Redemption of the Damned, Vol.2: Sea and Space Phenomena

A Hatchet Job

Despite a good amount of research, and the endorsements of several prominent Forteans, this is really an elaborate and excessively illustrated hatchet job upon several mysteries examined by Charles Fort.

As an example, the encounter of by the S.S. Siberian with a "globe of fire" rising out of the sea in 1887 was mentioned by Fort. Many have considered it an example of globular lightning, others some UFO, or "a slow, Earth-grazing, fireball meteor in one conceivable explanation," according to the authors. After 24 pages of delving into wind currents and "light ball" ordnance, their favourite explanation of a "light ball" from another vessel is abandoned for the lack of accurate wind charts for that time and place, (as well as the identity of any vessel launching such a piece of ordnance).

Ten pages are wasted on a detailed suggestion that a report of "a meteor in the shape of two balls," that fell alongside the Dutch ship J.P.A., in 1887, was nothing more than a sea captain repeating a description from a Jules Verne novel. An illustration from Verne's novel is prominently displayed on the book's cover. No suggestion is made in this chapter that the ship encountered a similar "light ball" ordnance that the Siberian had supposedly encountered.

In 23 pages, the authors dispense with "vast luminous wheels" observed scores of times: "Yet after more than a century there is still no satisfying explanation." Two pages are wasted questioning the date of the "Vera Cruz" observation by Edward Lawton Moss. Was it 1865 or 1875? Moss said his "notes were lost in the ship"; the H.M.S. Bulldog was commissioned as part of the North American and West Indies Station; and, Moss was its surgeon, when the Bulldog ran aground during a battle at Haiti and was blown up, on October 23, 1865. The next H.M.S. Bulldog was not commissioned until 1872. From February of 1872 to 1875, Moss was in charge of the hospital of the Pacific Station, at Esquimalt, (British Columbia); in December of 1874, he was offered a position with the Nares 1875 Arctic Expedition; and, he returned to England in April of 1875. The date was 1865, clearly, (despite the date given in Nature, and everywhere else); and, Vera Cruz was on the Mexican coast, (many other Vera Cruz locations are inland).

This is a valuable book for reference material, but there is little redemption for the authors, who failed to notice Charles Fort's letter in T.P.'s & Cassell's Weekly, of April 24, 1926, which said: "In terms of marine phosphorescence, all attempts to explain are misleading, because these shafts of light are so brilliant as to seem electric. I am not convinced that the phenomenon is of marine origin. One difficulty in trying to explain is the almost exclusive localization of the marine displays in Asiatic waters."

The authors conclude there is nothing extraordinary in Fort's The Book of the Damned that cannot be explained by "our general understanding of physics" today. They've missed the point, entirely. Fort offered up his own wild speculations, humorously and provocatively, to show that the scientists in their eagerness to explain phenomena according to their dogmatic beliefs, suppressed data that did not conform to their understanding. Here, we have "Wessex science," (with detailed analysis and extensive research), to deny that anything extraordinary has happened, or "is going on in our atmosphere, our oceans and our solar system." To them, all UFOs can be explained, and Fort was mistaken to believe that there was any evidence of alien craft in our skies or in our seas. In short, it's a hatchet job.