10/18/2023
The Flaming Ship of Ocracoke ⛵️🔥👻
The Flaming Ship Of Ocracoke
Another of my favorite ghost tales, the Flaming Ship of Ocracoke, begins in a far distant land. Palatines, escaping the war torn home in present day Germany, chartered a ship to go to the New World, in hopes of meeting fellow settlers in New Bern. The disguised themselves as paupers, hiding their wealth and dressing in rags.
When they arrived off the coast of Ocracoke, the big ship was supposed to place them in lighters to transfer them and their cargo across the shallow shore and narrow channels along the ribbon of the Outer Banks. But the nefarious sailors saw the Palatines' treasure, and the captain devised a bloodthirsty plan to relieve them of all their goods.
He waved off the smaller boats, saying he would wait until the next day to unload the travelers. The Palatines had no choice in the matter. Then, in the middle of the night, the captain and crew snuck through the ship and slaughtered every man, woman, and child on board. They stole the treasure the Palatines had and loaded it all into their smaller rowboats, and began to row ashore in the dead of night. The captain had soaked the ship in oil and set it afire to cover his tracks.
While the piratical crew rowed, the ship burned. But something happened to the ship. The sails, though afire, were not consumed, but glowed with an otherworldly flame. The ship began to sail on its own. It closed on the two smaller ships, as the pirates desperately tried to escape the big craft. As it got close, the sailors could hear the dreadful moans and cries of the dead and burning Palatines.
In terror, the pirates put their backs into the oars. But they couldn't escape the power of an otherworldly ship, bent on revenge. It crashed into one rowboat, cutting it in two. The crew were crushed under the heavy, barnacle encrusted hull. They were waited down by the ill gotten treasure, and sunk to the bottom of the shallow ocean, within sight of the shore.
Then the ship turned and cut the other rowboat into splinters. Only two sailors were able to unlimber themselves of the weighty treasure. They struggled to shore into the surprised local O'cockers, where they confessed in hopes of saving their souls from the vengeful wraiths, for their mortal lives were spent, and they died on the sand.
The ship sailed back out to sea, turning one way then another. The islanders watched in horror as the ship burned but did not sink. It sailed off into the darkness far off to the north. Some think the Palatines, even as ghosts, were looking for a way to finally get where they were meant to go.
Now, on the first full moon of September, the ship rises up out of the Atlantic, caressing and creasing the far horizon, to sail toward Ocracoke. It still burns but is not consumed, and as it approaches, the wails of the dead can be heard from the empty shore. The ship sails south, then turns north in hopes of one day finding a deep enough entrance to the sound to finally make it to New Bern, and a safe home, away from the fear of violence and hate.
