Alexia and her friend were enjoying a quick swim in Marsalforn Bay, just a few years ago. It was around 2pm, on a normal summer day. The two swam out to the northern part of the bay, treading water and chatting.
It was perfectly normal till then, except that all of a sudden, all the buildings which line that side of the shore disappeared. The two friends could see only the fields that must have once covered the whole bay area. The amazed girls had enough time to look at each other and verify that they could both see the same illusion.
The whole episode only lasted 30 seconds at most. Then the buildings reappeared, gradually taking form again through the heat haze.
Echoes of Antigua’s naval past
The story about Marsalforn may seem strange but since I spoke to Alexia I came across another similar occurrence that was even more bizarre.
It took place in Antigua in 1955, which was then a somewhat sleepy Caribbean Island, with an extraordinary harbour with a dockyard that had been used by Horatio Nelson after he had arrived there in 1784, a yard that was by then already 60 years old.
The harbour is now bustling with yachts but, back then, there were only two or three, including the one alongside the historic quay that John was on. Two elderly spinsters wandered down the quay and stopped to chat to John and his family. They were keen on photography and wanted to know how they could get up to the high bluff that overlooked English Harbour, as it would provide a marvellous vantage point.
They took note of the simple directions and set off to Shirley Heights, now a tourism resort but then just a dusty hill.
When they got there and looked down into the bay, they were confused. Instead of the few yachts they were expecting to see, the harbour was packed with naval vessels that are no longer seen today. Sailors in historic naval garb were busy loading and unloading, working up the masts of the vessels. Bosuns’ whistles could be heard and they could see the steam rising from the cauldrons of boiling tar, used to caulk the ship’s wooden hulls.
The harbour was packed with naval vessels that are no longer seen today
At first they thought that they had lost their sense of direction and were looking down at some historic re-enactment in another bay but they soon realised that they were looking at English Harbour in its heyday.
This vision did not just last a few seconds. Quite the contrary, they watched from Shirley Heights for over four hours, until it was time to get back to their lodgings.
Before they left, they took careful note of all the buildings and coves, and sure enough, once they drove back down to the harbour, they were able to pick out all the main features.
The cordage and canvas store was still there but without its windows and with grass growing from cracks in the ceiling, and only the pillars of the sail loft were visible. All the boats were gone.
Somehow, they had seen an echo of the past, an echo that the historians that now run the Nelson’s Dockyard National Park would undoubtedly give a right arm to witness for themselves…
These are the 50th and 51st in a series of short stories The Sunday Times of Malta has been running every Sunday. They are taken from The Unexplained Plus (Allied Publications) by Vanessa Macdonald. The first edition was published in 2001 and reprinted twice. It was republished, with added stories, as The Unexplained Plus. The Maltese version of the book, Ta’ Barra Minn Hawn (Klabb Kotba Maltin), is available from all leading bookstores and stationers and from www.bdlbooks.com.