THE STORY OF THE HAUNTED SHIP (1825)

Only a few days left for Balladeer’s Blog to squeeze in some more seasonal posts this Halloween Month.

THE STORY OF THE HAUNTED SHIP (1825) – This tale was written by the German author Wilhelm Hauff, who died in 1827.

Our unnamed Arab narrator informs readers he has just turned 18 years of age. His father recently died from despair over the failure of certain investments he had made and the narrator signs on with a ship’s crew in Basra determined to build up his own fortune at sea.

Accompanying him was his father’s old servant, whom he had known since childhood. While heading toward India, the Captain sighted a vessel which he called the ship of death, and he and his panicked crew did their best to escape the death ship’s influence, as well as a fierce storm which came out of nowhere.

The horrific storm left the death ship unharmed but rent apart the craft on which our narrator and his servant sailed. The pair wound up as the only survivors, floating precariously on some wreckage from the sunken vessel with no food or drink.

The next morning and all through the day Narrator and Servant clung to the small piece of wreckage, rapidly losing hope of rescue. Another night passed and in the afternoon of the following day the duo spotted the death ship itself cutting through the ocean toward them.

Driven by thirst and hunger, Narrator and Servant put aside their fears and pulled themselves up to the deck of the vessel via loose ropes. Once on deck, our main characters saw the entire crew lying dead as they had fallen in an apparent savage battle with each other.

The Captain was equally dead, with his sword drawn and his body in a standing position in front of a mast. A long spike had been hammered into and through his head, pinning him to that mast and keeping his body upright.

Our two shipwreck survivors were filled with dread over this tableau. The younger man’s dread was increased when his servant observed that the corpses strewn from stem to stern looked like they had been dead for barely a few hours.

The pair tried to lift the bodies to begin throwing them all overboard but they all seemed fastened to the deck, or the mast in the Captain’s case. None of their efforts could budge them.

Narrator and Servant were now terrified and crept into the quarters below decks. Surprisingly, every one of those rooms was ill-kept but there was an abundance of alcoholic drinks and salted, preserved food. The presence of treasure chests filled with gold, silver, pearls and precious gems convinced our heroes that the vessel had been a pirate ship.

The duo ate and drank their feel, then fell asleep from exhaustion. They awoke after nightfall, alarmed to hear men on deck shouting and obviously fighting. Our main characters were so alarmed they clung to each other and remained hidden until daylight, at which point they crept upstairs and found all the same corpses lying in the same positions and retreated back downstairs.

The young man and his servant huddled below decks all day, eating and drinking as needed and pondering their plight. Before the sun could set, they carefully made holes in the ceiling and walls so they could see what happened on deck that night but immediately wished they hadn’t.

The minute darkness fell, the dead men rose and reenacted a mutiny against the Captain and his loyalists. After ugly curses and bloody fighting, the orgy of violence ended with the few mutineers still alive spiking their former Captain’s head to the mast. They died of their own terrible wounds shortly after.

The servant was well-versed in the Koran and led the teenager in scrawling passages from that book on doors and walls to the rooms they did not want the undead pirates to enter. By day they would stay above deck, desperately hoping to catch sight of land or another ship. As the sun set, they secured themselves below deck, fearfully listening to the reenacted slaughter above.

The following morning, Narrator and Servant returned above to resume their vigil. In the afternoon they were overjoyed to see land in the distance. They swiftly lowered themselves into the sea aboard one of the smaller boats available on the ship. They rowed to shore and learned they had reached India.

The relief our main characters felt faded quickly and their thoughts and words turned back to the treasure chests on board the vessel they had abandoned. If they could somehow return there during daylight hours with a few hands to help them, surely they could take enough wealth to last them a lifetime.

Our hero and his servant Ibrahim (no idea why the writer waited this long to give one of the characters a name) begin asking around for a man skilled at black magic. At length they are directed to a wise old sage named Muley. They convince him to split the treasure on the haunted pirate ship with them and enough of his servants as necessary if they could all get to the vessel. 

With as many men as he could trust, Muley and our heroes set out in multiple boats and were happy to find the drifting pirate ship still within reach. Muley advised his two allies that it would be dark before they could load up all of the contents of the treasure chests and make the multiple trips to and from the shore.

Instead, they must pry up the wooden decks with the dead men stuck to them where they lay and have his servants get them all to shore and buried before night fell. There was some arguing that they should just grab as much treasure as they could carry and bolt for shore well in advance of sunset. In the end, greed triumphed and they would not be happy with anything less than every piece of treasure on the haunted ship.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Muley’s men pried up the deck’s wooden planks with the undead pirates attached to them and rowed them to shore. They returned with word that burial was not needed because the pirates decomposed into dust upon being placed on the ground ashore.

Only the Captain remained, and nothing our scavengers could do would separate him from the mast he was spiked to. Muley had a few of his men get swiftly to shore and return with some of the soil. They did so and Muley poured a little bit of the dirt on the Captain’s head. His eyes opened and suddenly the long spike holding him to the mast loosened and he was at last free to move about.

He thanked our teen hero, Ibrahim, Muley and the servants. He explained that over fifty years ago he and his crew terrorized shipping, plundering and viciously killing all who opposed them. One day a Dervish had paid the Captain for transport to the Arabian Peninsula so he could travel to Mecca.

The Captain agreed, but the Dervish ill-advisedly warned the pirates not to go back on their word or a curse would fall upon them. That night as the Captain drank and thought about the Dervish’s warning he came to view it as an insult. No one could tell him what to do on his own ship.

He led his crew in binding the Dervish and slowly torturing him to death while their victim laid out his curse on them. When the man was dead they tossed his body into the sea.

His curse was not long in coming upon the pirates. More than half the crew feared that the Captain had brought doom on them by his actions against the Dervish. Tempers flared and ultimately the horrible, blood-soaked battle that our hero and Ibrahim had seen repeated again and again broke out, leaving all on board dead.

But the curse did not let them off so easily. Every night the pirates came back to life and were forced to reenact the savage mutiny, climaxing with the Captain being nailed to the mast with the long spike through his forehead and out the back of his skull.

The Captain next welcomed all of his rescuers to take his entire treasure and his ship with his blessing. He then had Muley pour more handfuls of soil on his head and he was reduced to dust, joining his crew in the release of death.

Our surviving characters successfully sailed the former pirate ship to shore, where they all became wealthy from the riches on board.

*** If you’re like me, you were assuming some dark fate was about to befall our main characters when they let their greed drive them to return to the haunted ship. Nope. It’s still a nice, ghoulish story, though.