Look, Boy! The Phantom Ship !
by Grace Tomkinson

They said: "There's nothing much to see here now
But if you come around again this fall
We look to see the Phantom Ship go by.
Once every seven years they say it comes
Sailing with blazing rigging up the Bay
A ghostly ship on fire that never burns.

One told: "I saw it as I walked to church.
It was my eldest sister's wedding night.
Sixteen that year I think I must have been.
A neighbor stopped us on the hill and said :
'If you girls never seen the Phantom Ship
This here's your chance.' And there as plain as day
We saw the glowing flames leap up the masts
And seemed to hear them crackling on the spars.
We stood stock-still till she moved out of sight,
Fading into the dusk beyond the Head.

A woman said: "Grandmother saw it once.
She and her sweetheart, out on Razorback.
They stayed and watched it for an hour or more.
It must have looked to them a pretty sight."
And an old man, trembling and deaf, recalled:
"The Phantom ship? First time I see it there
Was the same fall the Mary Belle was wrecked
Before she left the stocks. The harbour light
An' house an' all was swep' clean off the pier
By a big wave. The breakwater itself
Was partly tore away. An' every man
Ran to the shore with planks, trying to save
The Rachael an' the Ezra B. McLeod.
An' poor Matt Swan was drowned in sight o'land.
That fall, I mind my uncle called me out
One night an' says: 'Look boy! The Phantom Ship!'
He told an ancient Bay 0' Fundy yarn
Of some unlucky vessel burned like that
With all on board; how every seven year
The folks along the shore still saw her pass.
Yeah, queer things happened here in the ol' days

They said : "There's nothing doing much here, now.
Ship-yard and tan-yard, grist- and lumber-mill
Have had their day and gone. Even the fish
That swarmed into the Cove, running from sharks,
So plenty men could almost scoop them up
With their bare hands, have turned against the place.
Our summer boarders don't stay very long.
They find the water cold - and then the fog!

Harbour and quiet shore, the hard-cleared fields
Now going back to woodland, this gaunt row
Of vacant houses staring out to sea,
This failing remnant of the pioneers,
What have they left to boast of now but ghosts?

Université de Moncton, Centre d'études acadiennes, Fonds Catherine-Jolicoeur, 63.022