SALTBURN pier stretched 1,500ft out into the forbidding North Sea until, 100 years ago, a storm swept a ship through it, cutting the pier in half.
The ship was the SS Ovenbeg and, although the thousands of people gathered on the beach did not know it at the time, it was a ship that was haunted by the ghost of a Russian monk.
Saltburn pier, by Northern Perspectives (Image: Northern Perspectives)
Last week’s Memories carried a fantastic Northern Perspectives’ drone’s eye view of the pier which today is 682ft long.
In the caption to go with the photograph, we said how much damage to the pier was done on May 7, 1924, when the Ovenbeg, carrying china clay from Cornwall to Grangemouth, was wrecked on the sands beside the pier.
A postcard shows the stranded Ovenbeg on May 7, 1924 – the day before it smashed through the pier. (Image: Chris Lloyd)
Twenty-four hours later, a second storm picked the ship up and threw it through the middle of the pier, causing a breach about 200ft long.
The huge gap in the pier left by the Ovenbeg (Image: Chris Lloyd)
While researching the caption, we stumbled across a newspaper report from 1933 which concerned the retirement in London of Charles O’Connor, a ship’s cook.
Mr O’Connor said that he had started out on a Russian barquentine (a sailing vessel with three or more masts but a square sail only on its front mast) called the St Nicolai, of Archangel, which was owned by Russian monks.
However, the St Nicolai was bought by an English firm and renamed as the Ovenbeg – it was very fashionable in the 1920s to name ships after Irish rivers, and the Abhainn Bheag, or Ovenbeg, is in County Cork.
But, said Mr O’Connor, as soon as the takeover went through, strange things began happening on board. There was often someone in the rigging, messing with the blocks and tackle. Ropes always needed an extra haul, as if there was someone, unseen, on the other end.
“I’m not superstitious, but it got me thinking,” said Mr O’Connor.
A 1933 newspaper headline tells the ghost story (Image: Unknown)
He continued: “Finally, the ship was wrecked at Saltburn. We were pounded on the sands and crashed into the pier. The decks burst open under us.
“A Russian pigeon came aboard us before we were wrecked – the skipper knew it by the ring on its leg.
“It would not leave until every man-jack of us left the ship.
“As the ship went down, the figure of a Russian monk appeared on the shore, and remained until she disappeared. Then he, too, vanished from sight.”