Excerpt from Blood Curse
It took the better part of two days to get everything from the Barracuda to the new ship.
As ships went, she was literally a new vessel, at only three years old. She’d been christened the War God, and had been built to be the ultimate pirate hunter. She’d vanished at sea on her maiden voyage from the Bristol shipyards bound for the Caribbean.
Tales of the disappearance had spread like wildfire throughout the sea-going community. The story was she’d left the shipyard accompanying a convoy of merchantmen and at least two other men-of-war. The mission was to finally squelch the piracy and smuggling interfering with English trade in the Colonies. Midway on the crossing, an unusually dense fog had enveloped the convoy. Several crewmen from the other ships later reported hearing piteous screams and tormented wailing. After about an hour, the fog dissipated. The War God was nowhere to be seen.
The official report was that she’d either hit an uncharted reef or run afoul of a pod of whales and been sunk.
The story the sailors who were there told was that Hell itself had opened up and swallowed the ship whole. They only heard the screams, not breaking timbers. They’d only seen the bloody water where the ship should have been, no bodies or wreckage… or whales.
Many vowed never to set to sea again.
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