THE MCCOOK TRIBUNE — JANUARY 11, 1895
TALES OF THE SEA ◇ WEIRD YARNS OF THE SUPERNATURAL SPUN BY THE CAPTAIN ◇ The Skull In the Chain Locker—The Unlucky Bark In the Demarara Trade That Was Said to Be Haunted—The Story of an Exile From Salvador.
We were eating dinner one night on the old cargo ship, says a New York Sun writer, and talking of the happenings at sea and on shore that are called supernatural, when the captain said:
“One sees some things at sea not supernatural which are fit to make a nervous man see ghosts. There was that case in one of Green’s liners to the colonies, where a man was sent down to clean out the chain locker. The locker had seemed foul all the passage home, and so they hoisted out the chain and sent this fellow down with his brush and soap and bucket, with a lamp, to clean it out. I’ll wager he saw ghosts for a year after that, for when he’d got down on his knees to begin scrubbing he found himself bending over the skull of a dead man.
“It was most likely a man that had stowed away out in the colony, and had been caught under the cable when they were running it down quickly, and so had the life crushed out of him.
However, I did know of a case that seemed supernatural right enough. It was in the Demarara trade and I was acquainted with the first officer of the bark [sailing ship] where it all happened.
“In the first place, while she was out there loaded and ready to sail, the captain had trouble with one of the
