Thirteen Men Aboard A Royal Navy Ship Saw A Phantom Vessel Cross Their Bows At 4 A.M. By Quarter To Eleven The Lookout Who Reported It Was Dead.
At four o'clock in the morning on the 11th of July 1881, off the coast of Australia, thirteen men aboard a British warship watched a glowing phantom ship cross their bows. By a quarter to eleven that same morning, the young sailor who had spotted it first was dead. Both facts are in the ship's published log, one after the other, in the same entry.
The ship was HMS Bacchante, on a three year cruise around the world, and she carried two very unusual midshipmen: the grandsons of Queen Victoria. The elder was Prince Albert Victor. The younger, sixteen years old, was Prince George, who would one day be King George the Fifth. Their tutor kept the journal of the voyage from the boys' own diaries, and it was published, respectably, by Macmillan, in 1886. Which is why what happened that night is not a sailor's yarn. It is in a printed book, over the name of a future king.
The entry is almost offhand. At four A.M., it says, the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars and sails of a brig two hundred yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up. Thirteen men saw her: the officer of the watch, the midshipman of the quarterdeck, others besides. Two other ships in company signalled across to ask whether Bacchante had seen the strange red light as well. And when the deck was searched at dawn, there was no vessel there, and no trace of anything on the sea at all.
Then the same entry, a few lines further on, records the rest of the day. At ten forty five in the forenoon, the ordinary seaman who had first reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the fore topmast crosstrees onto the deck and was killed instantly. He was twenty years old, and the naval log gives his name: Henry Youle. That afternoon the ship hove to, and they buried him at sea. There are sensible explanations for a red light on the water. There are sensible explanations for a fall from the rigging. There is no rule that says the same page has to carry them both.
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