Sailors and other seafaring folk are extremely superstitious. Sea captains and trawlermen will happily chatter over a pint about the rough seas they’ve conquered, or the mighty fish they’ve caught in their nets, but the mention of ghosts and the like will send them running for their beds in terror. This book is a unique foray into sea-related superstition and folklore, and serves up several reasons as to why nautical-minded folk are wary of the waters around Britain’s coastline. Those old, creaky stories of ‘the one that got away’ may be laughed at no more, because by delving into this compendium of the uncanny you’ll see why sailors and their ilk are hesitant to dismiss maritime tales of monsters, mermaids, coastal spooks and spectres, and things that go bump on their boats.
Ever since man has had the ability to trawl and travel the rough seas around Britain, there have been weird stories told about unfathomable depths, remote bays and cliffs, and isolated beaches. Sea fishermen may seem like hardened souls; their faces battered by biting winds, their boats bombarded by grey waves, but in most cases, they would always respect those forces of nature and protect themselves accordingly. Sailors once believed it unlucky to take a woman on board a ship, and nowadays it is said to be of ill luck should a woman step over fishing nets. Others will tell you that, should they see a woman with a squint before setting sail, it would also be considered bad luck. In the book Folklore Myths & Legends of Britain it is written that ‘… prejudice against the Church is also found among merchant seamen’, and that any heavy storms encountered would be blamed on crews whose party consisted of priests and their ilk. Some words would not be mentioned on board ship by sailors, these include ‘salt’, ‘eggs’, ‘salmon’ and ‘knives’, as well as animal names such as ‘cat’, ‘hare’, ‘fox’ and more so the word ‘pig’. In fact, the pig is one animal that fishermen are said to fear the most, maybe due to the fact that they bear the Devil’s mark on their forefeet or because they can sense the wind. There is a legend that some fishermen dread the sight of a cormorant and often associate the bird with maritime misfortune. To spot such a bird at sea would mean imminent tragedy.
Some fishermen avoid setting sail on a certain day, whilst others carry out protective rituals before going to sea. Some boat owners refuse to purchase or have a boat built on a Friday, and in some cases to protect a boat against tragedy the shipwright will tie a red ribbon around the first nail he banged in. Other shipwrights may, for luck, embed pieces of silver or gold within the framework of the boats. When a large ship is christened you will often see someone smash a bottle of champagne against its bows, whilst Scottish fishermen were once said to sprinkle barley around a new vessel. Some fishermen would have their nets blessed before a trawl, which seems to contradict the belief that some seafaring folk opposed the Church. However, in some cases a blessing from a clergyman could actually be blamed if there was bad weather or a day of poor fishing. The weather, quite obviously, plays a great part in the traditions and superstitions of sailors, hence the fact that it is considered to be unlucky to whistle at sea. Those foolish enough to do so will trigger a storm.
Whatever their beliefs, those accustomed to the seas paid great attention to superstition. In the early nineteenth century it was known for sailors to purchase a caul to take on board their ship. A caul is the amniotic sac that some children are born in, hence the saying, ‘born in the bag’. Sailors would pay large sums of money for a caul, often referred to as a ‘sailor’s charm’, and having one on board gave the belief that no crew member would drown or suffer any other mishap.
I have no hesitation in admitting that I am afraid of the sea. It wasn’t just the suspenseful 1975 film Jaws that put me off paddling along Britain’s murky coastlines; I’ve always been terrified of those foaming waves as they lap away at rugged shores. Mind you, I’m even unsettled at the thought of a seemingly tranquil lake – maybe it is because, as a child, my imagination would run wild as I sat perched on river banks with my father and gazed, fishing rod at the ready, into the algae-ridden waters expecting some unseen monster to be lurking in the silted depths.
I’ve never learnt to swim, probably because I’ve felt no inclination to travel over or in the water. Family trips to seaside resorts would often leave me nervous, even as I waded into water just a few feet deep – I was petrified of possible encounters with jellyfish or stumbling and plummeting into some unseen hole. The oceans of the world are truly alien environments. I find it fascinating that science continues to investigate the depths of limitless space, and yet right in front of our noses our seas roll out as inhospitable abodes; places so dark and inaccessible that only trawlers and brave divers dare venture. There is indeed nothing more atmospheric than watching powerful waves smash into an eroded cliff face on a stormy night, or to drive or walk along a coastal road on a hot day to the soundtrack of gulls, as grey waters glisten for miles. There is something, too, about the roaring sea that suggests a lack of control: no human dare claim to have conquered such an abyss and as we sit, unsteadily on these plates we call land, we are surrounded by that blue void, which at any moment could wipe us all away.
It is estimated that around 70 per cent of the earth’s surface is covered in water – that’s a frightening statistic. Around 97 per cent of this coverage consists of salt water, the rest being fresh water from lakes and rivers. Great Britain – the largest island of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – is surrounded by a handful of large salt-water bodies: these being the Irish Sea, the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, which is the second largest of the world’s oceanic divisions, covering some 26 per cent of the earth’s surface. The Irish Sea is approximately 576ft at its deepest point. It separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain, and is connected to the Celtic Sea (which is approximately 650ft at its deepest point) in the south by the St George’s Channel, and to the Atlantic Ocean in the north by the North Channel. The North Sea (which covers some 290,000 square miles and has a maximum depth of around 2,300ft) sits alongside the English Channel (which separates southern England and northern France, and is at its widest at the Strait of Dover), and is classed as a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean. The North Sea, according to Wikipedia, is ‘located between Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium’.
These great bodies of water have, for so many years, been navigated and fished. Their contents have been catalogued by science and almost every nook, cranny and crevice mapped. However, despite harbouring a bewildering variety of creatures, the waters around Great Britain exude further mystery. The ferocious waves continue to swallow ships – some having never been seen again – whilst other vessels line the shores like eerie, stranded skeletons as wrecks, half-consumed by the mud. Strange things have been reported by reputable seamen: from terrifying monsters to unexplained lights, which seem to slip in and out of the black deep. Not all of these stories are simply far-fetched tales spouted from the lips of drunken sailors in creaky old coastal inns, and the yarns pertaining to spectral ships and the like are not mere smugglers’ creations, spun to ward off curious trespassers from places where illegal goods have been stashed. The seas around Britain take no prisoners; they rarely give up their dead and the esoteric secrets they hide only occasionally surface to leave us perplexed.
It is my fear of the sea that has driven me to write this book; a follow-on, to some extent, from my 2012 book Shadows in the Sky: The Haunted Airways of Britain. However much we fear the inky depths of space, or the steaming, inhospitable jungles of this planet, the crashing waves that batter ships on our coastlines are a bleak reminder of another mysterious place so close to home. Many books have been written concerning monster-inhabited lochs or eerie rivers, but this look at our haunted coasts is something different.
As children we visit the seaside to build sandcastles under warm summer skies and, as visitors, we cavort among the waves, yet someone, somewhere else in Britain may have had a more frightening or seemingly supernatural experience; maybe a monstrous head rearing above the foam, or an ancient vessel floating on the horizon only to suddenly vanish.
It was poet Matthew Arnold who wrote ‘The sea is calm tonight’ in his work Dover Beach, and yet was quick to speak of how ‘… now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’. Meanwhile, William Shakespeare spoke of ‘sea nymphs’ in his Full Fathom Five, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his epic poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner, wrote of the ‘Water, water, everywhere … nor any drop to drink.’ For me, these haunting words sum up all of my fears of the seas I’ll be speaking of in this tome, and I hope you enjoy the maritime mysteries I have to offer. Of course, I don’t expect you to believe in any of these tales – especially if you are one to scoff at yarns pertaining to sea monsters, ghosts and the like – but I hope you’ll agree that this volume of British sea riddles is impressive at least. So maybe, just maybe, you’ll reconsider and, with open mind, venture forth next time onto that boat, pier or beach, and when casting an eye out across the glistening surface, you’ll feel the same trepidation as me for the shadows on the sea.
Neil Arnold
The author. (Jemma Lee Arnold)