Old Neb and the Ghost Ship is a charming story about the children of the lighthouse keeper on a pristine barrier island four miles off Florida's Gulf Coast. Their summer days are spent swimming, soaking up the sun, and looking for adventure under the watchful eyes of Old Neb, a shaggy and remarkable horse with a mind of his own. In this adventure, twelve-year-old Betty sees a black ship with flashing lights through fog on the bay, their garden scarecrow seems to move, and Old Neb is mysteriously lame. The cause for these mysteries is finally revealed, and Neb turns out to be a hero. This is the second book in the Old Neb series for middle school readers. See all of the books in this series
Old Neb and the Ghost Ship is a charming story about the children of the lighthouse keeper on a pristine barrier island four miles off Florida's Gulf Coast. Their summer days are spent swimming, soaking up the sun, and looking for adventure under the watchful eyes of Old Neb, a shaggy and remarkable horse with a mind of his own. In this adventure, twelve-year-old Betty sees a black ship with flashing lights through fog on the bay, their garden scarecrow seems to move, and Old Neb is mysteriously lame. The cause for these mysteries is finally revealed, and Neb turns out to be a hero. This is the second book in the Old Neb series for middle school readers. See all of the books in this series
When the bay suddenly goes dry outside her father's seaside restaurant and a sailing ship from the 1770s is revealed, Vicki finds herself compelled to find out its true story and uncover dark family secrets in the process with the help of her fearless friend, Peter.
Two days after Christmas in 1738, a British merchant ship traveling from Rotterdam to Philadelphia grounded in a blizzard on the northern tip of Block Island, twelve miles off the Rhode Island coast. The ship carried emigrants from the Palatinate and its neighboring territories in what is now southwest Germany. The 105 passengers and crew on board-sick, frozen, and starving-were all that remained of the 340 men, women, and children who had left their homeland the previous spring. They now found themselves castaways, on the verge of death, and at the mercy of a community of strangers whose language they did not speak. Shortly after the wreck, rumors began to circulate that the passengers had been mistreated by the ship's crew and by some of the islanders. The stories persisted, transforming over time as stories do and, in less than a hundred years, two terrifying versions of the event had emerged. In one account, the crew murdered the captain, extorted money from the passengers by prolonging the voyage and withholding food, then abandoned ship. In the other, the islanders lured the ship ashore with a false signal light, then murdered and robbed all on board. Some claimed the ship was set ablaze to hide evidence of these crimes, their stories fueled by reports of a fiery ghost ship first seen drifting in Block Island Sound on the one-year anniversary of the wreck. These tales became known as the legend of the Palatine, the name given to the ship in later years, when its original name had been long forgotten. The flaming apparition was nicknamed the Palatine Light. The eerie phenomenon has been witnessed by hundreds of people over the centuries, and numerous scientific theories have been offered as to its origin. Its continued reappearances, along with the attention of some of nineteenth-century America's most notable writers-among them Richard Henry Dana Sr., John Greenleaf Whittier, Edward Everett Hale, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson-has helped keep the legend alive. This despite evidence that the vessel, whose actual name was the Princess Augusta, was never abandoned, lured ashore, or destroyed by fire. So how did the rumors begin? What really happened to the Princess Augusta and the passengers she carried on her final, fatal voyage? Through years of painstaking research, Jill Farinelli reconstructs the origins of one of New England's most chilling maritime mysteries.
Old Man Silas had warned them, his gnarled hands gripping the worn map like a lifeline. "Dead Man's Cove," he'd rasped, his eyes glinting with a mix of fear and fascination, "ain't no place for the likes of you." The old sailor's weathered face was a tapestry of wrinkles, each line etched by years of battling the sea and its mysteries. His hands, once steady at the helm of countless ships, now trembled as he traced the faded lines on the parchment. But the lure of treasure, a forgotten Spanish galleon laden with gold, had dulled their ears to his warnings. Captain Jack Dalton, a man with a reckless glint in his eye and a thirst for adventure that burned brighter than any rum, dismissed Silas' words as the ramblings of a senile old salt. Jack was a legend in his own right, a swashbuckling rogue who had cheated death more times than he could count. His reputation preceded him in every port, a tantalizing mix of heroic tales and scandalous rumors. "Silas, my old friend," Jack said, clapping the old man on the shoulder, "your caution is admirable, but fortune favors the bold. This treasure could set us all up for life. Think of it – no more scraping by, no more living on the fringes. We could be kings!" Silas shook his head, his rheumy eyes filling with tears. "Jack, lad, I've seen things out there that would turn your hair white. The sea... she's got secrets, dark ones. Some treasures are best left buried." But Jack's mind was made up. With a crew of hardened men hungry for fortune, he set sail into the maw of the unknown, the promise of riches their only compass. The crew was a motley assortment of sailors from all corners of the globe, each with their own reasons for embarking on this perilous journey. There was Big Mike, the burly first mate with fists like hammers and a heart of gold. His family back in Ireland was counting on him to make their fortunes. Alongside him stood Rodrigo, a Spanish expatriate with a gift for navigation and a mysterious past he refused to discuss. In the galley, Old Tom, the ship's cook, prepared meals that could make even the saltiest sea dog's mouth water, all while regaling the crew with tales of his adventures in distant lands.
Excerpt from The Ghost-Ship Other Stories The other day I said to a friend, "I have just reading in proof a volume of short stories by an author named Richard Middleton. He is dead. It is an extraordinary book, and all the work in it is full of a quite curious and distinctive quality. In my opinion it is very fine work indeed." It would be so simple if the business of the introducer or preface-writer were limited to such a straightforward, honest, and direct expression of opinion; unfortunately that is not so. For most of us, the happier ones of the world, it is enough to say "I like it," or "I don't like it," and there is an end: the critic has to answer the everlasting "Why?" And so, I suppose, it is my office, in this present instance, to say why I like the collection of tales that follows. I think that I have found a hint as to the right answer in two of these stories. One is called "The Story of a Book" the other "The Biography of a Superman." Each is rather an essay than a tale, though the form of each is narrative. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
The most horrific struggle of the American Revolution occurred just 100 yards off New York, where more men died aboard a rotting prison ship than were lost to combat during the entirety of the war. Moored off the coast of Brooklyn until the end of the war, the derelict ship, the HMS Jersey, was a living hell for thousands of Americans either captured by the British or accused of disloyalty. Crammed below deck -- a shocking one thousand at a time -- without light or fresh air, the prisoners were scarcely fed food and water. Disease ran rampant and human waste fouled the air as prisoners suffered mightily at the hands of brutal British and Hessian guards. Throughout the colonies, the mere mention of the ship sparked fear and loathing of British troops. It also sparked a backlash of outrage as newspapers everywhere described the horrors onboard the ghostly ship. This shocking event, much like the better-known Boston Massacre before it, ended up rallying public support for the war. Revealing for the first time hundreds of accounts culled from old newspapers, diaries, and military reports, award-winning historian Robert P. Watson follows the lives and ordeals of the ship's few survivors to tell the astonishing story of the cursed ship that killed thousands of Americans and yet helped secure victory in the fight for independence.
