N I G H T B R I N G E R . S E
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A HAUNTED GIANT
The huge ship Great Eastern, with an iron body five times as big as any other ship at that time, were calamitous already from the start. Five men were killed while she were built and another one, a riveter, just vanished. There were rumours that his colleagues accidentaly had walled him in between the ships double hulls. When Great Eastern went on its maiden trip in 1859 a boiler broke and killed five crewmembers.
The captain soon complained he were often brutally wakened by "a neverending hammering" from the ship's inside. The sailors meant it was the walled in riveter's spirit. The hammering were reported over and over while Great Eastern continued its unlucky route. Not enough passenger tickets were ever sold to make a profit and she suffered from storms and misfortunes.
In year 1862 she hit an underwater rock outside New York. The workers who mended the hull got terrified when they heard a knocking sound, but soon it was discovered the banging noices came from some equipment which were moving with the ship.
In 1865 the colossus got a job laying the Atlantic Cable, a work of disgrace for a luxury steamboat. 1887 - her career were over and she almost went under when she were dragged in to a shipyard in Liverpool after it was said that the hammering had been heard again. The spirit which were said to have infested in her finally got its rest year 1889, when the shipyard workers who cut her body to pieces found a human skeleton next to a tool-box with rusty tools.
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