< PreviousThe 1877 tall ship Elissa at Pier 22 in Galveston is the subject of a few ghost stories, but they’re of “no concern,” said Mark Scibinico, port captain and director with the Galveston Historic Seaport. “Some creepy verbiage and stories, but she has been loaded a lot and sailed a lot of places,” he said. FILE PHOTO: JENNIFER REYNOLDSCOASTMONTHLY.COM | OCTOber 2022 31 FEATURE SEA SPIRITS Some ships are haunted by tales of death, doom and red-haired ghosts story by BARBARA CANETTI T ales of woe on the high seas of ghosts, phantom captains and young, wandering sailors look- ing for their mates. Some marine legends have Galveston roots. It’s hard to find locals who admit their boats are haunted. But at least one woman suspects ghosts or something goes aboard a boat she owns with some friends on Tiki Island. “I have a haunting spirit on mine that keeps breaking things when I am not around,” Tammy Brindley laughed. There are hundreds of ghost stories world- wide about ships, including the sad story of The Flying Dutchman, a doomed ship by all accounts. It’s reported it sailed into Gal- veston harbor in the 1850s and 1870s, said Kathleen Maca, who conducts ghost tours around the island. “The Flying Dutchman is never able to make port but doomed to sail the oceans forever,” Maca said. “There is supposedly an eerie blue glow around it.” Maca also includes the story of the Selma in her tours. The wreck of the concrete ship Selma can be found in the water between Galveston and Pelican islands. This 454-foot-long boat was launched in Mobile, Alabama, in 1919 after World War I. Shortly afterward, it hit a jetty and developed a 60-foot-wide hole. It was towed into Galveston Bay from Tampico Bay, Mexico, in 1920 to be repaired. But it never was. It became partially submerged. In 1946, Clesmey LeBlanc, a Galveston fisherman, bought the remains of the Selma 32 COASTMONTHLY.COM | OCTOber 2022 FEATURE for $100. For the next few years, he lived on the Selma, raising goats and chickens. Friends would pick him up periodically to take him ashore, where he would sell goat cheese and eggs. He even hosted The Hap- py Hermits convention in 1947 with 40 to 50 delegates coming on board to sing, drink and recruit women delegates, according to the Baytown Historical Society. LeBlanc died in 1956, but people say they still sometimes see a lone man walking the decks. “He’s the ghost,” Maca said. Another story involves the majestic 1877 tall ship Elissa at Pier 22 in Galveston. Moored permanently in Galveston Bay, the Elissa was launched 145 years ago in Scotland and has resided locally since 1978 when the Galveston Historical Foundation purchased it from a scrapyard in Greece. The Elissa, a square-rigged iron barque and one of only three ships like it to still sail, has a few ghost stories. Mark Scibinico, port captain and director with the Galveston Historic Seaport, said the stories are of “no concern.” “Some creepy verbiage and stories, but she has been loaded a lot and sailed a lot of COASTMONTHLY.COM | OCTOber 2022 33 places,” Scibinico said. One story involves two young sailors and dates back to 1879 after the ship sailed out of Buenos Aires. According to the legend, two young 15-year-old apprentices, Charles Noyes and Samuel Kirk, were aboard the Elissa. Unfortunately, Noyes fell to his death during that voyage while furling the mizzen topmast staysail on Oct. 11, 1879. “Scrambling aloft into the mainmast rigging was exhilarating and familiar — the wind clean and bracing; blue ocean as far as he could see,” according to a recapping of the story by the Galveston Historical Foundation. “It took just a moment … a fatal moment to lose touch with this life. Perhaps the ship pitched, or the sail bucked in his hands. Impulsively, Noyes grabbed for life, but found no purchase and felt himself slipping and falling. In a soul-wrenching and terrifying split-second, he lost his footing and plummet- ed to the main deck, crumpling across the main fife rail never to move again.” Some sailors think Noyes still is trying to finish that voyage and believe he’s still aboard standing watch. Boaters fish near the partially sunken remnants of the SS Selma off Pelican Island. FIL e PHOTO: J e NNIF er re YNOLDS34 COASTMONTHLY.COM | OCTOber 2022 FEATURE “If you are lucky, the touch of a cold, ghostly ‘hand’ may let you know that Charles is near as he tries to break his fall,” so the story goes. A recent guest to the island is the sto- ried Battleship Texas, which was moved in late August from its longtime berth at the San Jacinto monument at the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel to Galveston, where the 110-year-old vessel will undergo exten- sive repairs at Gulf Copper Dry Dock & Rig Repair on Pelican Island. With all the intense naval combat the battleship saw during World War I and World War II, there have been surprising few deaths on the vessel. Although there have been reports of voices and phantoms, the only story about ghosts aboard the Texas is the story of the red-haired sailor wandering the ship. “The most defined specter of the ship is that of a young sailor in uniform,” according to hauntedrooms.com. “Red-haired and often smiling, he has often been seen wandering the halls of the ship and has most especially been spotted standing nonchalantly around some of the ship’s many ladders. Though it is difficult to tie him specifically to any of the people who’ve been verified to die on the ship, his presence is not described as a hostile one and is perhaps just that of a sailor who never left his duty behind or fled his post.” PHOTO: COU r T e SY A r MIN CANTINI The Battleship Texas makes the journey from San Jacinto to Galveston for dry docking and repairs on Aug. 31. Galveston Historical Foundation offers harbor ghost tours during the month of October on Seagull II. Visit www.galvestonhistory.org for details.36 COASTMONTHLY.COM | OCTOber 2022 FEATURE GHOST WRITER Historian finds grains of truth in specter stories story by KATHRYN EASTBURN I n the world of ghost hunting, some people believe in lingering spirits, some don’t and plenty are on the fence. Galveston ghost aficionado Kathleen Maca, who has written books on the island’s ghosts and leads visitors on local history tours as well as ghost tours, said it doesn’t matter whether someone believes in and encounters ghosts, but whether the legends passed on are based on true people and real events, not manufac- tured. To that end, she uses her skills as a researcher and genealogist to veri- fy and enrich the stories she tells about the dead’s lives on Earth and their subsequent lives in the spirit world. “A lot of ghost stories exist around a grain of truth and some might be woven around a place,” Maca said. Galveston is thought to be inhabit- ed by a wealth of spirits based on the number of dead on this small island across its recorded history. “But how much is true about the real people in many stories is sus- pect,” she said. Maca has been practicing genealogy for 50 years, since she was a girl in Oklahoma, carted by her mother from one dusty courthouse to another in pursuit of family records. Most recent- ly, her research skills have been put to work by ancestry.com, digitizing thousands of paper records held in the Galveston County Courthouse. “You could say that knowing more about a person’s life makes a ghost story more significant to me,” she said. “No pun intended, it fleshes out the story. I overhear a lot of tours and hear a lot of misinterpretation of historical facts.” And while there’s value in simply entertaining people out seeking a chill or a thrill, a life that becomes legend through its ghostly existence is worthy of accurate representation, Maca believes, especially when facts are relatively easy to gather through newspaper archives, genealogy tools and other widely available records. “It’s a back door into Galveston his- tory,” Maca said. “Someone might come for a spooky story, but it’s important to understand why there was a ghost; it’s important to know the history.” Case in point: The vivid and grue- some tale of William Watson, whose ghost, legend holds, lingers around the railroad tracks on the north edge of downtown Galveston. Watson in 1900 fell while crossing the tracks, was hit by a train and decapitated. “I wanted to prove that he existed,” Maca said. She found his birth records, death records and newspaper accounts of his death from the Galveston Dai- ly News. She discovered Watson was from Brooklyn, had a wife and children there and came to Galveston aboard the USS Michigan. One ac- count revealed he was wearing a pin- striped suit on Aug. 31 when he was out for a night on the town, strolling along the tracks. “When the newspaper first reported it, they hadn’t found his head yet,” Maca said. “The next day, the Daily News headline announced: ‘It Was Watson.’” Watson was buried in Lakeview Cemetery a week before the Great Storm of 1900 arrived, pushing his demise out of the headlines and out of history. “I learned that his wife was given the opportunity to sue Southern Pacific but didn’t have the means to pursue it,” Maca said. “I’ve wondered if his descendants even knew what happened to him.” Maca has experienced what some would categorize as ghost sightings and said hauntings don’t necessari- ly portend the presence of a ghost but can be a transfer of energy from an emotional point in time. All of it — the legends, the spirits and the feelings associated with them — are firmly rooted in history and enriched by knowing that history. “The same approach you use if you’re researching your family tree, pulling up the census, land records, insurance records, prison and police records, all of these things can be used to flesh out proof or disprove local folklore and sometimes it really enhances it,” she said. “I think it’s fun to find out which grains of truth are true about these stories that have been around for so long.” To learn more about Kathleen Maca’s book and tours, including October events, visit www.kathleenmaca.com. 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