The Frolic, the old-fashioned craft of about 700 tons that was used for years as a dispatch boat and tender, was long alleged to be haunted, because of certain extraordinary noises heard in the wardroom about the beginning of the mid watch every night.

Mr. N., the junior watch officer, professed to have been kept awake several hours one night, and, on his motion, a party was formed the following evening with the intention of surprising the ghostly visitant.  The officers sat up to an unusual hour, maintaining perfect silence, but nothing happened by 1 o'clock and they turned in.

About forty minutes later the first lieutenant was wakened by the sound of a heavy body moving stealthily around the wardroom to the accompaniment of a muttering voice.  The lieutenant arose and stepped out into the light that came dimly from a single lamp over the center table.  On the table itself he beheld the figure of Mr. X, dressed only in pajamas and moving in a circle on hands and knees over the polished mahogany.  Meanwhile he repented over and over in sepulchral accents a mystic phrase: "Little pieces of orange peel."  Being roused, Mr. X explained that he had dreamed he was on the verge of an important scientific discovery.

Is the Fern Haunted?

After the Maine disaster, the Fern was the first United States vessel to visit Havana: several of the injured sailors were taken aboard and two of the victims died on her deck.  Being an old wooden vessel, she never went to sea before her visit to the Maine's wreck without carrying a large cargo of rats.  On her return from Havana, it was noticed that the rats were deserting her, singly, in groups of three or four, or in multitudes.  Little attention was paid to this until one night a water tender, who had been sent down into the coal bunkers, came up trembling and white as a sheet.  This man, a Maine survivor, affirmed that while below he had distinctly heard the voice of one of his old shipmates groaning.  Several officers started down toward the coal bunkers and, when nearing them, plainly heard noises such as the sailor had described.  As the party progressed the sounds grew fainter and finally ceased.  They are said to have been heard since on several occasions.

Another Fern ghost story is based on the alleged apparition of a strange beast that roams about the coal bunkers, and, when anyone approaches, takes refuge near the propeller shaft.  It is described as a shadowy creature, somewhat resembling a wildcat, though larger, with two big yellow eyes that glare ferociously out of the darkness.  Dogs have been taken down to attack this mysterious creature several times but they have fled to the dock invariably with howls of terror, after nosing around for a few moments.

The Coast Survey schooner Eager, formerly Commodore Garner's yacht Mohawk, is also declared by the sailors to be haunted.  Some twenty years ago the Mohawk was lying at anchor off Tompkinsville, S. I., the present naval anchorage.  The weather was calm and pleasant, with just enough wind to keep the yacht pointing due east, crossways to a gentle tide.  There was no watch on deck save sailing master Commodore Garner and his party being in the cabin at luncheon.  The ship had her starboard bow anchor set and both mainsail and staysail had been left standing when she came to her flying moor.  For some unaccountable reason, the Captain handed off the main sheet and secured it before he went to his own dinner.  He had hardly gone below when a furious squall came up.  In a moment the yacht was on her beam ends and nearly every one drowned.  Since then, they say, the sailing master comes on deck every night precisely at 12 o'clock, rushes aft to the main sheet and tries frantically to cast it loose and save his vessel.

A One-Eyed Paymaster's Ghost.

Down to 1800, when "the wardroom country" of the old corvette Monongabela was overhauled and reconstructed, the second room on the port side of the vessel had been left vacant for three cruises.  It was the Monongabela that was washed ashore in Peru in the fifties by a tidal wave and then washed to sea again without suffering serious injury, and with the loss of only a single man: but this has nothing to do with the ghost story and is mentioned only to identify the vessel.  Years after the tidal wave incident there was a one-eyed paymaster with a red beard on the Monongabela.  He was known throughout the navy as one of the three or four best story-tellers in the entire service.  He was also famous for his love of whiskey.  The former made him a general favorite and the latter ultimately brought him to his end.  When told that he was going to die, he summoned his fellow officers to his bedside.

"Dear boys," he said, "you have liked me and I love you for it.  I've often heard you say the wardroom mess wouldn't be a mess at all without me, and so I'll tell you what I'm going to do; I'll be around as usual in my old room, No. 2 on the port side, so that you can't say, old fellows, that I ever left the ship."

More than five veteran seaman wiped his eyes two or three days later when the paymaster was dropped overboard, and two or three youngsters in the mess fairly blubbered aloud.  Nobody believed that if the paymaster came back, as he promised, it would be with the intention of annoying anyone.  But his alleged reappearances caused great consternation.  They began the day following his burial and years afterward every officer who was quartered in No. 2 on the port side of the Monongabela's wardroom sought an early opportunity of relinquishing the berth, though few were willing to admit any ghostly experiences.  But among the sailors of the ship talk about the paymaster's ghost began within a few weeks of his departure.  The earliest yarns were spun by the men on duty in the storerooms and paymaster's office.  Nearly every night they reported that he was seen pottering round among the ship's stores and figuring up accounts on the desk by the safe.  One of the men, the pay yeoman, was sent to the sick bay.  His illness was trifling, but he told the doctor one morning that his time had surely come, for the dead paymaster had stood by his bedside at two bells in the middle watch and beckoned him away.  And, as a matter of fact, he died in a day or two.

About three months after this Passed Assistant Paymaster S---- joined the ship.  He was a lively young chap.  He had no superstitions whatever, he said, and cheerfully installed himself in room No. 2 on the port side.  The evening of April 23d; 1885m was one of unusual merriment in the mess.  The ship was homeward bound with a fair wind and the Passed Assistant Paymaster was the jolliest man on board.  About two hours after everybody had turned in the entire ward room was awakened by an unearthly yell, followed by a noise as of a man falling.  The officers turned out, lights were struck, and there was S----, doubled over an upset chair and moaning unintelligibly.  When asked what was the matter he pointed to the door of the room.

"It's there!  It's there!" he murmered.

"What's there, old man?" was the query.

"A dead thing!  A corpse in my berth---one eye and a red beard---cold and horrible!"

"The moonlight coming in through the port woke me," he continued, after a pause.  "I was very cold, and at first I thought I had a chill.  I raised myself upon my elbows to get a better view of things.  As I moved I came in contact with something clammy and slimy and icy-cold.  By the dim light I saw that I had a bedfellow--a dead man, his one eye staring and his red beard tangled with seaweed.  The thing is there now---lying in my bed."

The officers crowded to the door of No. 2.  Nothing was found---absolutely nothing, though there is a weird but unproved tale that when they examined Mr. S----'s berth they discovered two or three small pieces of barnacled seaweed.  After that strange occurrence, the story of which is an established legend in the navy, room No. 2 on the port side of the Monongabela was unoccupied until the reconstruction.

The Assistant Surgeon's Ghost

Few officers are alive to-day who served with the Monongabela on that memorable cruise; but the following story concerning strange happenings on the Ticonderoga has been told by an officer of high rank now in the department of naval intelligence and another at present and connected with the bureau of ordinance.  The Ticonderoga was of the Monongabela class, a wooden steamer of 2,000 tons displacement, and she had seen good service during the Civil war.  Among her officers on a cruise in the South Atlantic during the early seventies was a young assistant surgeon named W----.  He had a firm belief about the supernatural, and the ridicule that was heaped upon him by the other members of the mess made him very bitter.

"All right," he would say.  "You fellows can laugh at the truth as much as you please, but if I should die while any of you are attached to the Ticonderoga I'll come back and haunt the blamed old lugger until you'll all be glad to apply for other duty."

Well, the young officer died, suddenly, of heart disease, one night in a howling storm off the coast of Brazil.  His body was committed to the deep next day, and that night the trouble began.  Strange rapping's were heard from W----'s stateroom, and though the officers who went there to investigate discovered nothing, they were seized by an overpowering feeling of dread.  In the sick bay that night a sailor who was very ill with consumption stared from his sleep with a scream of terror.  He declared that a shadowy hand had taken his pulse with the familiar touch of the dead ship's doctor who had attended him so long.  The manifestations continued while the ship was at sea, and did not stop until after she reached New York.  A day or two following her arrival a dinner party was given on board, in the course of which one of the officers related the story of the recent strange occurrences.  As he concluded a hush fell over the company, and in the midst of the hush a succession of raps followed by a sharp crash came suddenly from the haunted stateroom.

The cause of the noises could not be discovered by the most careful investigation, but there were no similar manifestation on  the vessel's subsequent cruises.

Reprinted from an article written in 1800 by Syracuse Sunday Herald, Syracuse, New York - Sunday, January 7 1900

The stars were out overhead, and 'Lo!' I cried, 'Nevermore,
Nevermore shall the palace know me;' and high on the masts
The white sails trembled as skyward the good ship bore
Her cargo of shadows.
Never a word of regret as I stood on her moonlight poop
And sang not of old past things but of wonders to be;
And saw great birds with a glory of plumage swoop
Down the sea's meadows.

Eugene O'Neill, The Last Cruise