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THE TALE OF THE
YOUNG TEAZER

MAHONE BAY

Nova Scotia is a peninsula and there are very few locations within its borders where you can stand more than fifty miles from the ocean, so what book of Nova Scotian ghost stories would be complete without a tale of a phantom ship?

There are quite a few ghost ship stories to be found in Nova Scotia, so many that one wonders why all of these fabled ghost ships haven’t been written up by the Coast Guard as a maritime traffic hazard.

There is the well-reported phantom ship that sails up and down the Northumberland Strait, the empty drifting Mary Celeste, and Captain Kidd’s famous treasure ship. Yet the Mahone Bay tale of the Young Teazer has long been a favourite of mine.

Back in the early 1800s privateering was a profitable but dangerous profession. Privateering was a barely legal form of piracy. A captain would apply for a letter of commission from his monarch and/or ruler, and then would set out to capture every enemy vessel he could.

Every captured vessel and sometimes its crew, if they could be easily taken, were brought in to the naval commission of the pirate’s home country for a suitable reward. These captured ships would be converted and put to use in the fleet, sometimes as privateers themselves. Ships were swapped back and forth like bubble gum baseball trading cards.

Such was the case of the Young Teazer. Originally the property of a Spanish slaver, she was captured and sold at Halifax in 1811. She was refitted and then served as a packet vessel, sailing between Liverpool and London, under the very practical name of the Liverpool Packet.

When the War of 1812 broke out, the Liverpool Packet was refitted yet again and received a privateer’s commission from the British government. As a privateer, this small, fast fifty-four by eighteen-and-a-half foot vessel was very successful. She single-handedly captured more than a dozen enemy vessels with the help of five cannon and a crew of forty-five. Eventually, though, she was captured by the American vessel, Thomas. She was sold at auction again and renamed the Young Teazer.

Are you keeping score? So far the Young Teazer has been a Spanish ship, a British commercial vessel, a British privateer, and now an American privateer.

Her new master, young lieutenant Frederick Johnson, took command of her in 1813, directly following his capture and release by the British forces, and therein lies the heart of the tale. You see, Lieutenant Johnson was captured by the British with his previous vessel and had signed a parole note promising that he would return to his home town and never take up arms against the British forces again. Yet no sooner had he returned to Maine than he signed on as the master of the Young Teazer.

Some might think poorly of young master Johnson for breaking his signed word, but the fact was that he had signed the parole promise under duress. Besides, he was a career military man and knew no other trade. At this time in history, if you wanted to be a member of the American fleet, you had best be resigned to fighting the British and the Canadians.

So off he sailed, but he might as well have stayed at home. His bad luck hadn’t changed a whit. No sooner had he set sail than a pair of British warships caught him and the Young Teazer just outside of Mahone Bay Harbour, on June 26, 1813.

In an effort to escape his pursuers, Lieutenant Johnson turned the Young Teazer into Mahone Bay Harbour, hoping to take shelter behind Great Tancook Island. This should have been an easy trick, given the many islands that clustered and cluttered up the waters of the harbour.

The Young Teazer fired a blast from her cannon and turned into the wind. The British bracketed him with their own cannon fire. Johnson was outnumbered and outmaneuvered, cut off at every turn.

Not wanting to hang for breaking his parole promise, Lieutenant Johnson set fire to the Young Teazer in a desperate attempt to escape. He hoped that he and his men might row out of the reach of the blaze in their lifeboats and escape in the smoke and ensuing confusion. Alas, he had forgotten to take into consideration the ample cargo of gunpowder the Young Teazer had been carrying with future sea battles in mind. As the flames reached the powder kegs, the entire ship went up in an explosion that rocked the shores and rattled the window panes of the nearby town of Mahone Bay.

There were few, if any, survivors aboard the doomed Young Teazer. The records regarding this matter vary wildly. It is a fact that the body of Lieutenant Frederick Johnson was lost to the careless tossing of the waves.

The fire-gutted hull of the Young Teazer, scorched clear down to the waterline, was towed into Chester Bay on the following day and sold off as salvage. What was left of the hull was used as the foundation of what is now the Rope Loft Restaurant in downtown Chester. The keelson, a timber fastened above and parallel to the keel of the ship for additional strength, was used to construct a large wooden cross that is now a part of St. Stephen’s Church in Chester.

To this day, residents and passing ships claim to have seen the ghost of the Young Teazer sailing through the mist and the moon-light of Mahone Bay Harbour, just rounding the hook of Great Tancook Island. The hot tongues of a ghostly raging fire are seen licking at the ragged sails, and the spirits of the restless dead sailors still hang and burn in the rigging. Pragmatic party-poopers point out that this is nothing more than the light of the moon filtered through the nimbus clouds and night fog. Other wiser folk have declared that the vision is nothing more than the silhouetted mast of a tall spruce tree seen through evening fog as the sun sets, but I’ve never been one to listen too closely to practical thinkers. Ask any old-time sailor and he’ll tell you one truth: every ship has her own soul, a spirit as specific and individual as fingerprints.

I think the Young Teazer had been transformed so many times that she simply looked at her sinking as one more refit. Now she prowls the mists and the darkness of the Mahone Bay water, faith-fully keeping her final station.

Nearly two hundred years later, Mahone Bay holds an annual Wooden Boat Festival, whose highlight is the reenactment of the burning of the Young Teazer. Two local vessels play the part of the British ships and a third takes the role of the Young Teazer. Shotgun cannons and a road flare help simulate the gun duel and the subsequent fire. This reenactment is followed by the symbolic burning of a scale model Young Teazer and afterwards, if weather permits, you can count on a rousing display of fireworks.

Visit Mahone Bay someday if you have the chance. You might be surprised to see the Young Teazer, sailing through the misty waters. Or perhaps you’ll happen upon the wandering ghost of Lieutenant Frederick Johnson, still seeking to evade British justice, haunting the dockyards and the shoreline of the harbour.

Don’t be scared; I’m only teasing.