Maclean's magazine, June 15, 1951
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The Fiery Phantom that sails Bay Chaleur
By Ian Sclanders

For many generations Maritimers have told of a flaming ship that sails New Brunswick's north shore. Some have even pursued it. What's the secret behind the fiery phantom that sails Bay Chaleur.

No furtive ghost, the Fire Ship is seen several times a years off New Brunswick's coast by whole communities. No one has ever photographed it.

Tens of thousands have watched its eerie performances, scientists have tried for half a century to unlock its secret, and adventurous fishermen have attempted to overtake it with their schooners. But the «Fire Ship» that cruises Bay Chaleur, between New Brunswick's north shore and Quebec's Gaspé coast, is as much a mystery as ever.

Although it has been witnessed by more people than any other unexplained apparition in Canada -and perhaps in the world- it has the elusive quality of the end of a rainbow. Those who have pursued it say it always remains the same distance away, and those who have studied it through telescopes say a strong lens brings out no details visible to the naked eye.

It looks to most like a sailing vessel in flames.

Professor Ralph Childs, of New York's Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, collects data about nautical phantoms and, according to his records, fifteen or twenty of them voyage aimlessly around this continent's northeastern seaboard. The Fire Ship is the undisputed queen of the shadowy fleet-as superior to the average ghost ship as a passenger liner is to a smudgy tramp freighter.

Its rivals are furtive and vague. They appear at rare intervals, and only to one or two individuals whose evidence is suspect because it cannot be corroborated. But the Fire Ship is sighted several times a year-by whole communities.

It ranges New Brunswick's north shore for one hundred and twenty-five miles, from the thriving pulp and paper town of Dalhousie, near the mouth of the Restigouche in Bay Chaleur, to Miscou Island, where Bay Chaleur joins the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Occasionally it crosses to the Gaspé coast to visit such centres as Carleton, Bonaventure and New Carlisle.

It may hover for hours in one spot and gradually fade, or it may glow brilliantly and suddenly vanish, or it may whisk over the waves like the wind. Some claim to have seen the Fire Ship by day but most evidence indicates it appears only at night.

Nothing is easier than to drum up an argument among fisher folk on whether the Fire Ship is a natural phenomenon or a supernatural manifestation. Many say that those who believe it's a ghost are silly and ignorant. Yet hundreds of men and women of acknowledged standing in their communities insist they have seen a flaming ship that cannot be explained in scientific terms.

The ship's favorite haunt is Caraquet, and a motion picture director couldn't select a more suitable background. The two-hundred-year-old New Brunswick cod port, once the principal fishing port of British North America, has six thousand residents and a single street that winds along Bay Chaleur for twenty miles. At places, this street is so close to the water that salt spray lashes it when there's a storm.

Sea-Gull Inn, the best hostelry, is a wooden, mansion erected generations ago by a Jersey Islander who struck it rich in the cod trade. It is run by two female descendants, the Rive sisters. High on a hill, the building creaks and groans in a gale. Cod barons of another age stare down on the paying guests with mild distaste from ornately framed oil paintings in the lounge. In the library are old books and pictures of barques and brigantines. The house has an atmosphere of the past, even when it is crowded with tourists.

This same atmosphere surrounds the whole village, as though the inhabitants who salt and sun-dry codfish had a similar process for preserving their traditions and memories.

Everybody in Caraquet, from P. J. Carroll, general-manager of Gorton-Pew, the biggest fish-packing company in northern New Brunswick, down to the dark-eyed Acadian girl who waits on tables at Sea-Gull Inn, has seen the Fire Ship. Carroll, a thirty-seven-year-old New Englander, moved to Caraquet from Gloucester, Mass., in 1939. One dark night when he was still a newcomer he excitedly telephoned the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that a schooner was burning a couple of miles from shore.

"Don't worry," said the officer who answered. "It isn't a schooner. If you believe in ghosts, it's a ghost. If you don't believe in ghosts, it's a natural phenomenon. It's the Fire Ship. You're a stranger here, but you'll get used to it."

Peter Fiott, now in his middle eighties, is a much-respected citizen. With his snow-white hair, courtly manners and fastidious dress, the phrase, "gentleman of the old school," suits him perfectly. Born on Jersey Island, he was for more than fifty years Caraquet manager of the salt cod firm of Robin, Jones, Whitman, founded by Jersey Islanders in 1766.

"I have seen the Fire Ship hundreds of times," he told me. "It takes various forms. Usually it is a sailing vessel wrapped in flames. It has also been a shapeless ball of fire, a ship's lantern, and once-in 1906-it was a burning steamer.

"How do I explain the Fire Ship? There are those who say it is a mixture of imagination and phosphorus, or imagination and St. Elmo's Fire. For myself, I can't explain the unexplainable, but I have seen it-yes, hundreds of times." (St. Elmo's Fire is a flamelike electrical phenomenon seen in the rigging of ships and along the wings of aircraft.)

Mr. Fiott has yet to observe figures of tortured seamen on the Fire Ship. Not so other witnesses.

Walter Good is a middle-aged man, well-educated, intelligent, with a reputation for honesty. He owns a prosperous farm on the outskirts of Bathurst.

"I saw the Fire Ship twice," he said. "It looked exactly like a three-masted, full-rigged vessel with sails blazing. There were tiny things squirming up through the flames-black things like men climbing the rigging."

In 1937 the phantom veered off its regular route and put on a vivid show in Northumberland Strait. One of many who watched was Albert Robichaud, of Tracadie, who told a newspaper reporter : "I could see the rigging burning and men hurrying around the deck as though fighting the flames. Some were climbing the masts and some were in the shrouds. They were apparently living men, but of course it was an illusion."

Willie Chiasson, storekeeper and fisherman of Shippigan Island, claims that the Fire Ship nearly lured him to death. On that occasion it was a small fishing schooner and wasn't burning.

"I was out fishing fall herring," Chiasson relates. "A thick fog blew in and I started for port. There was a boat ahead of me so I decided to follow it ashore. Suddenly I realized I was almost on top of a treacherous reef. I also realized that if the boat I'd been following was a real boat I couldn't possibly see it-not through a pea-soup fog. Yet I could see it plainly. It was the Fire Ship-nothing else."

The loneliest place in New Brunswick is Miscou Island. To reach it you take a ferry from the mainland to Shippigan Island drive across Shippigan Island and board another ferry for Miscou, which is flat and bleak and wave-beaten and strangely beautiful.

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