Among the great variety of creations of the mind and human hands, ships occupy a special niche. They, like the people who created them, have their own destinies, sometimes happy and successful, and sometimes bitter and tragic. Some are attracted by the seabed, others stubbornly crawl into the shallows and reefs, others are unlucky in the battles for which they were created, the fourth is fatally unlucky with the captains, who largely determine how the life of the ships they lead will turn out.
Ghosts on board
When, in 1869, on the ladder of the newly launched schooner Charles Heskell, a stumbled and fallen worker broke his spine, many regarded it as a bad omen, almost a curse. With difficulty, it was possible to find those willing to serve on this ship. However, Captain Curtis still managed to assemble the crew and went to sea to fish, in the area of the Newfoundland Bank, where many other vessels were already fishing. As soon as "Charles Heskell" appeared among them, an unexpectedly powerful squall threw the schooner out of control onto a nearby similar ship, as a result of which it sank along with the entire crew. And "Charles Heskell", despite the damage, managed to get to its harbor.
After repairs, the schooner returned to the shores of Newfoundland. For five days the sailors were successfully engaged in fishing, but then something completely incredible happened: at night, two sailors on duty on duty on the upper deck saw two dozen ghosts from out of nowhere boarded the schooner. They were people with empty eye sockets in half-rotted clothes and fishing boots. In complete silence, they threw the net into the sea, after a while they pulled it out with the catch, after which they left the ship just as silently.
Naturally, the incident was reported to the captain. He did not believe at first, but, convinced of the perfect sobriety of the watchmen and seeing still wet nets with fish on the deck, he gave the command to immediately turn off the fishing and return to his native Salem. However, already near the coast, the silent ghosts again climbed onto the deck of the schooner and again threw the net. Then, lifting the net, they climbed overboard and moved straight across the water towards the Salem port.
This was enough for both the crew and the owner of the schooner so that they would never go to sea again. Later, when they were trying to understand this mystical story, they remembered that during the construction of Charles Heskell, some parts were used taken from the schooner Saint Anna, found at sea without a single person on board. It was decided that the ghosts who had twice visited Charles Heskell mistook him for "Saint Anne." With this "Charles Heskell" and remained in the annals of the sea.
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Leapfrog with captains
And here is another story from the 19th century. When the English steamer "Hinemoa" was being prepared for its maiden voyage, rubble was loaded into its holds as ballast, which, without further ado, was taken from the yard of the nearest old church. And on the very first voyage on board the ship, four young sailors suddenly died of typhus, who seemed to be completely healthy before.
Then the leapfrog began with the captains. The first of them lost his mind during the voyage and almost destroyed the ship. The second, as it turned out, turned out to be an escaped criminal. The third had to be written off for deep drunkenness, and the fourth was found dead in his own cabin. No one was surprised when the fifth captain shot himself.
And nevertheless, the steamer, at the very least, continued its naval service. But the sixth captain came, and under his command the ship landed on board during the maneuver so that two sailors were overboard and died.
In 1890, Hinemoa was thrown by a storm on the west coast of Scotland, to which it came too close. Those sailors who managed to escape later claimed that a curse originally hung over the steamer, since human remains were found in the rubble taken from the churchyard.
The most unlucky dry cargo ship
Some journalists writing on maritime topics are inclined to believe that the most unlucky ship in the world was the dry cargo ship Argo Merchant. And there really is a reason for this. Already on his first voyage from Japan to the United States in 1953, he collided with a tanker for no apparent reason. Later, fires broke out on the ship three times, he repeatedly had to make unplanned calls to the port for repairs. In 1968, an extraordinary event for our times took place on board an unlucky ship - a riot of the crew. And a year later, the ship sank off the coast of Borneo.
Do you think that's all? No matter how it is! The vessel was raised and repaired over a long five years, at a considerable cost. But as soon as it went out to sea again, it ran into the reefs near Sicily. He was again repaired and released into the sea. However, after repeated explosions of a steam boiler and failures of the steering system, the Argo Merchant was included in the list of ships that are prohibited from passing through the Panama Canal and calling the ports of Boston and Philadelphia. And when in 1976 the ill-fated ship sank again, now off the coast of North America, they did not raise it.
Curse of names
It has long been noticed that the fate of the ship, among other things, is influenced by its name.
For a long time France gave its new submarines the beautiful name "Eurydice". This is the name of the famous heroine of the ancient Greek myth, who, saving her beloved Orpheus, herself remained forever in the kingdom of the dead. Perhaps that is why all four submarines, alternately bearing this name, died. The last victim was Eurydice, which sank in 1970 not far from Toulon.
In the Russian Navy, the unlucky ship name is considered to be "Admiral Nakhimov". Perhaps because the renowned naval commander had to sink his own ships at the entrance to the Sevastopol Bay in order to prevent the enemy fleet from entering it.
The cargo steamer bearing this name died along with the entire crew in 1897 off the coast of Turkey. The armored cruiser "Admiral Nakhimov" in 1905, as part of the infamous 2nd Pacific Flotilla, took part in the Battle of Tsushima, where in the first battle with several Japanese ships she received serious damage, lost speed and, in order not to be captured, was flooded by her own crew.
But the biggest loser among the "Nakhimovs" was the cruise liner named after the admiral, which on August 31, 1986, in the bay of Novorossiysk with a calm sea and excellent visibility, managed to collide with a dry cargo ship and quickly sank. This disaster, the largest in the Soviet civilian fleet, claimed 423 lives. Prior to that, the liner had been sailing quite safely on the Crimean-Caucasian line for 29 years. By the way, the name with which this ship went to the bottom was not the first for him - until 1947 it, built in Germany back in 1929, was called "Berlin". But with its first name, the ship also had many serious troubles: it was torpedoed by a submarine, was blown up in its own minefield and sank twice.
Constantin RICHES