Page 61 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

sprang up, all sail was made, and the Portuguese ship, still
anchored, was left to her fate, as she had not the courage to follow,
and the Eden had no time to spare.
Twelve days later, about forty miles from Tristan da Cunha,
the Eden ran into a heavy gale, and the weather became thick and
hazy. It was here, for the first time on the voyage, that what
sailors call ‘the Flying Dutchman’ was seen. Loch describes it as
‘the perfect image of our own vessel on the horizon, which ever
way you look’. He explains the phenomenon as being caused
by the humidity, and the thickness of the atmosphere, which
reflects the image of the ship: the darker the night, the more
distinct being the reflection. Sailors, however, would not accept
this explanation of a phenomenon which has been the subject of
so many legends, and is regarded as a sign of coming disaster. In
this ease, no harm came to the ship.
On August 28th, the man at the mast suddenly called out ‘rocks
on the starboard bow!’ The ship was steered to pass the rocks
as near as was prudent. Within a few miles from the rocks, the
water was seen to be washing over them, but no rocks were shown
on any charts though passing ships reported that there were rocks
in these latitudes. Loch turned his glasses on to the rocks, and
saw what he supposed to be barnacles sticking to them. The
ship drew nearer. Then, to his surprise and relief, Loch saw that
what had appeared to be rocks were, in fact, a number of whales
enjoying themselves by floating on the surface of the sea, with
their fins and tails projecting from the water. A few days later,
in the same parallel, the man at the masthead sighted a sandbank
with breakers washing over it. When the ship approached, the
sandbank turned out to be the carcase of an enormous whale,
covered with thousands of sea birds which, when they were scared
off their meal, rose in a cloud which darkened the horizon. The
detestable smell of the huge dead whale stuck to the ship for
several hours.
Whales in the Indian Ocean arc common, and sometimes they
arc seen near the entrance of the Persian Gulf, but they very rarely
venture to the top part of the Gulf, possibly because much of the
Gulf is very shallow. Some years ago, a dead whale was washed
ashore on one of the Bahrain islands. Few of the Arabs had seen
a whale and, for many days, until very little was left of it except
the smell, local buses did a thriving trade in carrying out hundreds
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