The tragic tale of how a sailor known as Yorkshire Jack was hounded to his death began when the woman he loved was hanged for murder.
This took place early in the 19th century in the Mount’s Bay area of Cornwall. This is just to the east of Penzance, the Bay taking its name from the island of St Michael’s Mount that is its most prominent feature.
A man named Polgrain had taken a wife who was much younger than himself. This was Sarah, who grew tired of her husband and took a lover of her own age, this being Yorkshire Jack. She decided to murder Mr Polgrain and nearly got away with it.
After the death certificate was signed with “natural causes” given as the reason for death, rumours started to spread after Jack moved into Sarah’s house. So many people reckoned that there had been foul play that Polgrain’s body was eventually exhumed and found to be full of arsenic.
Sarah asked that Jack could accompany her on to the scaffold, and as the noose was placed around her neck she kissed Jack and was heard to say “You will – you promise you will?” to which Jack replied “I will, Sarah, I will”.
After the execution there are reports that Sarah’s ghost had been seen in the locality, at places which she and Jack had frequented.
The person who saw Sarah’s ghost more than anyone else was Yorkshire Jack, whose character changed completely in the months after the hanging. He became morose and short-tempered, with a habit of constantly looking over his shoulder.
Jack went back to sea, but Sarah would not leave him alone even there. He proved to be a difficult shipmate, especially when his fellow sailors also felt that there was an extra person on board whom they were unable to see.
When Jack’s ship came back to Mount’s Bay he told his shipmates that Sarah had made him promise on the scaffold that he would marry her at midnight that day. He had agreed, thinking to comfort her in her last moments, but he had not imagined that she would try to bind him to that promise after she was dead. He now realized that she wanted to be bound to him in death because she could not do so when alive.
At midnight on the day that Jack had told this tale, the shipmates heard a light tap-tap of feet in high-heeled shoes. They followed the footsteps to where Jack lay in his hammock with a look of terror on his face. He got up and proceeded to the ship’s foredeck, followed by the footsteps.
Jack then jumped overboard, never to be seen again. The shipmates said that they could hear the sound of church bells, as if chiming for a wedding.
In later years people claimed they could hear wedding bells out at sea on Mount’s Bay, together with a ghostly voice saying “I will” before it was lost on the wind.
© John Welford
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