Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Since Hoodoo Cats are the official Strange Company mascots, I bring you this spooky tale from “The Head-Light,” April 9, 1886:

"What am I going to tell you," said Capt. Rockwell of the schooner Fame, "occurred about ten years ago on Lake Michigan. I was then in command of the schooner Gordon, and in the grain trade. One afternoon, just before we were ready to tow out of Chicago, a stranger came aboard with a big black cat in a rude cage and offered her for sale. I was born with a constitutional hatred of cats. On board of a grainer there are plenty of rats and mice, but I'd rather have the vermin running over me in my sleep than to keep a cat aboard, as many vessels do. Outside of my hatred for cats I didn't like the looks of the man. He was a rough-looking fellow, with a cock eye and two or three front teeth hanging out to windward, and if I'd have wanted someone to do a bit of dirty work I'd have picked this chap from among a thousand. I sent him off in a hurry, as you may guess, but as he reached the wharf he turned the cat loose and cried out: 

‘My curses on the ship and crew forever!' 

"The feline might have run into the elevator, but she didn't. She just scrambled right aboard of us, and in a whisk was out of sight down the main hatch. Some of the men looked a bit serious and some treated the matter as a joke, and just before night we were towed out and had a fair wind to lay our course. The hatches were all battened down, of course, and nobody seemed to have given a thought to the cat while getting out of the harbor. It was as fine a June night as you ever saw, with a moon so bright that you could see a vessel a mile away, and a breeze to send us along at about five miles an hour. 

"Well, we had made everything ship shape, and had supper, when the black cat was suddenly seen on the end of the jibboom. She was looking inboard at us, her hair on end and her eyes blazing. I brought up my revolver to have a shot at her, but just as I was about to pull trigger, the cat yeowled out in a dismal manner, and down came the peak of the mainsail, the halyards showing as if they had been cut clean across with a sharp knife. They were new, stout ropes, and nobody could say they had been broken by any sudden strain. We had to reeve new ones, and when this job was finished I went forward to put a bullet through that cat's head. She set up a dismal yeowling, and as I pulled the trigger down came the whole foresail, both throat and peak halyards having parted. I hoped I had killed the black witch, but when the smoke lifted we saw her in the same place, safe and sound. Every man aboard agreed that the halyards had been cut with a knife, and as the men passed them from hand to hand they began to mutter against me for trying to bring about a calamity by seeking the cat's life. 

"By the time we had the foresail up again the cat had disappeared, going no one knew whither, and the weather had suddenly changed until the moon was overcast and the breeze was a third stronger. I never saw that craft steer as she did that night. She'd yaw and swing, and go wild, in spite of all the best sailor aboard could do. By the time we were off Waukegan there was a smart sea on and a nasty look all around. The wind gradually hauled into the northeast, and we had to go in stays and make long boards dead to the east, and then make our gain on the other leg as we ran to the northwest. Every time we went in stays the schooner acted like a balky colt, just barely keeping us out of irons, and the ugly cross sea banged her about until everything groaned. We were about to go in stays for our board to the northwest, and the men were aloft to care for the topsails, when the Gordon slipped into a hollow and rolled port and starboard like a stuck whale trying to get rid of a harpoon. There was a loud squall from the cat, which creature, it appears, was in the mainmast crosstrees, a terrible scream from the sailor, and as the Gordon rolled to starboard he was flung clear of her side by thirty feet and went down like a stone. 

"By this time the crew were so worked up that nobody would turn in, and every man seemed to be momentarily expecting some new disaster. It came before midnight. The wind hauled dead to the north and grew stronger, and when we came about from a run to the northwest the Gordon missed her slays, was taken flat aback, and several calamities followed. Three or four seas boarded us and swept the decks, the foreboom jibed and crushed a sailor's skull, and jib and outer jib whipped loose, and went sailing away with the wind.  We came within an ace of being dismasted, for the men cowered down in abject terror, and the mate and myself had the whole work on our hands. We finally got her head off and ratched away for the Michigan shore, but before daylight we sprang a leak, and we made Grand Haven only by the skin of our teeth, with our cargo damaged more than $3,000. From an hour past midnight to broad daylight that infernal cat kept up a steady walk between the two masts on the triantic stay, and now and then she would utter a yell which brought all our hair on end.

"Taken altogether we suffered a loss of over $4,000 and lost a life, and it was all on account of that cockeyed man and his black cat. No sooner had we got into port than everybody except the mate ran away, and the cat leaped to the dock with a farewell yeowl and took refuge in a pile of lumber. The story of our mishaps got noised around, and the Gordon had to be laid up for the rest of the season for want of men to work her."

You see what happens when you’re not nice to kitty?

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Since few things personify the Strange Company spirit better than “hoodoo cats,” here is a fine example of the breed from the “Cincinnati Enquirer,” March 3, 1892:

English, Ind., March 2. English and vicinity are stirred up by an incident for which, had it occurred in the days of the forefathers, some one would have been ducked in the horse-pond and burned at the stake. For many years Zip Bennett was a prominent and successful farmer of Sterling Township, and he and his family dwelt in peace and plenty within what might be well termed a palatial frame residence in a country like this. All this it at an end. The Bennett family have swapped the home of their youth, where fruit abounded the year around, and where the smokehouse, cellar and granary were never empty, for a little residence in English, valued at no more than $230.

Mr. Bennett and his family claim that their late residence has been haunted by witches in the form of a black cat with a white ring around its neck, which they honestly believe to be one of numerous neighbors versed in the black art. "And," said the old man to your correspondent today, "they are all poor, worthless wretches, and they will never be any better for it; for the devil has that creek, and he will have all of them what's a working by his methods to beat honest people out of their homes. Yea, I swapped my old home to Sam Benz for the little house in the suburbs, but I have had one good night's rest and one day free from the devil’s plague. And this is more than I have had o. the farm these many months.”

The black cat with the white ring around its neck has been guilty of all sorts of pranks, such as sitting before the bread-tray and preventing the "light bread" (wheaten bread) from rising; watching the yeast with the same sinister purpose, and sitting with its eyes fixed upon the oven to prevent the bread from baking properly. On such occasions the bread was sure to be flat, soggy, and sour, unfit for eating. There was no use to kill the d----d thing. Nothing could hit it, and it always vanished like a flash when an attempt was made. Though each room was mouse-proof, the cursed witch went out at the hole left by the carpenter despite bolts and locks. The imp of darkness has been known to evade a bullet and jump at least 100 yards in two leaps.

Other ordeals which these good people had to undergo was to see this veritable witch leap upon the table and select the choice bits, sit on the pillow and make night hideous with its cries, jump upon horses in the stable or set them wild by scratching them, kill young chickens, suck eggs and a thousand other things.

The farm upon which these scenes occurred is not three miles from the town of English, on the Louisville, Evansville, and St. Louis Railway. It contains 128 acres of fine land one third of which is bottom land, a fine orchard, and a lot of meadow land: in short. yesterday morning it contained everything that ought to satisfy a Crawford county farmer in the way of comfortable residence, stable and out-houses. 

Mr. Benz, who is a prominent merchant and sensible man, saw a bargain in this and felt that he could rent it to advantage, as well as to have pasture for his horses and cows.  In one point he was wrong--everyone whom he approached yesterday shook their heads dubiously and showed plainly that they believed as faithfully in the matter as Mr. Bennett and his family did.  No one wanted it. No one would have it as a gift.  Mr. Benz threatened to send to Germany for a kinsman to cultivate it and prove the foolishness of their ideas, but this morning some of Bennett’s old neighbors who wished to end the witch's work at that place set fire to every building on the place. Benz is at a loss what to do. He dreads the effect of the ignorance of a few adjacent farmers may have upon his place, but has given out that he "don't care, he didn't want the houses any way and intends to make a sheep farm of it."

Mr. Bennett’s family claim to have been sick all the time of late months, and that no medicine was beneficial while they remained on the farm. This was especially the case with Mrs. Bennett, who, though but a few days in town, is now moving about her house work with alacrity. The occurrence proves that there are many believers of witchcraft in the community, who are shaking their beads knowingly, but will not name the ones whom they "know" to be disciples of the black art.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

This grimly weird story--somewhat reminiscent of Poe's "The Black Cat"--appeared in several newspapers early in 1912. I found this particular account in the "Washington Post" for January 12. The schooner Sarah and Lucy did indeed exist--rather fittingly, it ran aground in March 1918--and other, less sensational, accounts do confirm that Andrew Lundberg hanged himself just before the ship reached New York. As for the "hoodoo cat" and other lurid details found in this story...horrid truth or a case of some journalist or fellow sailor who read too much Poe letting his imagination run wild? Who knows? The sea is a strange world...

Fifteen men on a dead man's chest,
Yo-ho! and a bottle of rum.
Drink and the devil had done for the rest.
Yo-ho! and a bottle of rum.

Since Andrew Lundberg signed as able seaman aboard the two-master schooner Sarah and Lucy in Bridgeport last Friday he dinned the words of Stevenson's pirates song in "Treasure Island" into the ears of his shipmates until they drove him from their quarters in the fo'castle, and made him share the ice-covered deck with a big black cat that went aboard before the schooner left Bridgeport for this port.

Early yesterday morning Lundberg, in a tipsy frenzy, lay on the deck, the cat on his shoulder and an empty bottle in his hand, mumbling the same old chorus while the schooner rolled at her anchorage off Red Hook. His shipmates were asleep, and the watch had curled himself up in a warm corner.

Two hours later Lundberg was found dead, hanging by a halyard from the foremast. The empty bottle was frozen to his fingers, and perched on his shoulder, as it swung like a pendulum in the breeze, was the hoodoo cat.

Lundberg lived at 1 Seeley street, Bridgeport. He told his mates the cat had followed him for miles, and that it meant his death. At times he cursed it, and once tried to kill it. The other seamen aboard prevented him, and for a time it looked as though Lundberg was going to start a killing on board.

A few hours sleep cleared his mind a little from the effects of the drink he had been swallowing, but he was not long awake before he found a bottle again, and once more he started raving and hunting for the cat. He found it and kicked it half the length of the schooner. The thought that he had killed it seemed to pacify him for a time, and he began to sing again.

The schooner dropped anchor off Red Hook on Tuesday, waiting for a tow to Perth Amboy. Then the cat, minus its tail, appeared on deck from nowhere and sat and blinked at Lundberg. With a curse the sailor tried to get on his feet, but the deck was like glass and he slipped down again. For an hour he lay, singing and cursing until he dozed off.

There his mates left him, with the black cat alongside, and went below to sleep. The man on watch gave him a glance of disgust, tossed a piece of bread to the cat, buttoned his coat, and sought out a corner where he would escape the sting of the icy northwester that blew steadily all night.

Lundberg cut a halyard, tied a hangman's noose, and slipped it around his neck. Then he climbed the rigging high enough to be sure the drop would break his neck. Whether the cat went with him or climbed on his shoulder after he had hanged himself is not known.

When the body was found it was shrouded in frozen spray; the fingers of the left hand showed they had been badly cut, and the sailor's coat was missing. The cat was dead.

The New York police were notified, and Lieut. Dwyer, of Harbor Squadron A., went out to the patrol and brought the body to the Battery. There it was taken to the morgue and information sent to Bridgeport.