Tuesday, January 7, 2020

The Silence of Seamen

Busted!
You know as children we sometimes revel in the mistakes of our parents. They are, of course, faultless and will remind you of such until something happens that simply cannot be explained away—not even in the very best examples of parental misdirection. Alas, we were all subject to comparatively scant official references compared to today's info overloads, and urban (in this case suburban) myths regularly graced the pages of "trusted" periodicals, including the hometown newspaper. Tisk!
Glad this one was harmless.

Published Tuesday, March 15, 1988 in the Gainesville Times, Alex Taylor Tuesday begins with his recollections of a vacation once taken to Bermuda and the superstitions of the sea. He cites the case of the HMS Friday—a ship that never existed outside of persistent recirculation. Oops. (Fake News!) Ah, but Dad recovers nicely with the tale of the Mary Celeste, a bona fide nautical mystery if there was one. In the Victorian Era, a man could say anything if the obvious evidence matched, as this was well before the maturation of forensic science. The Mary Celeste would also fall prey to fake news. Some things never change. If you recall, the same nonsense happened to Flight 19, a training flight of torpedo planes that disappeared within the Bermuda Triangle in December 1945. The pilot-less planes showed up in the Sonoran Desert some 32 years later. ;)

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T. Nelson Taylor | Official Site | DusT | Bolita