Jesse’s Reviews > The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea: The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Volume 3 > Status Update

“By the Lee”

A prose poem of flash fiction where sailors desperately try to sail their ship through a storm but are unsuccessful. It’s not bad, it’s just very short and more about the mood of desperation and Hodgson’s relationship with the ocean, how it relates to the human struggle in that people can fight for their lives but then be swallowed by the ocean with barely a trace.

“The Sharks of the St. Elmo”

In an absurdly morbid situation, a steamer breaks down and at the same time it’s surrounded by a literal sea of sharks, writhing like a pit of snakes. This twigs the bo’sun and the second mate in that something is up—they have something that the sharks want. The captain and the officer are smuggling something, but what is it?

“The Heaving of the Log”

This is a semi-humorous anecdote with a grim twist. It features an abusive officer and apprentices who get back at him with a practical joke, except the prank results in the breaking of the man’s neck. Manslaughter!! The story doesn’t play out the rest of the drama, but I assume that everyone on deck will claim it to be an accident, just as was intended had the victim survived.

“The Riven Night”

Sailors come across a place where the spirit world intersects with ours. Some ghosts accuse their murderers; some are just content to reconnect with their loved ones; and some relationships are shorn so recently that the living are compelled to join the dead. There’s something else, too, on the borderland, something with an undefined but malefic intent.

“The Habitants of Middle Islet”

Hodgson wrote a story where his protagonist follows his buddy, who commandeers a ship in a fugue to find his sweetheart. This starts out feeling similarly, but the stories diverge, with this turning into a badass horror story. What was on the boat? Did Trehorn’s fiance turn into a Lamia or something? Or a siren? Or what???

“The Wild Man of the Sea”

This is a grim tragedy where a Natural seaman is resented for his purity, prowess, and poetic nature, and the course of the ship comes to blame him as a Jonah (a passenger who brings bad luck) while at the same time he foments an inspirational relationship with one of the cabin boys who can feel him but not really understand or articulate their camaraderie.

“Demons of the Sea”

A vignette worthy of Glen Carrig. A boat passes through a part of the ocean that appears to be on its way to boiling. They see some weird things, here, but the only bit for sure are some human-seal-monsters that have recently massacred a boat from Glasgow, and only barely manage to escape a similar fate by the mercy of the ocean breeze.

“Old Golly”

A murderous Captain gets his comeuppance after murdering a sailor of African descent. Was it a ghost, or was it just superstition??? Hodgson gives a ridiculous half-explanation for one of the haunting’s symptoms, the rest I suppose being a Biercian fear-causing-death through clumsiness, but there is enough unexplained to believe that Old Golly got his revenge.

“In the Danger Zone”

Another WWI story except this has more of a proper fight against the submarine as the merchant vessel has been toting some sort of gun, clandestinely, presumably for this purpose; Hodgson was an advocate for mariners being armed because not being so put them at the mercy of pirates, and this story is basically pirates in a submarine.

“Jack Grey, Second Mate”

This combines the valiant characters under siege on a boat with a romance between the chivalrous second mate and a woman passenger who is being pursued by a scoundrel. There’s a lot about Jack Grey that reminds me of Howard’s protagonists, though without the preponderance of describing how animalistically he moves. A lot of action in this piece.