The Eerie Footsteps: Richibucto

Crowds gathered at night to hear the footsteps as they went up and down in the almost empty hold of the Amity.

Search after search was quickly organized, but nothing was ever discovered that would solve the mystery of the eerie footsteps.

Finally the Amity was refloated and move to Rexton, New Brunswick, where the damage to her hull was repaired. Then the vessel was loaded with another cargo of lumber, and once more set her course for Liverpool, England.

While the Amity was stranded on the sandbar in Richibucto Harbour, a large number of people heard the parading footsteps in the hold of the vessel. But after she was freed, nothing more was heard aboard the vessel that would class her as a haunted ship.

It was generally believed that the movement of the barque on the sandbard had been the cause of the unusual sounds.

The matter of the eerie footsteps was forgotten until the Amity arrived at her Liverpool destination. There, while being discharged of her lumber cargo, a gruesome discovery was made.

In the hold of the Amity, wedged in among the lumber, was the decomposed body of a sailor.

Detectives went to work on the case. They found that the body showed no signs of foul play. No member of the crew was missing. Time also revealed that no one in the New Brunswick ports of Rexton or Richibucto was missing. The whereabouts of the original crew were checked and all were accounted for, with the exception of the seaman who had been classed as a deserter when the vessel became stranded on the sandbar in Richibucto Harbour.

But the body found in the hold of the Amity at Liverpool was not that of the supposed deserter.

The hold of the barque had been closed from the time she left Rexton in New Brunswick until her arrival in Liverpool, a lapse of 28 days. But the condition of the body found in the hold indicated that it had been there for months.

With the finding of the body, there were many who remebered the eerie footsteps that had been heard when the Amity was locked in the ice of Richibucto Harbour. What had caused those sounds? Was it something that had buffetted the vessel's keel under the ice? If so, why did the sounds cease upon investigation?

Some were of the opinion that the body was aboard the vessel during the winter. If so, how did it escape detection during the many searches carried out in the hold? Where was that body when the original lumber cargo was discharged? Was it the body of a stowaway who might have been crushed by the lumber when the vessel was loaded the second time? If so, how did a stowaway manage to get into the hold without being seen and reported?

Remembering the eerie footsteps and the missing seaman, many believed that he had been murdered, and his body was in the hold all the time, and was purposely overlooked by searchers who did not wish to find the body. There were others who believed that the reported missing seaman from the original crew of the Amity had not been missing at all. The claim was that he had been alive and stayed on the vessel for reasons best know to himself, and his were the footsteps that had been heard in the hold of the Amity.

If this was so, where did he hide in the bare hold when it was searched time and again? If it were possible for him to hide, how had he survived the winter? There were no fires aboard the Amity while she was ice-bound, and where did he get food and drink? Where was he when the vessel was loaded the second time at the port of Rexton?

During the speculation over the Amity case, there were many who believed that the so-called footsteps emanating from the hold of the barque were caused by the vessel rubbing against the sandbar. But there were always just as many to firmly believe that the sounds heard had their origins with the supernatural.

Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that all questions concerning the body found on the vessel at Liverpool, the whereabouts of the missing seaman from the Amity, and the unearthly sound of footsteps aboard the vessel, have never been satisfactorily answered.

Down through the long years the name of the New Brunswick barque Amity has always been linked with this unexplained mystery of the sea.