Ghost ships have fascinated people for centuries. They symbolise the unknown at sea, stories that defy any clear explanation. Some are based on real events, others are pure legends, passed on by generations of sailors. In his book "Maritime myths" collected numerous of these puzzling cases.
In October 1913, the tabloid media in several countries reported on an event covered by the London daily newspaper The Evening Standard was the first to report the story in its 3 October edition. The English newspaper explained that the story was based on a "telegram from New Zealand" that had yet to be confirmed. Le Petit Journal gave his version of events in the illustrated supplement of 19 October 1913:
An English ship on its way to Lyttelton (New Zealand) made a gruesome discovery in Punta Arenas (near Cape Horn). It sighted a ship that appeared to be unable to manoeuvre. As it was not responding to the signals, they approached and some of the sailors went on board.
They found 20 human skeletons there. The ship was named "Marlborough" and came from Glasgow harbour. In 1890, a sailing ship with this name, which was on its way to Chile, was sighted for the last time in the Strait of Magellan, after which there was no more news of it and it was categorised as lost.
According to initial information, the English ship that had sighted the "Marlborough" was the sailing ship "Johnson". The discovery is said to have taken place eight weeks before the publication, which means that the encounter with the ship could be dated between the end of July and the beginning of August 1913.
Investigations in Scotland confirmed that the "Marlborough" actually existed. This 70 metre long three-master with two decks and an iron hull was launched in Glasgow in 1876 by the Robert Duncan and Company shipyard before becoming the property of the Shaw, Saville & Albion Company. With a crew of around 30 men, the three-master successfully completed 14 crossings between London and New Zealand between 1876 and 1890. Captain Herd took command in 1884.
The mysterious disappearance
On 11 January 1890, the "Marlborough" left the port of Lyttelton in New Zealand with a cargo of wool and frozen meat and a passenger, Mrs W. B. Anderson, on board. Two days later, on 13 January, Captain Gordon of "The Falkland Hill" made contact with the "Marlborough". Little did he know that he would be the last to see her. The three-master then disappeared without a trace.
After a long wait, the authorities carried out an investigation into the condition of the ship on its departure and established that the cargo was properly stowed and the ship was in a suitable condition for the crossing. A few months after her disappearance, the "Marlborough" was reported as "missing" to Lloyd's. The hypothesis that the ship had been sunk by icebergs off Cape Horn was considered plausible by the public, as the "RMS Rimutaka" had reported large amounts of ice between Chatham Island and Cape Horn between the beginning and middle of February 1890, when the "Marlborough" was travelling in this area.
Rumours about survivors
The following year, 1891, there were rumours about sailors from the "Marlborough" who had been recognised near the Bahía Buen Suceso on Tierra del Fuego. The newspaper Daily Colonist from British Columbia reported in an article dated 9 April 1891 that a sealing schooner commanded by Captain McKiel had encountered a number of men between mid and late January 1891 who were allegedly British castaways hired by the Argentine government for a supply ship in the Bahía Buen Suceso.
The "HMS Garnet", a corvette of the Pacific Fleet under the command of Captain Harry Francis Hughes-Hallett, travelled to the scene of the incident and searched the bay and its surroundings. In vain! No seamen were found, nor any evidence of their presence in the area.
The sighting of the ghost ship
Let's return to the year 1913. New details about the circumstances of the discovery of the "Marlborough" came from London, 23 years after it disappeared. The captain of the "Johnson" reports in a rather lyrical tone:
We were in front of the rocky bays near Punta Arenas and stayed close to the land to seek shelter. [...]
In front of us, a mile or more away on the other side of the water, was a ship, its canvas flapping in tatters in the breeze. We signalled and turned. There was no reply. We watched this "stranger" with our binoculars. We couldn't see a soul, no movement of any kind. The masts and yards glowed green - the green of decay. The ship rested there as if in a cradle. It reminded me of "The frozen pirate"a novel I had read years ago. I imagined the ship from the novel, with its stiff masts and the outlines of its six small cannons drawn in snow.
We finally reached the boat. There was no sign of life. After a while, our first officer went on board accompanied by some crew members. The sight they saw was terrifying. The skeleton of a man lay under the steering wheel. As they carefully walked across the rotten deck, which creaked under their footsteps and broke in some places, they came across three skeletons in the access hatch. The remains of ten bodies lay in the mess room and six more were found on the bridge, possibly including the captain. There was a strange silence and a musty odour that gave them goose bumps. Some remains of books and a rusty cutlass were discovered in the captain's cabin. Never before had anything stranger been seen in the history of seafaring. The chief mate examined the still pale letters on the bow and, after some difficulty, read "Marlborough, Glasgow".
A plausible story?
Although the gripping account of this shimmering green ghost ship fascinates many readers, attentive and critical observers quickly realise that some details are not very plausible. The most controversial point has to do with Cape Horn. As everyone knows, this region is subject to violent storms and is known for its icebergs and strong currents. It is therefore extremely unlikely that a drifting ship could have withstood these elements for almost a quarter of a century. The "Marlborough" would more likely have been wrecked on rocks or icebergs beforehand.
Cape Horn is also a heavily travelled sea area. It is therefore difficult to imagine that an abandoned three-master could have remained undiscovered for so long, especially as the area is often searched for wrecks or crews of other shipping disasters. A "ghost ship" would also not have gone unnoticed near the colony of Puntas Arenas, where a gold rush in the 1890s had lured many people.
Finally, there is also the question of whether the "Johnson", which allegedly found the "Marlborough", actually existed. In fact, no sailing ship with this name was sighted in any New Zealand harbour between 1912 and 1913. Moreover, if such a sailing ship had started from England, it would more likely have taken the route via the Cape of Good Hope and then through the Indian Ocean to reach New Zealand. Assuming the "Johnson" had existed, the discovery of the "Marlborough" would have been the subject of articles in the New Zealand press, but this was not the case. On the contrary, the country's newspapers regarded the story as fictitious as early as 1914. Newspapers in other parts of the world, which had previously promised to provide up-to-date information on further developments, also failed to publish any reports and no further enquiries were made.
Is it all just a sailor's yarn?
So there are good reasons to believe that the horror story of the "Marlborough" is just an invention. In 1929, a new version of the story emerged, according to which the ghost ship was found adrift in January 1899 by the "British Isles" under the command of Captain Hadrop. If this sailing ship, built in 1884, was actually a little north of Cape Horn when it allegedly encountered the Scottish three-master, then the captain must have been someone else. Moreover, no report of this encounter on the high seas was ever published. Much later, in 2006, the author Tom Quinn proposed a third version, in which a British Royal Navy ship is said to have encountered the wreck of the "Marlborough" off the coast of Chile in 1913. Here too, the source of the information and the name of the sighted ship and its captain are missing.
In fact, there is every indication that the story of the discovery of the "Marlborough" is based on another event, which was told in 1912 by Captain Thomas Sydney Burley. According to a version revised in the 1940s, he was a crew member of the "Cordova", which was shipwrecked off Tierra del Fuego on 23 July 1890. The survivors are said to have tried to reach the Bahía Buen Suceso.
On their way they would have sighted the wreck of a ship called "Godiva", then, a few miles south of it and within sight of the Isla de los Estados, another one labelled "Marlborough of London". Not far away, he and the other survivors found a canvas tent and seven skeletons in front of a pile of mussel shells. Unfortunately, the "Cordova" had been wrecked around 26 July 1888 and its crew had been rescued in this area at least a year and a half before the "Marlborough" sailed. Burley could not possibly have seen her!
Ultimately, the incredible story of the "Marlborough" is one of these semi-legendary tales based on a true event (the ship actually disappeared) and embellished to create a myth about a ghost ship. Certain media at the time had no qualms about adding invented and unverifiable details to captivate their readership, who at the time had no way of verifying the authenticity of these details.
Finally, it should be noted that the "Marlborough" had a sister ship, the "Dunedin". She sailed for London two months after her sister, on 19 March 1890. She also disappeared on the high seas ... Neither ship was ever found.
Lars Bolle
Chief Editor Digital
