Skip to main content

Shades of Sail: Edwardian Nautical Hauntings

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic

Abstract

Ghost ships are an enduring trope in history, literature, and folklore of the sea, and continually change in meaning according to their cultural contexts. The early twentieth century produced British nautical gothic fiction that grapples with the implications of the transition from sail to steam and new naval technologies in the lead-up to the First World War. In three stories by William Hope Hodgson, Oliver Onions, and Richard Middleton, I examine how ghost ships from the sailing past return from the dimensions of ocean and time, to haunt the present and negotiate anxieties and hopes about a changing modern world.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 189.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Bibliography

  • Alder, Emily, ‘The Dark Mythos of the Sea: William Hope Hodgson’s Transformation of Maritime Legends’. In William Hope Hodgson: Voices from the Borderland. Edited by Massimo Barruti, S. T. Joshi, and Sam Gafford (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2014), 56–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, ‘Dracula’s Gothic Ship’, Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 15 (2016): 4–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, ‘Through Oceans Darkly: Sea Literature and the Nautical Gothic’, Gothic Studies 19, no. 2 (2017): 1–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arnstein, Walter, ‘Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee’, The American Scholar 66, no. 4 (1997): 591–97.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ballads, Vol. 3, 1750–1812 (Glasgow: Fuimus, Motherwell Collections).

    Google Scholar 

  • Baker, Margaret, Folklore of the Sea (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1979).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brennan, Zoe, ‘“Let the Miserable Wrestle with His Own Shadows”: The Beleaguered Edwardian Male Author in Oliver Onions’ “The Beckoning Fair One”’, Literature & History 26, no. 2 (2017): 177–94.

    Google Scholar 

  • Briggs, Julia, Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (London: Faber, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Roly, ‘Glimpses into the 19th Century Broadside Ballad Trade: No. 23: “Duncan, Jarvis and Lord Howe …”’, Musical Traditions Internet Magazine (28 October 2006): Accessed 27 October 2019. https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/bbals_23.htm.

  • Burgess, Robert F., Ships Beneath the Sea: A History of Submarines and Submersibles (London: Robert Hale, 1976).

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Jane, The Wandering Soul: Glimpses of a Life: A Compendium of Rare and Unpublished Works (Hornsea; Leyburn: PS; Tartarus, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gazzard, Katherine, ‘The Triumph of Britannia: Naval Victory and Urban Entertainment in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London’, Royal Museums Greenwich (2019). Accessed 27 October 2019. https://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/blog/triumph-of-britannia.

  • Gilroy, Paul, Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).

    Google Scholar 

  • Giorgetti, Franco, The Great Sailing Ships: The History of Sail From Its Origins to the Present (Vercelli: White Star Publishers, 2011).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson, William Hope, The House on the Borderland and Other Novels (London: Gollancz, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  • Holloway, William, The Histories and Antiquities of the Ancient Town and Port of Rye, in the County of Sussex (London: John Russell Smith, 1847).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutchison, Robert, Submarines: War Beneath the Waves From 1776 to the Present Day (London: HarperCollins, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, Rachel, ‘The Ghostly Femme Fatale: Meta-Textuality, Desire, and Homo-Eroticism in the English Ghost Story (1890–1925)’, diss., University of the West of England, 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, Robert, Destroyers, Frigates and Corvettes (Hoo: Grange Books, 2000).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, William, Credulities Past and Present: Including the Sea and Seamen, Miners, Amulets and Talismans, Rings, Word and Letter Divination, Numbers, Trials, Exorcising and Blessing of Animals, Birds, Eggs, and Luck (London: Chatto and Windus, 1880).

    Google Scholar 

  • Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge, The Boer War (London: John Murray, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  • Manning, Captain T. D. The British Destroyer (London: Godfrey Cave Associates, 1979).

    Google Scholar 

  • Marryat, Frederick, The Phantom Ship (1839) (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1896).

    Google Scholar 

  • Middleton, Richard, ‘The Ghost Ship’. In The Ghost Ship and Other Stories (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912), 1–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mix Barrington, Julia, ‘Phantom Bark: The Chronotope of the Ghost Ship in the Atlantic World’, Gothic Studies 19, no. 2 (2017): 58–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Onions, Oliver, ‘Phantas’. In Widdershins (London: Martin Secker, 1911), 107–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Packham, Jimmy, and David Punter, ‘Oceanic Studies and the Gothic Deep’, Gothic Studies 19, no. 2 (2017): 16–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poe, Edgar Allan, Selected Writings. Edited by David Galloway (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967).

    Google Scholar 

  • Preston, Antony, Destroyers (London: Hamlyn, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, The World’s Great Submarines (Blitz: Leicester, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rediker, Marcus, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rössler, Eberhard, The U-Boat: The Evolution and Technical History of German Submarines (London: Cassell & Co., 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  • Savage, Henry, Richard Middleton: The Man and His Work (London: Cecil Palmer, 1922).

    Google Scholar 

  • Tearle, Oliver, Bewilderments of Vision: Hallucination and Literature, 1880–1914 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  • Verne, Jules, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Translated by Mendor T. Brunetti (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • Winter, James, Secure From Rash Assault: Sustaining the Victorian Environment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emily Alder .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Alder, E. (2021). Shades of Sail: Edwardian Nautical Hauntings. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40866-4_45

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics