I’m on a (haunted) boat!

I’d like to tell you a little bit about the haunted* sunken ship where I’ll be spending my Halloween.

(*Not entirely sure this is actually a haunted ship.  I’m assuming it is for reasons I’ll outline below, but the officialsbehind it make no mention of any hauntitude.  I’m pretty sure it’s haunted, though.)

Gaze, ye land lubbers, upon the storied remains of the good Lightship Frying Pan.  From fryingpan.com,

“Built in 1929, Lightship #115 “Frying Pan” guarded its namesake, Frying Pan Shoals, 30 miles off of Cape Fear, NC, from 1930 to 1965.  She is 133 feet and 3 inches in length with a 30 foot beam and she is 632 gross tons.”

Back in the days before GPS and sonar, lightships essentially acted as a lighthouse where they couldn’t put a lighthouse, to warn larger vessels of shoals, coral reefs, and sand bars that would do damage to the underside of the big boy ships.  (Scrappy, underappreciated little guy helping out the star players?  Sounds like we’ve got the beginnings of an awesome haunted ship story to me, fryingpan.com.)  The lightship’s sole purpose was to keep a light shining atop her mast at all times and never, ever move, regardless of whatever “numerous storms and even hurricanes that would send other ships to safer harbors” came her way.  Sailors tasked with manning the Frying Pan described the experience as “months of boredom followed by minutes of pure fear.”  (Edited for publication from the original quote, “Months of beating my roommate at Backgammon followed by shitting my pants out of sheer terror and regretting ever signing up for duty aboard this HellShip. I just want to see my wife one last time.”)

The Lightship Frying Pan served this task, and served it well, for over 35 years, until it was unceremoniously docked and left to float, unmaintained and ignored, for 10 years at a town called Whitehaven on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  For ten years she sat, waiting for someone, anyone, to thank her for her years of service in rain, snow, sleet, and hurricanes.  Instead of gratitude, all she ever experienced was the stench of rotting, discarded oysters from the old oyster cannery she was docked next to.  Finally, in 1986, she grew tired of waiting, and just sank for no goddamned reason.  Today, the official claim is “a broken pipe”, but let’s be honest: A tiny little scrapper that has survived multiple hurricanes- multiple hurricanes- doesn’t just bust a pipe and go under.  It goes down because it wants to go down. 

Did the good oyster canners rush to the Frying Pan’s aid?  Did they swim down and try to drag her out with naught but the power of their sheer human strength and will?  Were cranes and dredging ships brought out to rouse this forgotten heroine from her disgraced, watery bed?  No.  America let her sit down there and think about what she did for three fucking years.  Finally, a team of salvors raised her to sell her for parts when the good people who take care of her now (and their website doesn’t give them a name, so I’m just going to call them the Frying Panners) swooped in to the rescue and bought her off the underwater graverobbers.  I’d like to think they did this not so much out of respect for history, but out of fear of what the Frying Pan would do to us if we let her sit there any longer.  Either way, a great national treasure now floats off Pier 66 in New York City, its vengeful spirit surely appeased and willing to let the human race continue to traverse the high seas.

And this Halloween, I’m going to go get sauced on it and likely desecrate its haunted planks once again in a variety of ways.  If you don’t hear from me after Nov 1st, you’ll know why.