How American vampires wrecked a Russian ghost ship
Maybe
Last week I dealt with the strange tale of the vampire sailor, James Brown, who’s death sentence was commuted by President Andrew Johnson.
James Brown, you may remember from my earlier blog, murdered a crew mate in 1866, perhaps in self defense, perhaps not. Nearly twenty years later, he became a vampire-in-retrospect when the story grew from a single murder with a knife to several murders wherein blood was drained from his victims. This embellished version of James Brown may have originated with newspapers or it may have been the work of his prison warden, done with the intent of attracting tourists (yes, really).
Scoring some political points probably didn’t hurt.
The tale seems, on it’s surface, to be a free-standing bit of American vampire lore, disconnected from the large body of European Victorian literature that gave us the popular images we now immediately recognize as vampire. It might as well be Seinfeld for as much as it resembles gothic horror.
But maybe not. Maybe there’s a Dracula connection.
The same, vampirically-enhanced version of the James Brown story reemerged in newspapers in 1892. That’s shortly before a certain Bram Stoker toured America, and he’s known to have clipped articles from several papers concerning vampires. Is it possible he caught wind of the “improved” James Brown story before he wrote his masterpiece, Dracula?
“So what?” you ask, not trusting me and moving on. “We know Bram Stoker researched Dracula meticulously, so what difference does it make if he noticed this story too? What bearing does this one story have?”
Wellllllll,
It just so happens that James Brown’s vessel, The Atlantic, suffered a massive shipwreck in 1887, “one of the most melancholy and disastrous wrecks of the year”, killing most of the crew.
“Surrounded by the impenetrable fog and darkness, with the spars and rigging tumbling about their heads, the stout timbers crunching and splitting like matchwood, and the ceaseless roar and turmoil of the surf as it swept the wreck from one end to the other, the situation was appallingly dreadful, and many of the crew were doubtless killed outright…”
Quick, was that description from the wreck of The Atlantic… or was it Bram Stoker’s description of the wreck of The Demeter, the schooner that crashed into Whitby, delivering Dracula to England?
Author Robert Damon Schneck draws the line between a tragic wreck of a ship upon the shore, a ship that once carried a “vampire” aboard who feasted on the crew, and Dracula’s preying upon the crew of the Demeter, leaving it lifeless as it wrecked upon the rocks of Whitby. It’s a tantalizing possibility, even without corroborating notes.
Perhaps there’s a line to be drawn from American mythology and fake news to the ultimate gothic horror novel. Or perhaps it’s an astonishing coincidence. But how does anyone see the similarities and not marvel at the world we live in, full of fiction, fact, and fantastic hybrids of the two?
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Image credits: Shutterstock, Becky Cloonan from the 2012 Harper Design Dracula.
