the abyss means...

On 17th May at midnight each year a big ghost ship type thing sails into Brighton, this would be viewable from St Nicholas's church if some bugger hadn't built a big block of flats in the way. The first time that the ship was seen was before the introduction of BST (somewhere in the 1850's I think) so I reckon that an extra hour drinking whisky (Scottish - Irish has an extra 'e') starting before 11 is a good idea. Frankly, when the ghost ship was first seen (a) people generally had no idea what the real time was, as this was not set as a standard anywhere & (b) I suspect that people were drinking bad wood spirit when they saw it. (on a personal note) I believe that the ship is probably not real & that we won't see it. This will not stop me from getting drunk around nice people at the correct time & location though.

Pete's email via hecticjames, after it was originally mentioned here.

I seems like a good way to celebrate 17. mai. Kind of.

(I have mentioned previously that I'm a traditionalist, haven't I?)

Although, I may get my sølv out...

I would like to see some original sources about the ship though, as I am surprised it is not in the paranormal database...

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UPDATE (More from Pete):

For clarification : - BST was introduced in 1916, so I reckon that GMT
would be the way to go if the ghost ship originates from before this
date. Clocks started to adhere to GMT rather than local mean time in
around 1850, mainly so that railway timetables would be accurate regardless
of location (advances in technology have since made sure that railway
timetables are always inaccurate regardless of location). Between about
1800 & 1850 clocks were in use quite a lot, but were set to local mean
time, probably set from a sundial on a certain day of the year - June 21st
would make sense (though this is a bit of a guess on my part), so we have a
fairly good estimate of when to turn up if the ship originates from this
time period. Before 1800 the sundial was the main time source, which was
notoriously innacurate at midnight (something to do with the sun not
casting useful shadows). I have no idea if moondials were greatly
used. Of course, these were a bit innacurate as well & were absolutely no
good when the moon had fully waned. This makes turning up at the correct
version of midnight really tricky, but I reckon that being there between
10:50 & 12:30 would be quite reasonable.

Now - should we each bring a couple of bits of wood so that we can have a
small fire & keep warm? Or should we just warm our mitts on the dying
embers of the West Pier?

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FURTHER UPDATE (The Next Day):

OK, so the possibility that we were actually on the beach on the wrong day was also raised... Damn that Julian Calendar.

Despite that, fun was had.

And I got to see flames dripping from the hulk of the West Pier, and a golden wave reflecting the glowing embers inside the concert hall...

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BST was introduced as part of the Defence of The Realm Act, which was meant to help regulate almost everything in WW1, and as the title suggests, to protect us from filthy spies and traitors. Amongst other things it made eating crumpets illegal, banned dogs from barking after seven at night, made pubs close during the day, and introduced BST as an attempt to a. give farmers (in very short supply in 1916 as it hadn't been made a reserved occupation) more time to get their work done b. make sure that workers went home rather than going to the pub c. prevented zeppelin raids (in theory) since lighting up times could be regulated.

Ah, the war. My favourite thing.

Esther on May 19, 2003 03:51 PM

About the ship: last year at the festival, I did the the 'ghost tour of Brighton' and there they mentioned it as well. Unfortunately it was the 18th of May then, so I had just missed it :-( But walking through Brighton I now can stop and think, hey wasn't this the shop where they slit that poor man's throat somewhere in the 18th century...? (that is, if I were good at remembering things)

Judith on May 20, 2003 07:50 AM

I've avoided the ghost tour for similar reasons...

There's some things I just don't need to know about Brighton!

joh on May 20, 2003 09:35 AM