Mr. Bracegirdle and the Legend of the Headless Helmsman

It is nigh on the Eve of All Hallows, and a young Tony Bracegirdle returns from the sea to claim his true love. But romantic complications ensue in this playful romp inspired by a classic horror tale.

Part One

*****

They told me last night
There were ships in the offing
So I hurried down
To the deep rolling sea.
But my eye could not see it,
Wherever might be it,
The ship that is bearing my lover to me.

"Blow the Wind Southerly"---Traditional

*****

All along the Kentish coast of old England lie secret, fog shrouded inlets and long, desolate stretches of shingled beach and empty marsh where for centuries smugglers have plied their chancy trade. And while some of these rascally rogues did make their fortunes running the tides, trusting their luck and the Devil's good will to see their quick little ships to their goal, the coast abounds with local tales of them whose luck ran out, and many a story is told of shipwrecks, of hangings and shootings, of drowned men and luckless souls betrayed and murdered by their fellows out of drunkenness or greed. And, as is so often the case, these tales of unsavory souls gone to uneasy graves have given rise to still more tales---of hauntings and apparitions, of ghastly ghosts and spirits that walk, and there is not a village, hamlet or town along the entire coast that does not lay claim to at least one such famous shade.

 But not smuggler nor spirit nor shade had occupied the thoughts of the hero of this tale, one Anthony Aubrey Bracegirdle, as his ship glided silently through the thick October mists past the looming headland of Allhallows, and into the estuary of the Thames, bound for the ominously appellated destination of Gravesend.

And not a thought to spare for ghosts and haunts had he upon disembarking from his beloved "Nerissa", the frigate upon which he had served from the time he was a boy of thirteen and upon which he was a new made lieutenant of His Majesty's navy at the promising age of twenty-two, for "Nerissa" was paid off and headed for dry dock, and our young Lieutenant Bracegirdle, his commission in hand, his future employment assured by his doting captain (yet for the present time deferred) was headed for home.

And that this young man's thoughts did not run in the least to thoughts of restless souls or superstitions might seem peculiar to some, given the season (for it was nigh on the eve of All Hallows, whereupon every schoolchild knows, the spirits of the next world are given to move with equality among the souls of the present one) and considering the high, round face of the blooded Harvest moon, and most of all in respect of the fact that that self-same home to which he now traveled by cutter was home as well to what by some is considered the most notorious and awesome of all the Kentish ghosts: the legendary Headless Helmsman of Haythe.

The helmsman of the sloop, "Yellow", so the story goes, did slip off the coil by hideous misadventure in the time of Charles the First (a high water mark in history for headlessness, by the by, if a little beside the point). This ill-fated person, whose name has been lost to posterity, was said to have been a good and God-fearing man who had taken a berth on the ship fully in ignorance of the sly designs of her Captain and the rest of his nefarious crew. Too late, it must be assumed, did he discover the truth, and indeed that he must do his duty or be killed. Yet did the "Yellow" 's helmsman find a way to take revenge on his deceivers. For on an October night (quite dissimilar to that on which our young Tony Bracegirdle was making his journey, for the cutter sailed on a smooth, black sea, with a fair wind from the south, lit, as before mentioned, by that high, orange harvest moon) when thick clouds scurried like rats in the attic over and over a pale, feeble sliver of moon, and squally winds quibbled and quarreled and blew in fits and starts all along the coast, the Captain gave orders that the "Yellow" would run in close to the shore, making for a secluded inlet close to the one time port of Haythe. This harbour, it's shoreline receded by the incessant battering of storms, had long since lost its usefulness as a port to honest shipping, but to a smuggler it's lonely situation and long strip of deserted beach, punctuated only be the ruins of a pair of ancient towers, offered a sweet landing place, and vast, hidden cellars, dug in Roman times, a perfect arrangement for the stashing of loot that waited to be spirited over the marshes when the time was right.

But this, as we know, was a tale of them whose luck ran out, and indeed, as luck would have it, those squally winds commenced to a dangerous blow, and our helmsman, fearing for his own life and for the health of his ship (for he was a true sailor, and a true sailor, like a true horseman, will ever hold blameless his ship, as the rider should his horse, the former and the latter being but true and obedient instruments of the master, wanting only gentle skill and firm guidance to faithfully submit to his will) did urge the Captain to allow him to take the "Yellow" back out to sea before she would be blown into the shore and grounded, or worse, dashed upon the jagged rocks that lurked, like the teeth of a monster, just below the surface of the pitching sea surrounding the mouth of the inlet, ready to grind the ship to splinters, and swallow the men whole. But this man, his captain, drunk on greed---and very likely rum as well---did but laugh and order the helmsman to stay his course, giving him the option to disobey only on pain of certain and immediate death (as opposed, of course, to theoretical and eventual).

No sooner had the helmsman opened his mouth to give one final and despairing argument (thinking he had little left to lose) but he was well and cleanly beheaded by the whiplash snap of an overstressed halyard, its cleat yanked loose from a rotting bulkhead by the force of the wind in a fully rigged sail. The smuggler captain, taking suddenly sober stock of this interesting turn of events, did (almost immediately) undertake to push aside the headless body of the helmsman and take the wheel himself. Not a moment was to be lost, he realized, in his now acutely tuned state of mind, for the wind was blowing, the shore was fast approaching and the rocks awaited hungrily, and the helmsman, as he had slumped to the deck, had never let go his hold on the wheel, and in the motion of his fall, had turned it hard over, steering the helpless "Yellow" straight into peril. And now, try as he might, and enlisting the help of as many of his fellows as could leave their storm tossed stations, the captain found that he could not loose the hold of the helmsman's hands upon the helm, for held it was in a true "death grip", and the irony of discovering the truth of that expression was, for the men of the "Yellow", understandably somewhat lost.

To put the story to a needfully quick end and to advance to the telling of our hero's tale (for you will remember young Bracegirdle, journeying home?) all souls were lost, and as providence would have it, only the body (and ONLY the body!) of the God-fearing helmsman was washed onto the shore to be found by a beachcombing hermit and his dog. A fruitless search for the missing head was made and soon abandoned, and the body eventually was laid in the Haythe churchyard, where, as is so often the turn in situations such as these, it would seem it did not rest easy.

And it would seem remarkable that not any remembrance of the Legend of the Headless Helmsman had found purchase in the thoughts of Lieutenant Bracegirdle as he journeyed to his home on the clear October night, for Tony had heard the stories through all of his growing up in the village of Haythe, where his father was indeed the Vicar of that very church in whose ground the helmsman was laid, and from whence it was said, his shade traveled nightly to wander on down to the lonely strand, in the shadows of the ruined towers, to search and search in vain for the head that never was found. And many a time as a boy had Tony rambled and roamed along that beach with his big brother, Jonty, or with any of his three sisters, winkle picking in the tidal pools, searching for tell tale scraps of wormy driftwood that they would convince themselves to imagining had come from the wreck of the "Yellow" herself, and always, half expecting, half fearing, half hoping (though that may be three halves, be assured a boy's mind could generally only entertain but two at one time) that they might come upon a partially buried dome of bleached bone, which, when trepidatiously unearthed, would prove to be the long lost skull bone of the foul-fated helmsman, complete with leering yellow grin and black hermit crabs emerging from the eye sockets!

We should not be deceived that our hero had completely forgotten these youthful adventures, nor the stories that had stirred his boyhood imaginations. We must merely deduce that on this journey home, concluding a period of some eighteen months at sea since he had last been ashore in his native country, that our young man had thoughts more pressing and of much greater consequence that weighed upon his mind. Eighteen months might be a brief voyage indeed by some standard of the day, but to Tony there had been times when it had seemed interminable, and when he had been very hard put indeed to amend his thoughts and see to his duties, to fill his time in the useful purpose that would seem (at least according to the wisdom of his fond and fatherly captain) to speed the day of his return. All of his anxieties, and all of his energies were directed at one object---or rather two, the second being the accomplishment he must achieve to attain the hope of being worthy of the first, and the first being….Lizzie.


Go to Part Two