Ghost Stories of Newfoundland and Labrador by Edward Butts

Author:Edward Butts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: OCC000000, OCC029000
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2010-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

Val Clery’s narrator was not the only person in Newfoundland to report a strange experience in connection with the 1914 Sealing Disaster. Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke recorded a story told by Pat Maher of Pouch Cove. The tale is rooted in the belief that on the anniversary of their death, ghosts will return to the place where they died.

Following the 1914 disaster, the Newfoundland did not participate in the seal hunt again until 1916 after undergoing extensive refitting. She was also renamed the San Blandford and Pat Maher was one of the crew. At the end of March, the San Blandford was in the same vicinity as another sealing ship, the Terra Nova. During the night, a thick fog lay upon the ice fields. Suddenly, the Terra Nova started blowing her whistle — the signal that there were people out on the ice.

The captain of the San Blandford heard the signal and began to blow his ship’s whistle, as well, thinking the Terra Nova had men on the ice. However, the Terra Nova’s skipper thought that the men on the ice belonged to the San Blandford. Finally, at about ten o’clock that night, the Terra Nova stopped sounding her whistle. Assuming that the other ship had her men safely aboard, the captain of the San Blandford also stopped signaling.

The next morning, Pat Maher and several crewmen went over to the Terra Nova. They were surprised to be asked what time their men finally got aboard the night before: the men out on the ice weren’t from the San Blandford. But the Terra Nova crewmen insisted. “Yes, ye had got men on the ice, because we saw the men. We heard them first hallo and sing out, and we watched them until they walked up the side of the ship and went in the boat.”

Maher and the others didn’t know what to make of it at first. But some of those crewmen who had seen the men on the ice climb aboard the San Blandford later claimed that they had recognized a few of them as men who had died in the disaster of 1914. The San Blandford, after all, was just the old Newfoundland with a different name. Her lost men had apparently returned home.

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