In the 1940s, two separate groups of fishermen working about half a mile offshore reported seeing a large fishing vessel approaching them from the open sea. What immediately struck them as strange was that the boat appeared to be silent – its engine could not be heard – and it seemed to leave no wake or disturbance on the water as it advanced.

Fearing the vessel might be carrying customs officers – a real concern at the time for fishermen engaged in informal or unlicensed trade – the men hauled in their nets and steered for shelter, hiding their boats in nearby coves until the stranger had passed. When they ventured back out, the vessel had vanished without trace.

Around two weeks later, a severe storm struck the coast. During this gale, a local schooner named the Nellie Flemming was lost at sea with all hands, and no wreckage was ever recovered. In the aftermath, the earlier sighting took on new meaning for the fishermen who had witnessed it. They became convinced that the silent vessel they had seen offshore had not been an ordinary fishing boat at all, but a phantom forerunner of the doomed schooner – an apparition announcing its fate in advance.

There is no surviving official record linking the two events, and the identification of the mysterious vessel with the Nellie Flemming belongs entirely to local belief and later retelling rather than to maritime documentation. Nevertheless, the story has endured as part of coastal folklore, reflecting an old seafaring idea that ships lost at sea may sometimes be seen again as warnings or omens, appearing briefly before disaster strikes.