Do you believe in ghosts?

I’ve found that ghost stories are not all that rare, but surprisingly common. I’m amazed how many people when asked if they or some family member have had encounters with ghosts report some kind of event. Here are some stories from my family about some ghostly events.

The Woman Crossing the Deck

My great-granduncle Edward Crago Bolt (1836-1894) was a sea captain, sailing three-masted cargo ships between England and the port of Freemantle on the western coast of Australia. He claimed that on one of his voyages, when he was alone on watch, he witnessed the image of a woman slowly glide across the deck, then disappear. The image he saw could not have been that of a real person as, on commercial runs, no women were permitted on board. Later when he arrived in port he learned that his wife, who had been in poor health, had died on the very day and at the very hour he had seen the apparition.

The Warning Hand

My mother’s mother, Mary Ellen Taylor, née Elliott worked in one of the shoe factories in Haverhill on Essex Street. Returning home at the end of the day, she often took a short rest, collapsing on her bed, her arms outstretched. On one particular occasion, she felt her hand clasped in the unmistakably familiar grip of her deceased mother Catherine Elliott. At the same time, her mother’s voice called, addressing her by a familiar pet name, “Mame, go to the bank!”

The incident was so vivid she could not pass it off. The following day, the story goes, Mary Ellen went to the Haverhill bank that held the mortgage to the family house at 52 High Street, and sure enough there was an imposing deadline to which she was not alerted, which, had it been missed, would have been very costly, even risking loss of the house.

The Ghostly Footfalls

Before the beginning of each semester she was to teach at Tufts University, my wife Olga would spend morning hours preparing the course syllabus. She would work in her small upstairs office at our house. I would be away, already having headed out to work.

In mid-morning she would hear, faintly at first, then louder, footsteps as from someone walking slowly back and forth overhead. The sound was distinct, though not overly loud. The attic above was unfinished, but was partially fitted out with floorboards, enough for a person—or a spirit—to walk upon.

The footfalls, Olga said, would continue for minutes at a time, stop awhile, then resume. She didn’t find them scary or threatening, but felt rather they were those of a kindly spirit watching over the house, possible those of the long-deceased head of the family that had owned the house previously. Too, our son John, who was about 10 at this time—it was the mid-to late 1980’s, would sometimes hear in his bedroom when falling asleep footsteps overhead coming from the attic area. After we had constructed an addition to the house in 1988-89, the footsteps were no longer heard, as if the spirit had concluded that the house no longer needed watching over and had passed into a new phase of being.

A Phantom at Salzburg?

In January 2007, my wife Olga and I were in Salzburg, Austria with family friend Béatrice, and walking through St. Peter’s Cemetery there. (St. Peter’s Cemetery is portrayed in the motion picture The Sound of Music, where Julie Andrews as Maria von Trapp and the rest of the Trapp family hide out from Nazi troops.) Béatrice took the accompanying photo of Olga and me in one of the cemetery passageways. It was early and a bit chill, with a fine morning mist about—but nothing like the cloudy swirl you see before us in the photo:

A phantom? Your guess? But given that this was within Saint Peter’s cemetery amidst the banks of tombs, I suspect so…

The summer after my junior college year I worked at Woods Hole on Cape Cod as part of the kitchen crew at the dining hall at the MBL—The Marine Biological Laboratory—a world famous institution, attracting marine biologists from all over the world.

I worked in the serving line. It was a good spot to be, as one could chat with the people coming through the line as opposed being one of the pot-wallopers (scouring and cleaning up the cooking pots) where one was perpetually facing a tub of suds.

Our working hours were from 7 to 9 in the morning, from 11 to 1 mid-day, then from 5 to 7 in the evening, affording mid-morning and mid-afternoon two-hour breaks on your own time. It was a short walk to small, quaint Stoney beach with its public and private sections. Or, on cloudy days, one might go to the MBL Library, which was well stocked, though top-heavy with scientific books and journals. One rainy afternoon there I glimpsed at a nearby table noted physicist and prolific science writer George Gamow, author of One Two Three… Infinity, shuffling though stacks of notes, perhaps preparing a new publication.

In addition to my dining hall work, I tried out for and got a part in Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, the Silver Anniversary production of the Penzance Players, a amateur theatrical group founded and run by college-age children of the summer residents whose ample homes sat on the broad spit of land named Penzance Point or by the coast along Fay Road. The play was to be presented at the Woods’s Hole Community Center, a small century-old building on Water Street next to the old firehouse.

During one of the rehearsal breaks, Michael, a fellow member of the cast whom I’d gotten to know a bit, invited me to go for a sail on his family’s small sailboat, the Opsin, named after a substance in the retina of the eye that his father had researched for which he’d later share in a Nobel prize. I told Mike, as he preferred to be called, that l I’d love to take him up on his offer, but I didn’t know the least bit about handling a sailboat. He said not to worry; he’d teach me.

The Opsinwas a Town Class sloop, sixteen and one-half feet long, with a lapstrake hull of overlapping narrow mahogany planks, a triangular mainsail plus a jib. Instead of a keel, it had a brass centerboard that could be raised or lowered by means of a lever.

The afternoon break was better for sailing, the sun being higher and the air a bit warmer.  Mike and I pushed Opsinoff from the beach, and hopped in. Following Mike’s direction, we raised the mainsail, and let it flap loosely in the wind while we unfurled the jib. We then backed the jib, holding it by its free point to one side to catch the wind and head the prow toward the opposite side. Then, setting the mainsail by hauling on the main sheet, we were underway.

We first practiced tacking, Mike talking me through the maneuver. On a tack you are sailing more or less intothe wind. On a starboard tack, the wind is coming at you over the left or port side of the bow. Conversely, on a port tack, the wind is coming at you over the right or starboard side of the bow.

To change what kind of tack you are on—either from port to starboard, or the reverse—the helmsman at the tiller will say ‘ready to tack’ or ready about,” and just before performing the maneuver will say ‘tacking,’ The helmsman will then push the tiller toward the mainsail, upon which the sail will swing over and switch sides. While this is happening, the crew and helmsman will change sides to balance the weight on the boat. When the boat is on the desired course, the helmsman brings the tiller to center.

In jibing, the wind is coming from behind the boat, with the boom and mainsail hanging out toward the left (port) or right (starboard) side of the boat. Let’s say the wind is coming from the north with the heading of the boat being southwest, and you want to change the heading to be to the southeast. To prepare for the jibe, one hauls in on the mainsheet so that distance the boom will travel during the jibe is minimized. The helmsman announces ‘jibe ho,’ and turns the boat across the wind; the mainsail and boom will swing across the boat. Finally, the mainsail is trimmed for the new setting.

Jibing is more difficult than tacking because the mainsail moves from far out on one side of the boat to the other. The boom can be moving very fast, and can be dangerous to anyone in its path. In my novel Sailor Take Warningprotagonist Bill Rundle is taken for a sail in Sydney, Australia harbor by his girlfriend’s cousin Sergei Tartarinoff and receives a violent cuff on the head during a jibe. Whether this happens by accident or is deliberate is part of the suspense of the story. 

While Mike and I were sailing the narrow passage between Wood’s Hole and the eastern end of Nonamesset Island, Mike cautioned that we shouldn’t get too close to “The Hole,” a section of the strait where, at the changing of the tides, a strong current can grab you if you are, as we were, in a small boat. The current’s force can be strong enough to cause marker buoys, attached the sea floor by their chain, to lie almost flat in the tidal rush.

The tidal whirlpool off Wood’s Hole, while potentially troublesome to small craft, is as nothing in comparison to some in other parts of the world. Called maelstroms, such tidal currents can form a whirlpool of such size and strength as to be truly terrifying. One such is the Corryvrecken maelstrom off the west coast of Scotland between the islands of Jura and Scarba. Its waves can be as much as 30 feet high, and its roar can be heard 10 miles distant.

I’ve never done any ocean sailing or racing. Since learning the rudiments of small boat handling on Opisin, I rented a variety small sailboats for an afternoon’s sail at Marblehead: Lightning’s, International 110’s and 210’s, Cape Cod Mercury’s. I pretty well could handle the sails on all of these, but tides and currents always baffled me. On many occasions when returning from the outer to inner harbor at Marblehead, I took overly much time and tacking/jibing while fighting the, to me, indecipherable current.

My Bolt family originates in Cornwall, England. The earliest Bolt ancestor that we know of is a William Bolt, who was born, we estimate, about 1778. In 1799, he married a Hannah (or Anne) Ham in the church at St. Austell.  On the marriage certificate, Willam’s occupation was entered as a member of the Royal Artillery.

A grandson of William, Reuben James Bolt, in 1869 at Veryan, Cornwall, married Ellen Ann Rundle. Ellen Ann’s father, John Quintrell Rundle, had a second cousin named Mathew Quintrell. Born 1766 at Padstow, Cornwall. Matthew had an interesting career as a sailor: he was one of the leaders of the famous mutiny on the HMS Bounty.

The Bounty sailed with a crew of 46 in December 1787, bound for the South Seas, her mission under the command of Captain William Bligh being to collect breadfruit trees from Tahiti and spread their growth to other South Sea Islands.

Matthew Quintrell is described as being 5 feet 5 inches in height, strongly built,  “…with a fair complexion, light brown hair and very much tattooed on his back, legs, and backside.”

Mathew—whose surname was entered on the Bounty’s roster as “Quintal”—had the dubious honor, four months into the voyage, of being the first seaman on board to undergo disciplinary punishment, being lashed for refusing to eat pumpkin, which had been purchased at Tenerife as a substitute for bread.

Bligh noted in his log: “Until this Afternoon I had hopes I could have performed the Voyage without punishment to any One, but I found it necessary to punish Mathew Quintal with a dozen lashes for Insolence and Contempt.”

Such a punishment would have been an excruciating ordeal: “… the crew mustered to watch Quintal, age twenty-two, from Cornwall, striped to the waist and strapped, spread-eagled, by the wrists and ankles to an upright deck grating. With no marines to drum or pipe, this would have been a lackluster ceremony, itself stripped down to its most pertinent and brutal elements.” (Caroline Alexander. The Bounty, p. 87.)

Quintal was the first of the crewmen to be approached by Fletcher Christian, master’s mate on the Bounty, concerning the possibility of a mutiny; Quintal initially was reluctant, but later became a supporter of Christian.

Of the mutiny itself, Bligh wrote: “Just before sunrise Mr Christian and the Master at Arms came into my cabin while I was fast asleep, and seizing me tied my hands with a cord and threatened instant death if I made the least noise. I however called sufficiently loud to alarm the officers, who found themselves equally secured by sentinels at their door. There were now three men at my cabin door and four inside. Fletcher Christian, Alexander Smith, John Sumner and Matthew Quintal.”

Captain Bligh and eighteen of his crew were put into a small boat, with which they sailed for 3000 miles through the South Seas to eventual landfall, their voyage itself a classic tale of survival. The Bounty, under the command of Fletcher Christian, set sail for Tahiti, where all but nine of the mutineers chose to remain. These nine English sailors, along with four native men—whether willing or not is unclear—and eleven young native women, made for the tiny, remote island of Pitcairn, intending “…to settle in undisturbed peace and tranquility.”

At Pitcairn, the Bounty was stripped of all that could be taken ashore. There was a dispute as to whether to keep the Bounty intact in case of a later need to escape, or to dismantle it for wood and nails to build shelter. While the dispute went on, Quintal settled the issue by setting fire to the ship.

Soon the intended paradise on Pitcairn turned into a sorrowful trial. Jealousy and drunkenness prevailed. Seaman McCoy used his knowledge of distilling to concoct an extremely potent drink from the “tee root” (Dracoena terminalis) plant. McCoy and Quintal produced copious streams of the liquor, which in time drove McCoy insane and led to the four Tahitian men, whom they had taken from the island, being flogged and hung in irons. Two of the Tahitians escaped and somehow secured muskets, with which they fled. Later returning, they attacked the white men, killing Fletcher Christian and seamen Williams, Mills, Martin and Brown. McCoy and Quintal fled for the hills of the tiny island, which measured only one by two miles, and hid.

The Tahitian men now held most of the weapons, all of the liquor, and the eleven women. After a drunken fight over one of the women, one Tahitian shot another and fled to join McCoy and Quintal, who promptly murdered him for his musket. The two remaining Tahitian men were turned against by the women; one was axed to death, the other was shot by Edward Young. The remaining people on the island somehow made up their differences, and for a good while lived in peace.

Three years later, in 1797, McCoy, drunken and depressed, committed suicide by throwing himself off a cliff with a rock tied around his neck.  A couple of years later, one of Quintal’s women slipped and fell from a cliff while collecting bird’s eggs. Quintal, drunk and crazy, demanded Edward Young’s woman from him, despite there being other women who were unattached. Adams and Young decided for self-protection to kill Quintal, which they did by setting upon him with an ax while he lay in a drunken stupor.

Unquestionably one of the most violent of the crew members, Quintal seemed yet to have a feeling for family, not only naming his Tahitian consort after his mother, but naming each of his children after a member of his family.

A year later, in 1800, Young died, the first of the mutineers to die of natural causes. This left John Adams, age 33, the only surviving English seaman on the island. With him were nine Polynesian women, one eleven old Polynesian girl, and twenty-three children born on the island, several of whom fathered by Matthew Quintal.
Upon the death of Adams in 1829, charge of the island’s affairs was taken over by one of Quintal’s sons, Edward, who, according to Adams, possessed the “… best understanding of any on the island.”
Two years later, missionaries removed all of the settlers to Norfolk Island.

The descendants of Matthew Quintrell currently form the largest grouping of blood relatives on Norfolk Island. To this day, there are many of Matthew’s descendants living in Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. (I, Richard Bolt, am not a descendent of Matthew, but a second cousin, 4 times removed.)

Interestingly, the movie actor Errol Flynn (1909 – 1959) may have been a descendent of Quintal. Flynn’s maternal grandfather, Frederick Richmond Young (1860 – 1918)—himself descended from mutineers Edward Young and John Adams and their Tahitian  consorts—married as his second wife Esther Linda Quintal, a g-g-granddaughter of Matthew Quintal. However, some on-line genealogies of Flynn’s mother Lily Mary Young list her as born to Young’s first wife Annie Edith Madden (e.g., on Geni; Ancestry), while others (e.g., on WikiTree) cite second wife Esther Quintal.

* * * * * *

A number of passages in the foregoing account are quoted or paraphrased from the magazine article: “The Padstow Mutineer” by Chris Pollard.  In Cornwall Today, August 1995.

Also from: “Descendents of Matthew Quintrell and Hannah Brent.” Compiled by Mr. Paul J. Lareau.

Also referenced is Caroline Alexander’s The Bounty. Viking, 2003.