Superstitions and Omens of The Seven Seas

And some in dreams assured were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow

So ends one of the calmer stanzas from the long poem, "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner." First published in 1798, the poem is narrated by an ancient mariner who tells how his ship is drawn toward the South pole by a storm: The ship is surrounded by ice when an albatross, an omen of good luck, appears through the snow. The ancient mariner later shoots the bird, and a curse falls upon the ship, which is driven north to the equator and becalmed. All of the crew dies except the ancient mariner, who beholds God's creatures of the great calm and their beauty, blessing them in his heart. Only then does the spell break, but the mariner is condemned to wander the world teaching by example of love and reverence to all God's creatures.

Omens, superstitions and strange customs are as much a part of sailing and sailors as the Seven seas themselves. As the sailing season kicks into high gear on Lake Tahoe for the summer, sailors of the Sierra Nevada may enjoy remembering that beyond the snug breakwater and safety of anchorage around the lake there is a sea chest full of mock baptisms and customs many mariners still hold dear. For instance:

It is unlucky to start a cruise on Friday, the day Christ was crucified. In the 19th century the British navy tried to dispel this superstition. The keel of a new ship was laid on Friday, she was named HMS Friday, launched on Friday, and finally went to sea on Friday. Neither ship nor crew were ever heard of again.

Never begin a voyage on Dec. 31, the day Judas Iscariat hanged himself from an elder tree on ground that became the first potter's field.

A silver coin placed under the masthead ensures a successful, profitable voyage.

Never put your left foot down first when stepping on board ship. Disaster will soon follow.

It is good to pour wine upon the deck before a long voyage as a libation to the gods. The custom of breaking a bottle of wine across the bow of a ship when she is launched arose from the practice.

Flowers are unlucky aboard ship because they could later be used to make a funeral wreath for the death of someone on board.

Women aboard a ship makes the sea angry.

However, a naked woman aboard a ship calms the sea. This is the reason so many ships have figureheads of a woman with her breasts bared.

Porpoises swimming around a boat are a good sign, and it is unlucky to kill one.

Gulls contain the souls of sailors lost at sea, and it is thus unlucky to kill a gull.

It is unlucky to cut nails or hair at sea. The reasoning among the Romans was that nails and hair were votive offerings to Prosperpina, queen of the infernal regions, and Neptune would be jealous it offerings were made to another god in his kingdom.

It is useless to fight the sea if you fall overboard, and thus it is foolish to learn how to swim, the reason many sailors never bothered to learn in the past.

All the seas are purified at the full moon.

The feather of a wren will protect a sailor from death by shipwreck especially the feather of a wren killed on New Year's Day. This belief led to the wholesale slaughter of wrens on the Isle of Mann, because the wren feather supposedly retained its power for only one year.

Death comes with the ebbing of the tide ("He went out with the tide.") and birth with its rising, (Aristotle, among other ancients, believed this.)

Sailors long believed that they could whistle for the wind. This was best done by sticking a knife into the mast and whistling softly so as not to offend the wind spirit and bring on a storm. To whistle in a calm would bring a wind, ancient sailors believed, but to whistle on deck when the wind was blowing would bring a gale. Spit into the wind and you were inviting disaster, no doubt, just as you were if you allowed a landlubber to whistle on deck. If a black cat frolicked on deck, a big blow was coming, for a black cat was thought to carry a gale in its tail.

Pirates wore golden earrings because they believed such earrings gave them better eyesight.

French pirate Emmanuel Wynne used a flag drawn up of a sable ensign with crossbones, a death's head, and an hourglass. The hourglass meant that time was running out.

Spanish pieces of eight, famous as pirate booty, were silver coins worth about eight "reales" (about a dollar). One story has it that our dollar sign ($) derives from the way the figure eight was written on pieces of eight, but more likely it was modified from the seemingly twisted Pillars of Hercules stamped with a scroll around them on another old Spanish coin called the "Pillar Dollar."

Seventy-nine people died when the Abermenai Ferry capsized on her run from Caenarvon, Wales, in 1864. The disaster was widely attributed to the "Wrath of God" because the ferry had been constructed with wood stolen from Llanddwyn Church when the church was torn down.

Several wealthy passengers aboard the Titanic threw their jewels into the icy sea, believing that the casting off of their riches might ensure their salvation.