The old sea folks carried their superstitious fancies into all the concerns of their daily life. No act was without its good or evil import. Whistling at sea was regarded with special disfavor when a breeze was blowing, as the practice was supposed to provoke a gale. At the present time, especially in sailing vessels, the habit is held to be a reprehensible one, and juniors indulging it are often sharply told to "stop that whistling." But the credulous sailors believed, also, that whistling, in a guarded way, during a calm, would induce a favorable wind to spring up; and whistling for a breeze is by no means a forgotten custom, even at the present day, during that patience-trying period when sails hang idly against the masts and the ocean surface is smooth as a polished mirror. Longfellow refers to this common belief:
Only a little while ago
I was whistling to Saint Antonio
For a capful of wind to fill our sail,
But instead of a breeze he has sent a gale.
Captain Basil Hall, of the English Navy, in his "Voyages," mentions a case of whistling for the wind, during a calm in the Yellow Sea, which occurred on board his own ship. One of the sailors undertook to produce a breeze; and while incredulously permitting the practice, to convince the men of the foolishness of the superstition, the captain remarks that a favorable breeze did spring up immediately afterwards. It was also believed that a breeze might be produced by scratching the mast.
The superstition prevailed that Friday was an unlucky day for a vessel to leave port, and the prevalence of the belief is confirmed by frequent mention of it in old-fashioned ditties of the sea:
On a Friday she was launched,
On a Friday she set sail, '
On a Friday met a storm,
And was lost too in a gale.
Pertinent to this belief, Fenimore Cooper relates an anecdote of a Connecticut merchant who devised a plan to show the folly of the superstition. He had built a fine vessel, the keel of which was laid on a Friday; the ship was launched on a Friday; was named The Friday; a Captain Friday had command of her; and she sailed on a Friday, freighted with a valuable cargo, bound for China. Strange to relate, no tidings of ship or crew were ever afterwards received; and one can well believe that such an event would strengthen the credulous mariner's faith in the superstition. Other instances of disaster following the sailing of vessels on Friday have had prominent mention — the West India steamer Amazon, which foundered in the Bay of Biscay, when upwards of a hundred passengers were lost, Eliot Warburton among the number, who, strangely enough, had written in one of his books, "since the days of steam navigation the Bay of Biscay was no longer formidable"; the Golden Gate, between San Francisco and Panama; the English troop-ship Birkenhead, off the Cape of Good Hope, and, more recently, the English man-of-war Captain. Columbus is said to have sailed on Friday, August 3, 1492, and it was on Friday that he first sighted the land, which he named San Salvador. It seems almost incredible that Columbus would sail on a Friday; not from any distinctly superstitious feature in his own character, but the age in which he lived, the nationalities and superstitious natures of the sailors accompanying him, are really matters enough to induce one to question the date. Indeed, in medieval times, and later, it was occasionally an especial provision — an article of agreement — between the merchant venturers and their shipmen, that vessels would not leave port on a Friday; and being a fast day in the Roman Catholic Church, the suggestion against sailing on Friday appears to be strongly probable. Friday was the day of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ; and hence the myths and superstitions which are associated with it.
The early navigators believed in apparitions and evil spirits, who were supposed to show themselves to the terrified sailors during storms. The Cape of Good Hope, or Cape of Storms as it was formerly called, is associated with many of these myths of the sea; and even the thick gray cloud which occasionally obscures the top of Table Mountain, named the Devil's Table Cloth, is the premonitor of stormy weather. Camoens, in the "Lusiad," described the Kobold of the Cape:
Robust and vigorous in the air appear'd.
Enormous and of stature very tall,
The visage grim, and with squalid beard,
The eyes were hollow, and the gestures all
Threatening and bad, the color pale and sear'd.
Carmilhan was the phantom ship on which the specter sat when he appeared to doomed vessels. Sir Walter Scott, in "Rokeby," refers to the superstition:
That phantom ship, whose form
Shoots like a meteor through the storm;
And well the doomed spectators know
'Tis harbinger of wreck and woe.
The picturesque legend of the Flying Dutchman has been well utilized by Marryat, Clark Russell, and other nautical writers; but it is worth repeating. About three centuries ago Mynheer Vanderdecken, the captain of a Dutch Indiaman, after a long season of adverse gales, swore that he would round the Cape of Good Hope in the face of a contrary wind, even if he should be compelled to sail until the day of judgment. Of course, he failed to accomplish his object; and, for his obstinacy and impiety, Vanderdecken and his crew were doomed to sail forever in the latitude of the stormy Cape. So, in the night watches, the superstitious sailors affirmed that they had seen the phantom ship borne along by the gale over the tempest-lashed waves, her spectral crew working the sails in response to the orders of her ghostly commander. The superstition is illustrated in many quaint old ballads of the sea, the following being a favorite example:
'Twas on a stormy day, far southward of the Cape,
When from a high nor'-wester we'd just made our escape;
Like an infant in its cradle, each breeze was hushed to sleep,
And peacefully we sailed along the bosom of the deep.
At length the helmsman gave a shout of terror and of fear.
As if he just had gazed upon some sudden danger near;
We look'd around the ocean, and there upon our lee
We saw the Flying Dutchman come bounding o'er the sea.
"Take in your flowing canvas, lads," our watchful master cried,
"To us and our ship's company great peril doth betide;
The billows cresting white with foam, all angry doth appear,
The wind springs up a hurricane, now Vanderdecken's near."