Been away for awhile, doing some more research and writing some stuff for a local publication. More about that at a later date.
The band is taking a little brake, wih the holidays coming. We’re planning on recording a new demo, getting a fill in bass player (The trek from NJ for Tommy is getting rough), and coming out fresh in the new year.
Here’s the last track from “Ghostly Tales of Annapolis and Beyond”. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read about it, listen to it, and buy it. It’s available at CD Baby, ITunes, Amazon, and whole bunch of other places.
The fundraising effort for the Goshen Farm Preservation Society has taken in over $2700. Very cool.
Track 14
NO MORE SAILIN’
Two famous seafaring ghosts are said to haunt the area. Captain William Kidd (1645-1701) was hired as a privateer by the English. He sailed the east coast of America, the Indian Ocean, and the “Pirate round”, hunting pirates and enemy ships.
Unfortunately, he was saddled with a crew of miscreants and eventually committed at least one act of piracy, and even that event is questionable. Along the way, he threw an ironbound bucket at William Moore, a gunner on the ship. It was a good throw, hitting Moore in the head and fracturing his skull. He died the next day.
During the return voyage, Kidd learned that he was wanted by the crown. Feeling confident in his political connections, he returned home anyway. He was promptly arrested, and eventually sent to London for trial. His political cronies had no further use for him, and left him to his fate.
Found guilty of murder and piracy, he was taken from Newgate Prison to the “execution dock”. They hung him, but the rope broke. So they hung him again. It took that time. He was gibbeted and hung over the Thames river, where his rotting corpse would serve as a warning to anyone else thinking about crossing the empire.
He reportedly hid treasure everywhere from Nova Scotia to Japan. Some of his loot was actually recovered on Gardiners Island in New York, by the colonial Governor Bellemont, and sent to England as evidence against him.
The tale associated with this area is the appearance of his ghost on Gibson Island. Legend has it that Kidd hid some of his treasure here. One story has it that a man had a dream about the loot, buried under an old oak tree on the island. When he and his friend went to search for it, Kidd appeared, and scared the bejeesus out of them. They of course ran, and never returned.
I haven’t found any proof of Kidd ever coming this far up the bay, but it is not out of the question.
John Paul Jones (1747-1792) was the “father” of the American navy. His most famous exploit, of course, was his fight against the British ship “Serapis”, and his statement “I have not yet begun to fight”.
Finding himself unemployed, in 1788 he became a rear admiral in the Russian navy, fighting against the Turks in the Black Sea. He was very successful and was even awarded The order of St. Anne, but politics and jealousy caused him to quit and return to France in 1790.
He was found dead in his apartment on July 18, 1792. The cause of death was reported to be a severe brain tumor.
He was buried in Paris at the Saint Louis Cemetery, which belonged to the French royal family. Four years later, France’s revolutionary government sold the property and the cemetery was forgotten. The area was later used as a garden, a place to dispose of dead animals, and a place where gamblers bet on animal fights.
To some back in the States, this was not a fitting situation for our first naval hero to spend eternity in. In 1905, Jones’ remains were identified by US Ambassador to France Gen. Horace Porter, who had searched for six years to track down the body using faulty copies of Jones’ burial record.
On January 26, 1913, the Captain’s remains were re-interred in a lovely bronze and marble sarcophagus at the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis.
His ghost reportedly wanders the Academy grounds from time to time. He was allegedly pickled in alcohol for preservative purposes upon his burial in France. I wonder if it’s his intoxicated ghost, simply trying to find his way back to the chapel.
Now imagine these two old seafaring Scotsmen, stuck here on the brown water of the Chesapeake for eternity. One, a proud and decorated naval hero, ultimately buried in grand fashion on sacred ground. The other, a luckless privateer, who seemed to end up in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people. The noose didn’t even work correctly. In the final indignity, his corpse was left in a cage to rot, under the constant glare of the local Londoners.
Kind of a ghostly odd couple.
