The Bad Luck Boys: The Unfortunate Demise
and Spectral Sightings of the Great Explorers
Are you still harboring resentment towards those countless world exploders (circa 17th/18th centuries) whose names and dates you were forced to memorize in in grade school?
If so, and if you are even slightly passive aggressive, you may be pleased to know that many of these rascals came to a most unpleasant, nay even ghastly demise.
Yes, there were a litany of expeditions from an assortment of European nations all competing for the right to invade, conquer, and pillage the new world. Such men of note as Walter Raleigh, Vasco de Gama, Captain Cook, and even Balboa , met particularly gruesome, and singularly peculiar deaths.
But of special interest to us,lising here on the Jersey shoreline are those two well-known good luck boys, Giovanni Verrazano and Henry Hudson. Everywhere we look around us there are statues, buildings, bridges, rivers, schools, etc.,……. all paying homage to these two.
After all, they were the first to explore our local coasts, and I might add, to write very disparagingly about our assets, geography, and local inhabitants. In keeping with their general mindset and demeanor, they alternately drank and traded; then attacked and pillaged native American camps.
Alas Henry Hudson met his untimely death when his crew mutinied and cast him into the wilderness of Hudson Bay where he likely frozen to death, or perhaps starved. (Being eaten by a Polar bear is within the range of possibility as well.) When his crew were brought up on mutiny charges they were all acquitted. (Ah, the joys of having a good legal representation.)
Verrazano, who after being provided food and shelter during a New England storm showed his appreciation by kidnapping two native American children from the village. Only one child survived the long trip to Europe, and the other child was sold as an “exhibition as a human novelty.” In a subsequent voyage Verrazano and his crew were eaten by cannibals in the Caribbean. ( I wonder if they found “fillet of Verrazano” to be a novel delicacy?)
Of course, that wasn’t the last we saw of the two local rascals, as their spectral images have appeared repeatedly over the decades along our coast. If you encounter one these spectral figures, feel free to let them know of their unfortunate demise.
I suppose it would be fair to say that these “good luck boys” of exploration fame actually became the bad luck boys!
Read about the “plight” of these and more rascals of the era in
Ghostly Tales of Two Rivers: Curious Encounters Along the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers.
Available: amazon.com and barnes&noble.com as well as these local retailers:
Sea Bright: Bains Hardware Highlands: Bahrs Restaurant and Twin Lights Lighthouse
Rumson: Rumson Pharmacy
Fair Haven: Fair Haven Hardware and Canyon Sports
Little Silver: Sickles Market
Red Bank: O’Ireland and Shapiro Deli.