen heading due east under a cloud of sail by a number of inbound passing vessels. This was the last anyone ever saw of the proud fisherman. Her crew would never see home again.
Days, weeks, months passed and no word was heard from the black schooner. The families of the crewmen began to voice concern. Where were their men? Why hadn't they returned with their usual rich harvest from the sea? Had some mishap befallen the Marion? The vessel's owner, the Burke family of St. Jacques, began to make inquiries. Had anyone seen or heard from the now long overdue Manon. No replies were forthcoming. The vessel carried no Marconi wireless.
Two of the four Burke brothers - Denis and Jon - went to St. Pierre to see what they could learn from the local waterfront denizens. Their investigation turned up one interesting bit of information. The Burkes soon learned there had been a bitter fight between Marion's skipper Isaac Skinner and the captain of a French steam trawler at the Cafe de France the night before the schooner went to sea. Brawny six-foot Skinner had easily decked the wiry Frenchmen in their brawl with the result that the bloodied trawler captain vowed to get even with the Marion's skipper. The following day, the French trawler slipped her lines and followed the Marion to sea. Five days later the French trawler limped back into St. Pierre in dire need of repairs to its damaged stern following a supposed "collision" with a channel marker.
Curious about the trawler's strange "accident," the Burke brothers wanted to know if the Frenchman had made good his threat to seek vengeance on the Marion by ramming and sinking her with a loss of all 17 hands? A full investigation was launched by the local authorities. But the French captain staunchly maintained his innocence; denying ever having gone after the black schooner on the open sea. Further, he was able to identify the iron marker his trawler had accidentally backed into. Photos revealed its flotation chamber still showed evidence of the dents and paint smears of the trawler's damaged stern.
While the formal investigation was underway another possible excuse for Marion's disappearance was offered. German U-boats had occasionally been stalking and sinking Grand Banks fisherman with their deck guns. Two fishing vessels had been sunk by U-boats in recent months, but in both instances survivors had taken to their dories as lifeboats and were soon picked up by other vessels. Had Marion been torpedoed or sunk in this manner, her crew captured and taken back to Germany to be interned? Though some seamen felt this was a plausible explanation others held the view German submariners were already too cramped and too tight on rations in their "iron coffins" to take hapless fishermen aboard for a 3000-mile trek back across the Atlantic.
As speculation raged about Marion's fate her mysterious disappearance spawned a legend that became a popular sea chanty sung throughout Canada's Maritime Provinces. With each passing year the legend grew especially because Marion's vanished crew left behind so many grieving widows and children. The end of World War One revealed no record of any fishing crew having been captured at sea and taken prisoners by any U-boat. Though the French trawler captain maintained his innocence throughout his lifetime others allegedly claimed he confessed on his death bed to having scuttled the Marion. With so much notoriety surrounding the schooner's disappearance and the Burke family's offer of a handsome reward for information about the incident it would seem one of the French trawler's crew of 14 might have been motivated to confess the truth. No one ever claimed the reward and to this day the Marion's fate remains unknown.
STRANGE HAPPENINGS ON THE PACIFIC COAST
Nor is the Pacific Coast bereft of strange evennesses. In fact America's West Coast enjoys more than its share of unexplained happenings, some of them most bizarre. The disappearance of the schooner J. C. Cousins continues to baffle seafarers around the mouth of the Columbia River even though it happened more than 120 years ago in October 1883.
Dawn broke over the picturesque Pacific northwest with clear skies and a slight wind as a group of Coast Guardsmen of the US Revenue Cutter Service, forerunner of the US Coast Guard, watched the schooner J. C. Cousins steady progress toward Clatstop Spit, near Ilwaco, Washington. Moments later the schooner suddenly swung around as if out of control and headed straight inshore for a sandy bank fringing the seaway. To the Coast Guardsmen's and other witnesses utter amazement, the ship careened to a stop as its keel bit into the silt with a full brace of wind still billowing her sails.
Rushing to the grounded vessel's aid, the sailors were astonished to discover no one aboard. The magnificent ship was lifeless, having instantly transformed into an abandoned, grounded hulk. Though the J. C. Cousins was deserted the usual macabre traces were left behind; an untouched meal on the cabin table, the galley stove still warm, potatoes boiled dry in a pot. All of the crew's personal possessions neatly hung in their crowded quarters below. There was absolutely no evidence of a fight, mayhem nor even a minor brawl. Proceeding down river toward the sea under the command of Capt. Joshua Zeiber, a notation in the ship's log made in mid-river gave only the time and location as well as the assurance that, "All's well." Yet a strange fate had somehow intervened.
Though everything was obviously not "all well" aboard the abandoned schooner no clue as to what possibly may have happened ever surfaced. The vessel, salved and later sold at auction, was the subject of a review board, but all roads led to dead ends in the investigation that followed. Captain Zeiber and his crew of twelve hail and hearty seafarers, though always in sight of the Columbia River shoreline, simply disappeared into thin air never to be seen again. Not one body nor shred of evidence of any kind ever washed ashore. Robbery or mutiny was ruled out as a possible cause owing to the fact that the schooner was heading out to sea in ballast with a freshly recruited crew containing no known troublemakers, Further testament to a non-violent phenomena was the finding of a loaded Colt revolver in the captain's cabin with six .45-cal bullets in the cylinder. In a deck box near the mainmast was a neat untouched stack of cork life preservers. A dozen possible explanations ranging from the presence of an unknown gaseous substance forcing the crew to abandon ship to the inviting lure of ladies of the night were offered as possible explanations, but none answered the question of the crew's fate. Why and how did they to a man manage to disappear on the Columbia River? No solution was ever forthcoming.
INLAND WATERS: LAKE ERIE, THE EERIE LAKE?
In 1977, Jay Gourley wrote a book called The Great Lakes Triangle which, as you can probably guess, attempted to collect various weird vanishings and bizarre incidents from the Great Lakes' region in order to "prove" that there was a place more frightening than the more popular Bermuda Triangle. Needless to say, it didn't become quite the media sensation they hoped it would.
While Gourley finds far more mystery in the Great Lakes other than Erie (especially Ontario and Michigan) he does provide a few interesting tidbits. For example: On 2 December 1942, two ships, the Admiral, a tug boat, and the Clevco, an oil tanker, disappeared within ten miles of Cleveland upon Lake Erie. Both ships had left Toledo tied to each other with a towline. The idea being that occasionally ships would run aground upon the uneven bottom of the lake and the tug would easily be able to "yank" the ship oifthe inconvenient embankment. On this occasion, the Admiral was in the lead with Clevco in tow. At 4 am, a lookout on the Clevco noticed that the towline was no longer leading out over the water, but was actually leading down into the lake itself.
The inescapable conclusion was that the Admiral had somehow sunk to the bottom of the Lake with 14 men aboard it without a sound. The crew of the Clevco was understandably shocked by their discovery. So they stopped the ship in its course and radioed the Coast Guard for assistance. Their position was almost exactly 25 miles away from downtown Cleveland. The Coast Guard dispatched two cutters and a few motorboats from Cleveland to help. When the Coast Guard arrived at the location, they found nothing. Neither ship was at the coordinates the Clevco had broadcasted. But it gets weirder.
When daylight broke, the Civil Air Patrol (remember this is WWII) joined in the search. Pilot Clara Livingston spotted the Clevco 15 miles from its original location within ten miles of Cleveland itself. She reported its location and then claimed that the ship simply disappeared as a "cloud of snow" descended upon the ship. She then claimed that her radio failed her, so she returned immediately to base. For the rest of that day, the Coast Guard was at a loss at where the ship was.
Eventually, the cutter Ossipee spotted the barge and got within 150-ft when once more a "snow storm" cut them off from the ship and they were unable to rescue it. At 3:30, the Clevco once more established radio contact with the authorities. They claimed that their ship was adrift and unable to be steered. The Coast Guard informed them to release oil into the! water in order to help the search find the barge. At 4:40 pm, the Clevco ceased radio contact and was never j heard, nor seen, again. Early the next morning, two members of the crew ' were found dead, washed up along the Cleveland shore with Clevco lifejackets and stained with oil. Neither ship was ever found and no survivors were ever reported.
The book also lists the unusual circumstances behind eleven airplanes and five other ships that have been lost upon the Great Lake Erie. Perhaps one of the most interesting is the case of the vanishir skipper George Donner. Donner was in charge of the O.M. McFarland which was sailing on Lake Erie from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Lake Michigan. The ship made it with the entire crew intact, all except for Donner who j apparently vanished into thin air. While still upon Lake Erie, the skipper excused himself and went into his cabin. The second officer testified that he had heard Donner moving about within his cabin at 11:30 pm. The next morning, however, Donner didn't answer his door when knocked upon. Eventually, the second officer had to break down the door only to discover that George Donner was not within. A quick search of the ship revealed that Donner had simply disappeared without a trace.
A little more on Cleveland...
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
There you have it - a brief review of mysterious vanishings all around the North American continent. Though one can endlessly speculate and ponder what had happened in each of these mysteries the fact remains that there is little hope we will ever learn the truth; that their secrets will forever remain shrouded in an abyss of fanciful supposition. Yet quite remarkably, there is always the odd chance that some electrifying piece of evidence will emerge to complete the story; answer an unsolvable conundrum. That such things do sometimes happen - even if all too rarely - is best exemplified in the 1997 case of the ketch Ruth which suddenly disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in September 1996.
Gone with Ruth were the yacht's German owners Ralf Schilling, 33; and his wife Britta, 31. An all out search for the couple, who were last seen in the Canary Islands on a round-the-world voyage sailing odyssey, yielded nothing but empty blue sea. Both occupants were given up for lost - the ship sunk; two more hapless souls added to the lengthy toll of the Bermuda Triangle's countless victims.
Ten months were to pass before an astonishing discovery was made. Purely by chance, the British Royal Navy frigate HMS London found the sailless ketch Ruth adrift 500-km off Bermuda in the mid-Atlantic. "She looked very strange. She had no sails, the mooring lines were listlessly hanging over the sides and she appeared water-logged and totally derelict. We put a boarding party on her to investigate," said London's skipper, Cmdr. Lian Greenlees. His officers found clothes in the bunks, a book left open with a page marker, rotted food in the refrigerator, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, as if someone had just stepped off five minutes earlier with every intention of returning.
Checking Ruth's registration with authorities in Spain, Cmdr. Greenlees discovered the Schilling's had last been seen sailing west from the Canary Islands. Apparently they had sold their house to buy the boat and planned to sail around the world. Taking the forlorn vessel in tow, Cmdr. Greenlees set about making inquiries regarding the long overdue couple.
A chance phone call by the curious officer to Dusseldorf a week later brought startling results. To Greenlees' chagrin he discovered the "missing" Schillings were happily very much alive and safely back at their jobs in Germany! In fact, they had no idea the world considered them missing or lost at sea. It seems the Schillings believed their yacht had been stolen the previous fall when they discovered Ruth missing at her mooring after having visited some friends in the Canaries for a few days. Despondent over their loss, they returned to Germany after filing a missing vessel report which unfortunately never was properly recorded. As a result, the world press erroneously believed the couple was missing with their yacht while in actuality they were forlornly winging home on an airliner. Believing Ruth to have been stolen by modern pirates they felt the boat was gone for good.
"It was such a shock to have our boat found after all these months," Frau Schilling happily reported to journalists. "Now perhaps we can continue our voyage."
Rarely is the Bermuda Triangle cheated of another victim, yet in this case a kinder fate prevailed and all ended happily. The curse of the Bermuda Triangle had been broken; the "lost" had been found, and a couple reunited with their boat were able to complete their dream voyage. One can't help but wonder if similar absurdly simple explanations can be traced to many of the mysterious disappearances at sea?
Copyright Challenge Publications Inc. Jan 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved
AUTHOR :
by James, Preston Maudry
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