Tim's Tales: East Lothian's 'ghost ship'

When I was storytelling just before Hogmanay, the wind was literally rattling the windows of the venue and a member of the audience who was from a sunnier and calmer climate asked: “Is it always like this?”

I explained that it isn’t always like this, but I had to admit that storms of various kinds are a common feature of Scottish history. The sites of shipwrecks litter our coast as testimony to this and the East Lothian coastline has its fair share of wreck sites and tales.

One of these tales comes from 1984. I got wind of it just a few days ago and the tale fascinated me. A friend shared a faint memory of the story but that sent me looking for more details. Time to find out more has been limited so I’m very aware that my telling of this tale is incomplete. But I hope that those who may remember it or were involved in the drama may fill in the gaps. It’s a true story that’s now part of East Lothian history.

The tale begins on January 15, 1984, with a farmer’s discovery by the shoreline just beyond Seacliff. He could hardly believe his eyes at first because down on the rocks a 745-tonne cargo ship called the Pergo had run aground. There was no evidence of the crew aboard the ship and the farmer rushed home to contact the coastguard.

A member of the Dunbar Coastguard called Alan French was one of those to board her. What he and his colleagues discovered was very eerie. The ship’s engines were still running, the lights were on, but as they cautiously searched the ship their sense of unease began to rise. Every nook and cranny of the vessel was searched but there was absolutely nobody on board. It was like a ghost ship. Where had the crew gone and how had the ship got here?

Alan French later said it was like the Mary Celeste. This was a reference to a ship which in 1872 was discovered sailing the Atlantic with no sign of the crew. To this day nobody knows for sure what happened to them. The Pergo was likewise abandoned by its crew with no sign of what had happened to them.

Investigations soon revealed the remarkable, almost unbelievable, story. The ship was a Dutch freighter and had left Sweden a few days before, loaded with over £120,000 of compound fertilizer destined for Leith. But soon after leaving port the weather began to build into a storm. Waves battered the sides of the ship, and the captain and his crew began to wonder if they would make it. Only they could tell the tale of these final terrifying moments on that seemingly stricken ship as huge waves swept over the bow.

How many sailors have been in that stormy sea and held onto prayers as the freezing waters threaten to engulf them? How many still lie on that seabed with the skeletons of their vessel? The captain of the Pergo was determined his crew would not join them.

He must have felt he and his crew were in mortal danger to abandon ship and cargo, but the decision was his. And he was lucky that it was 1984 and not a few decades earlier. The Pergo was literally in the middle of the North Sea, hundreds of miles from any shore.

But close by was the Norwegian Ekofisk oil field, with numerous oil platforms. An SOS call was sent out and picked up. A rescue helicopter was dispatched.

There, hovering above a raging and foaming sea, the Norwegian helicopter pilot bravely negotiated his aircraft, swaying in the wind, as the helicopter crew lifted the now fearful men from the struggling ship.

It seemed as if they had been only moments away from disaster, and so what a massive sense of relief the crew must have had as the helicopter took them to safety.

But once the ship’s five crew members had been safely landed on the Tor platform, the helicopter pilot returned to the scene to report the exact location of the now abandoned ship. But there was no sign of it. His flight crew scoured the dark sea below but the ship had vanished. The obvious conclusion was that she had succumbed to the waves and joined the other wrecks on the seabed. The rescue, it seemed, had been in the nick of time. The pilot therefore reported the Pergo sunk.

But the main part of this tale has no one to tell the story because the only participant in the story was Pergo herself. She had not sunk despite being abandoned by her crew. She had continued her voyage because the engine had been left running. All her lights still shone, and she made her own way towards her intended destination. Unbelievably, for two nights and two days, she sailed herself across the North Sea.

How did she manage to negotiate her way alone across the raging North Sea to the mouth of the Forth? The auto pilot had steered her steadily towards the East Lothian coastline. Other seafarers must have seen her, unaware they were watching a ghost ship.

But Pergo could not override the auto pilot to make the necessary starboard turn as she passed May Island. She negotiated hazardous rocks, and gently glided her bows onto rocks by Seacliff. Then as the tide withdrew she settled for the night to be discovered in the morning by the farmer.

After the arrival of the coastguard she was once again given human guidance. The rising tide lifted her from the rocks and she gently floated out to sea. But she was now no longer alone. Fishing boats and tugs hovered by her. One of those fishing boats was The Highland Queen from Dunbar, skippered by Davie Fairbairn.

And so partly with his help the Pergo finally reached its destination. The crew were finally reunited with her as she was berthed at Leith. So ended the remarkable voyage of the ghost ship of East Lothian.

Of course, this tale cannot compete with that of the Mary Celeste, as the mystery of what happened to the Pergo’s crew was quickly solved. We will never know what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste and it is that unsolved mystery that haunts the imagination to this day.

Yet it is also true that the story of the Mary Celeste may never have gained its legendary reputation had Arthur Conan Doyle not written a short story about the mystery. He changed the name to Marie, and most people still use this when mentioning the mystery.

Doyle’s fictional account made the real events of the Mary Celeste famous, just as Compton Mackenzie’s ‘Whisky Galore’ made the real events of the SS Politician a legendary Scottish tale.

Although a cargo of bagged fertilizer lacks the romance of bottles of whisky, and the mystery of the missing Pergo crew was only a mystery for a very short time, the tale of the Pergo is still worth being regarded as a worthy legend of East Lothian. The image of her sailing herself over those stormy seas and landing quietly on East Lothian’s snow-covered shoreline on that January day has the ingredients of a great fictional story. But I have kept to the known facts as they provide a good enough tale.

But one question still begs: why did the crew leave the auto pilot on? Did they just forget in the rush to escape?

Well it seems they had to leave the engine running because the helicopter pilot required the ship to maintain a steady course for the rescue. Nobody imagined she would sail herself over 200 miles of storm-ridden sea. But that’s exactly what she did.