The Strange Tale of the Bristol Hope

Throwback to the Fireside Yarn published in the October 1996 issue of Downhome Magazine.

The Strange Tale of the Bristol Hope
From the book Ghost Stories from Newfoundland Folklore by Alice Lannon and Mike McCarthy.

This unexplained event at Harbour Breton occurred in the spring of 1867, and involved a ship belonging to the Newman & Company. A large number of people in Harbour Breton witnessed this strange and terrifying phenomenon that has never been explained. At that time, Newman & Company, a large English firm, had a branch store at Harbour Breton. They carried on an extensive business in Fortune Bay and along the South Coast. Beside the fishery, the company used their Harbour Breton warehouses to store casks of Port wine brought from Oporto, Spain. The wine was stored for four years and then taken back to England. The four years in storage in Newfoundland created a unique wine which was sold as Newman’s Port, a very popular drink with the English gentry.

Early in May of 1867, the manager of the Newman store in Harbour Breton was informed by telegraph that a three-masted vessel named the Bristol Hope was due to leave Bristol, England, with a cargo of wine for storage in his warehouses. The approximate date of arrival was given as May 19, 1867.

On the morning of May 19, the Bristol Hope was sighted in the bay and the men of Newman’s room got ready to store the wine when it was unloaded. It was a beautiful May morning, clear and fine with just enough wind to bring the ship into port. As she sailed up the long passage into Harbour Breton harbour a goodly number of citizens came to watch her come into the wharf. The ship neared the wharf and the people could clearly see the ship’s name and the sailors getting ready for the landing.

Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the ship disappeared before the eyes of the watching crowd. One moment she was coming in under full sail, the next moment she sank like a bolt of lead and disappeared beneath the waves.

The watchers on the hill and the workers on Newman’s room could not believe their eyes. It all happened so quickly and people were so shocked that for a moment they could do nothing but stare at the place where she had sunk.

However, in a few moments boats were launched and the men of Harbour Breton went out and searched the area where the ship had disappeared. They dragged the bottom of the harbour but did not find a trace of the missing ship. For the next few days the disappeared of the Bristol Hope was the main topic of conversation. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Bristol Hope had entered the harbour. They had all clearly seen the name of the ship. But what had happened? Was it a mirage? Did it foretell some impending disaster? To most of the people the meaning was clear, the Bristol Hope had foundered at sea, and they had seen a ghost ship.

However, a week later the story took an even more bizarre twist when the agent for Newman’s received a telegraph messaged from Head Office in England saying that the Bristol Hope had been delayed and was only now on the point of sailing. This caused even more speculation, for if the ship had not been lost at sea why had the ghost ship of that name come to Harbour Breton? There were no answers.

Then days passed, and again the men on Newman’s room made preparations to store the expected cargo of wine. They watched the bay for the sign of an approached three-master, but none came. The days passed into weeks and weeks into months. The Bristol Hope did not arrive and in due time it was sadly concluded that she had foundered on the voyage across the Atlantic with no survivors.

To the people of Harbour Breton, the question of why they had seen the loss of a ship more than a month before she had sailed from here home port, was never answered. That they had witnessed a psychic phenomenon there could be no doubt, too many people had witnessed the event to doubt that it had occurred. But, why it occurred forever remains an unexplained mystery of the sea.

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