Horror on the High Seas: The Pirates' House

I've been to Savannah, Georgia once in my life and I found it both charming and beautiful. The people were delightful, even if the weather wasn’t, and the history of the city is enthralling. Founded in 1733 by British General James Edward Oglethorpe as a buffer between His Majesty’s colonies and Spanish Florida and French Louisiana, she is full of wonderful sights and delicious restaurants. Her seafaring legacy is rich as well and, of course, that means a few piratical legends.


There is a place in Savannah known as The Pirate’s House which is now a restaurant but once, allegedly, housed a famous pirate. The freebooter in question is not actually known but locals call him Flint, after one of the many colorful characters in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. According to Jeff Belanger the opposite is true; Stevenson named his pirate Flint after a visit to Savannah and a stay at The Pirates’ House. Of course Belanger, in his book The World’s Most Haunted Places, throws out this off-handed “fact”:

With the exception of the pirate Jean Pierre Lafitte, who married a woman from the same neighborhood and came from a later era…

Given that Jean and Pierre Laffite were two separate men, probably never did more than glance over the rail of a ship at Savannah and were neither of them ever married, committing that snippet to paper does a deal of harm to any writer’s credibility.

That said, Belanger – who is “one of the world’s most visible and prolific paranormal researchers” according to the bio on the book jacket – tells us that he has spoken to people who have had unusual experiences at The Pirates’ House. As a number of these episodes seem to involve rum, it is no wonder that people are convinced the ghost haunting the restaurant is a pirate.

Belanger reports one particular night when Greg Profitt, who runs a walking tour of the city known as Savannah by Foot, was spending the night at The Pirates’ House on a dare. He was joined by Tony Cross, the darer if you will, and they turned the stunt into a fund raiser for leukemia research. Profitt reports that the two men “… heard a lot of noises…footsteps and banging on the walls and banging on the doors…” Perhaps to calm their jangled nerves, the men reached for a bottle of rum and Cross quoted Flint’s famous line from Treasure Island: “Darby, bring me more rum!”

The men poured out three shot glasses and, again according to Profitt, each took one and then the third glass “… just vanished with the rum in it. We watched it disappear.”

Other “spirit related” incidents at The Pirates’ House included glasses suddenly exploding or filling inexplicably with Spanish moss. Does, as Belanger asserts, the “… spirit of Flint in all his menacing glory still walk the Pirates’ House”? It’s hard to say. What I will say without question is that, given the handsome decor and mouthwatering fare available at the restaurant, as the pictures from Savannah for 91 Days attest, I would happily haunt the place were I an old, chain-rattling seadog.

With that, Happy Halloween Brethren. May your spirits be joyful and may you always have more rum.

Header: The Pirates’ House via Savannah for 91 Days

Horror on the High Seas: The Gunner's Daughter

The gun to which boys serving in the Royal Navy were tied or 'married' when being whipped.  On some ships it was superstition that if the boys were not whipped on a Monday, there would be no good winds the following week.  To 'hug' or 'kiss the gunner's daughter' thus meant a whipping.  When 'married to the gunner's daughter' for a flogging, the miscreant was tied to the four deck rings which held each cannon in place.  As the sailor was tied to the gun barrel, the saying 'you've got me over a barrel' comes from this time.  Sailors were whacked with a rope's end on the gun deck, where the ceilings were only a maximum of four feet six inches.  For more serious offences, requiring enough room to 'swing a cat' of nine tails, the punishment was carried out on the main deck.

~ from The Pirate Dictionary by Terry Breverton

Header: Cannon on the gun deck

Horror on the High Seas: Devil

The English word “devil” originated with the Greek word diabolos. This word in Greek did not mean some imp or demon but a slanderer (dia – across combined with ballein – to throw). The act of slander in Ancient Greek culture, and later in Rome as well, was so heinous that the word quite literally became demonized. By the medieval period it had morphed into the Middle English devil, a limb of Satan and later still Devil, Satan himself.


Sailors, much like any group of people who live and work in hostile and potentially deadly conditions, tend to both laugh at and fear evil. Use of the word “devil” and calling upon the Devil are not uncommon at sea, or at least they weren’t. When times are really tough, the essence of evil may be more helpful than the essence of sanctity. And, aside perhaps from Saint Brendan, there has rarely in any history been a saintly sailor.

Devil bolts are those with false clenches. As The Sailor’s Word Book notes, they were often used in contract built ships. They were ill thought of among blue water seamen and usually replaced fairly quickly once the ship was afloat.

A devil’s claw is a very strong split hook used for grasping chain cable. Devil is priming made by wetting and bruising black powder. Caulkers called the water line on a ship the devil, probably because it was the hardest part of the vessel to make air tight.

Devil is also used in weather signals and signs. Devil’s smiles are patches of sunshine streaming down through dark clouds, a sure sign that better weather is on the way. Sometimes the officer in charge – and particularly the captain – was said to have “the Devil’s smile”, considered a good sign that a prize might be in the offing. The Devil’s tablecloth is a particular portend of a south-easter off the Cape of Good Hope, where condensation from the impending storm forms a patch of fleecy cloud at the top of Table Mountain.

Devilry is the act of wanton trouble that is only inches from crossing over into crime. Sailors ashore, particularly after a long time at sea, were notorious for drunken devilry.

Men said that there was the Devil to pay and no pitch hot when there was necessary work to be done and no one stepping up to do it. This was also a phrase that indicated impatience with no outlet; rather an old sea-going form of “all dressed up with no place to go”.

Of course, it probably goes without saying that a sailor can all too easily be caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea. That term’s origin has been a source of debate for years but everyone understands its meaning well enough as we’ve all been there in one way or another.

Finally, in the very worst of circumstances and particularly in a vicious storm, an offering might be made to the Devil. In a gale that had torn his fore and main topmasts away, Charles Ellms tells us that the pirate Captain Lewis “… tore off a handful of hair and throwing it into the air used this expression, good devil, take this till I come.” Lewis must have had the Devil’s ear; despite the loss of his topmasts, he overtook the prize he was chasing.

Header: Sea Devil from a medieval manuscript

Horror on the High Seas: Nix's Mate

Out in Boston Harbor there sits a tiny speck of an island that, at first glance, almost appears to be man made. Known from about 1636 as Nix’s or Nixes Mate, the island is the site of a pyramid beacon run by the Coast Guard and on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.


In the 17th century, the island was large enough to mine for ship’s ballast, graze sheep and unload smuggled goods for reloading onto less suspicious vessels. Probably because of its continued use by smugglers and pirates, the place became notorious; from the time the island was granted to John Gallop in 1636, the good folk of Boston used it as a place of execution for those who committed crimes on the high seas.

Many legends have grown up around the fascination with piratical doings and the demise of scurvy seadogs on the island. One of the most popular stories explains the name of the island as well as why it is now just a speck of earth in Nubble Channel.

It seems that one Captain Nix put out to sea and was killed mysteriously one night in a violent storm. The next morning, the crew found their First Lieutenant – Nix’s mate – soundly sleeping with blood on his shirt. Assuming the worst, they clapped the man in irons despite his protests of innocence, and turned back toward Boston. The First Lieutenant was tried and found guilty, although he continued to tell anyone that would listen that he had not done the bloody deed. He was rowed out to the island and led to the gallows. There he made a promise to the people of Boston about the place where his corpse would hang as a warning. The island, he said, would be washed away to nearly nothing by the sea as proof of his innocence. With that warning on his lips, he died. Within a decade, the Lieutenant’s prophecy had come true and the people of Boston named the little island Nix’s Mate in his honor.

In fact, this story first appeared in 1883 in a purported historical entitled King’s Handbook of Boston Harbor by M.F. Sweetser. It is a charming tale, of course, but probably pure fiction. No one seems quite sure why the island is called Nix’s Mate and the continued use of its rock for ship’s ballast throughout the 17th century insured that it would errode with wind and tide to its present size.

The most famous pirate to swing in the sea breeze on Nix’s Mate was William Fly, whose story is curious enough to deserve a post of its own. Hanged in July of 1726, Fly went to his death with such steadfast obduration that he impressed that bitter witch hunter Cotton Mather himself.

Local legend has it that Fly’s spirit continues to cling to the place where he proclaimed not his innocence but his conviction that piracy was born of the harsh treatments allotted men in the merchant service. Treatments Fly referred to as “bad usage”. It is said that blue lights are seen hovering over the little pyramid beacon at Nix’s Mate on warm summer nights. They dance about in the dark air but disappear when a vessel pulls in for a closer look, flying up like embers out of a fire.

True or no, all sailors love a good ghost story and they are always so much more believable when the mate in question was put to “bad usage”.

Header: Nix’s Mate by Joe McGurl

Horror on the High Seas: The Revenge of Goodwife Cowtie

Mistress Agnes Cowtie was the kind of business owner that was more typical in her era than our Victorian ancestors would like us to believe. Though she was married to a respectable merchant named George Blak, she herself ran a shipping business that traded with England, Holland and France from the port of Dundee, Scotland. She had at least two grown sons who worked aboard her ships, possibly as officers but certainly as her representatives in trade in foreign ports. It was not at all unusual for Mistress Cowtie to be standing on the dock at Dundee, waving off her carrack Grace of God, as it headed out to the Netherlands.


Was Agnes anxious as she watched that ship sail off laden with both cargo and cannon? Most probably; the year was 1562 and the threat of English piracy surrounded the British Isles. More distressingly for merchants like Agnes and George (as noted here), this piracy went virtually unchecked. Even entreats from Queen Elizabeth herself could not pull freebooters away from their lucrative employments.

Grace of God was armed against such attacks and had, it seems, a relatively uneventful voyage to the port of Veere in the Netherlands. In her book She Captains, Joan Druett tells us that the sons of Agnes Cowtie were probably well known in that port city and may very well have been welcomed into some of the finest homes. They traded their merchandise for sundry items but Druett notes most particularly “6 cast pieces and 16 small pieces of ordinance”. Cannon were just as profitable in such times as finished cloth.

With their business done the Cowtie boys steered their ship away from Holland and may have been headed to the Bay of Biscay, perhaps for a stop around the Gironde to load up on wine. They would never make their destination. Their ship was attacked by a group of English ships. This little flotilla seems to have been led by those notorious pirates from Poole, Captain Clynton and Captain Purser. Grace of God put up a fight in which both of Agnes’ sons were killed. Probably shortly thereafter, she struck to her attackers and the horror really began.

The pirates boarded the carrack and, in a fashion that would become standard among freebooters, took their aggressions out on the crew that had the temerity to defend themselves. Under the guise of discovering where the Cowties had hidden the hard specie, the pirates set into the most brutal of tortures.

Men had splinters of wood shoved under their fingernails. The wood was coated with tar before being set ablaze to burn whatever flesh it touched. When this had no effect, the men’s hands were dipped in hot tar and set ablaze. Fingers and in one case a whole hand to the wrist were lost.

The misery continued with other men, or in at least two cases the same poor sailors, being subjected to the gruesome torture of woolding. In this process rope knotted in strategic places was placed around the head and slowly tightened by the use of a stick. Michael Kuntz gives an eye-witness account of this type of torture as inflicted on German peasants by mercenaries in his book The High Road to the Stake:

They put a rope around another one’s head and twisted it so tight with a wooden billet that the blood leaped from his mouth, nose and ears.

Eyes would be forced from their sockets, as Druett notes “…bulg[ing] out … like eggs.” This simple but terrible operation left seamen both blind and deaf.

Eventually the madness subsided and, almost miraculously, some of the pitifully abused crew of Grace of God managed to make their way back to Dundee despite the taking of their ship as prize.

Agnes Cowtie, doubtless both revolted and enraged when she saw the men she called her “especial mariners” and heard of the senseless deaths of her sons, went ballistic. She began a campaign of appeal to the highest officials and nobles in Scotland claiming the need for redress for not only herself but for the loss of her sons and the inexcusable state of her wounded men. In one particularly touching letter, she and George lamented being “… brought to such extreme wreck and misery by invasion of English pirates, their bairns and servants slain…” Bairns, of course, being the affectionate Scottish word for children.

It may have been that Mistress Cowtie’s timing was impeccable but more likely her shrewd choice of ears to chew and her particular indignation worked more thoroughly than any previous objections. Her petitions went as far as the throne; King James himself wrote to Queen Elizabeth entreating her as “You’re most loving affectionate brother and cousin” to put a stop to the unconscionable predations being perpetrated by her subjects. And she did.

The Poole pirates, most particularly Clynton and Purser, were rounded up via a clever ruse at sea and brought before the recently ensconced Admiralty Judge with the remarkable name of Sir Julius Caesar. This judge had no inclination to cast a blind eye and put the nefarious pirate captains to “questioning” similar to that they had employed against Mistress Cowtie’s men. Both captains were sentenced to hang. Brought down to the gallows at Wapping, Clynton and Purser wore their finest clothes which they distributed to friends from the scaffold. They also answered questions as if appearing in some reality show’s reunion episode. Eventually they were both “turned off the ladder” and in Admiralty Court tradition “… there they hanged till from that ebb two tides had overwhelmed their bodies…”

The English crown, in most unusual fashion, paid not only Agnes Cowtie redress for her lost ship and goods, but also allotted money to her maimed and crippled men for their loss of livelihoods. Whether this satisfied the Goodwife or not, history does not say, but one hopes that other freebooters learned this lesson: don’t mess with Mistress Cowtie.

Header: Tudor era carrack via Wikipedia

Horror on the High Seas: The Lost Dragon

In 1655 the Dutch East India Company was a thriving commodity. Running ships from Holland around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean to what is now Indonesia and back again was old hat, so to say. Doubtless, however, no one took it for granted. The ocean, then as now, was a vast and powerful thing that could swallow whole ships, their cargoes, crews and passengers alive. Never being heard from again was a very real possibility.


Surely Captain Pieter Albertszoon knew that the worst could happen as his ship, Vergulde Draeck, left port for the East Indies in October of that year. A leader cannot dwell on the potential for failure, however, and it is a certainty that Albertszoon intended to reach what was then known as Batavia safely. His ship, whose name translates as Golden or Gilt Dragon, carried trade goods for Company use, eight chests of silver coins, provisions for one year and 193 souls including crew and passengers. All signs seemed favorable and Vergulde Draeck rounded the Cape in March of 1656.

Almost exactly one month later, Albertszoon was lost thought he probably did not know it. He was closer to the western shore of Australia than to India when his ship hit a reef that quite literally shattered her hull north of the modern city of Perth. Panic ensued as the roaring ocean around the reef sucked people, goods and finally the ship down to the murky depths. Of the 193 souls in Albertszoon’s charge, 75 managed to make the beach. There can be no doubt that they gathered together, half drown and dripping wet, to watch dumbfounded as their wooden world was swallowed by the sea.

Albertszoon kept his head, however, and began to organize the living immediately. He had the good fortune of a sturdy and fast-thinking First Lieutenant named Abraham Leeman who had managed to salvage a few provisions as well as Vergulde Draeck’s only boat. The situation was perhaps more dire than it would have been at another time of year. With winter on its way, storms would batter the coast and ships passing by – if any – would probably not steer close enough to shore to see signal fires or other markers left by the stranded. It was quickly decided that Leeman would need to hand-pick a small crew, gather what provisions he had salvaged and take the longboat out on the treacherous journey toward Batavia. Albertszoon would stay with the remaining survivors who would doubtless move inland to find water, food and shelter.

Leeman and seven crewmen set out for Batavia perhaps only a day or two after the wreck of their ship. They reached their destination in remarkably good condition on June 6th. The Company’s response was almost immediate; two ships, Goede Hope and Witte Valk, were dispatched to the coast of Australia to search for survivors. In an unfortunately hapless adventure, both ships were battered by relentless weather and high seas. Upon sighting land in the general area where Vergulde Draeck was thought to have gone down, Goede Hope sent in a boat. When the boat and its eleven-man crew did not return, another boat with eight men aboard was sent after them. This was dashed to bits on the rocky shore with a loss of all hands. With still no word from or sighting of either the rescue party or the Vergulde Draeck survivors, Goede Hope and Witte Valk turned back to Batavia. They arrived in mid-October.

Other ships on their way home to Holland were instructed to call on the fatal coast and check for any signs of life. Repeatedly, they found nothing, although just how thorough their searches were remains unknown. Finally, the ships Waeckende Boei and Emmeloort were dispatched on the 1st of January, 1658 with specific orders to make a sweep of the treacherous Australian coast. The captains of the two ships had a falling out on their way, and they separated. Both were off the coast by February but it was Captain Volkersen of Waeckende Boei who sent a party – led by none other than Abraham Leeman, First Lieutenant – ashore. The men found signs of human encampments, including planking possibly from the wrecked ship, but there was no sign of survivors. Leeman and his search party went back ashore but foul weather prevented them from returning to their ship. Despite the sighting of more than one signal fire, Volkersen concluded that his men had been lost on the reefs and turned for home.

Leeman was left with no choice but to once again make the almost impossible journey to Batavia in an open boat. He and his fourteen-man crew set out on April 8th; they arrived at their destination a month later. This crossing had not been as successful as the last. Only five men, including Leeman, survived and all were starving, dehydrated and horribly sunburned. Rumors of possible cannibalism aboard the boat were quashed immediately by the Company.

No further search parties were sent to find the lost victims of wreck and marooning. What became of them remains a mystery to this day. The only tantalizing hint was a chance find, made by a young boy inland from Cape Leschenault, of silver coins dating from between 1619 and 1655. These were found in 1931. It is probably reasonable to imagine that the survivors of both Vergulde Draeck and their would-be rescue party from Goede Hope succumbed to injuries, disease, starvation and exposure. Most of all, it can be imagined, they would have given in to the hopelessness of being lost in an unfamiliar wilderness with no reasonable way out.

The Vergulde Draeck wreck was rediscovered by spear fishermen in 1963 and, despite unfortunate poaching by treasure hunters, many of the artifacts are now on display in the Western Australia Museum in Fremantle. As a curious aside, a rather conspiratorial theory of the collapse of our modern economy via the U.S. dollar is known as the Vergulde Draeck Omen or, yet more ominously, the Vergulde Draeck Triple Witching Condition. Find that delightful scenario here and read more about the Vergulde Draeck disaster at VOC Historical Society.

Header: “Beard Jars” and silver coins from Vergulde Draeck via Heritage Aritcles

Horror on the High Seas: Flashback Lunch

My current schedule is a little off, Brethren, but I did want to kick off Triple P's third annual Horror on the High Seas week so that we can get a full seven days under our belts, so to say.  No new post today but lets start things off right with my dear friend House in Rlyeh's gripping review of the horror classic The Ghost Ship generously gifted to Triple P for her second anniversary.  Grab your lunch, sit back and enjoy.  Then click on the Horror on the High Seas label below for yet more terrifying flashbacks.  Tomorrow, something new: the mystery of the lost Vergulde Draeck.

Header: The Ghost Ship, a new interpretation by Bryan J. Toy via Elfwood