They float through the chilling pages of many sea tales – the ghost ships that sail eternally to chase the living seas. But once, in the English Channel, a real ghost ship set sail. The story began with a collision in thick fog.

The two ships that collided were the French steamer Frigorifique built in 1869. A 715-ton ketch-rigged steamer, carrying wine from Bordeaux to Rouen, and the British 522-ton Rumney Minaret, built in 1879, sailing from Cardiff with 920 tons of coal bound for Rochefort. They collided off the Ile de Seine during a thick and foggy morning on March 19, 1884.

The Rumney was driving SE on S. with slow engines and its steam whistle sounded at regular intervals. When the lookout heard a noise from the port bow, the captain immediately put the engines into reverse aft, where the Frigorifique, moving at considerable speed (later denied by the Frigorifique) heading west, was seen crossing the bow of the ship. Rumney, moving. athwartships. The wheels of both ships were placed to starboard but the collision could not be avoided, the stern of the Rumney came into contact with the starboard quarter of the other ships, cutting half of her deck. In the collision, the Frigorifique’s rudder was forced and jammed hard to port side, throwing the helmsman completely over the rudder. As the two ships remained stuck together for a time and the Frigorifique appeared to be taking in water, the 22-handed French crew immediately abandoned their ship and jumped aboard the Rumney and then the Frigorifique, whose engines were still advancing, slipped away and disappeared into the fog.

With the survivors on board, the Rumney continued sailing. Suddenly, the French screamed in fear. Then a large ship crept out of the fog and narrowly passed the Rumney. It was the French ship that they assumed had sunk.

And twenty minutes later, the ‘ghost ship’ re-emerged from the fog, once again closing in on the British ship. This time there was no escape. With a deafening crash, the Frigorifique’s bows smashed into the starboard quarter of the collar. Within seconds, the Rumney was sinking, sending her 15 men running for the lifeboat and hitting it as the French crew plunged into the pinnace. The French ship had its revenge. The two crews of the boats pursued it and managed to board the boat out of control, and its engines stopped, but shortly after it was discovered that it was also sinking, however both crews were saved and assisted ashore by some fishermen.

When the fog lifted and the survivors of both ships clearly saw the French ship across the sea, the sinister mystery was explained. The Frigorifique had not sunk after that first collision. With its boilers still running and its rudder jammed from the collision, the abandoned ship had continued to sail in a full circle, crossing the collar path twice. Only then, after his revenge, his deadly obsession ended, he finally sank.