The Ghost Ship by Richard Middleton

The Ghost Ship by Richard Barham Middleton

Richard Barham Middleton was born in 1882 in Staines then in Middlesex, but since 1965 part of Surrey. It calls itself Staines upon Thames now.  I checked the 1864 map and then it was a small town surrounded by fields and woods. Even now looking at the satellite, though I see is is a much bigger urbanisation there is still some nice green land around it. But I digress. He died in 1911 in Brussels by suicide

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He was educated at Cranbrook school and then went to work as a bank clerk between 1901 and 1907 but lived, the Wiki says ‘affected’ a Bohemian lifestyle at night and joined a club called The New Bohemians. He knew Arthur Machen who much admired his work and wrote a preface to the collection of stories in which I found The Ghost Ship. It’s available on Gutenberg for free. He became a magazine editor but really wanted to be a poet. He met Raymond Chandler who was put off writing almost because Middleton was so talented and he thought he’d never match it. His most famous poem is The Bathing Boy which is a paean to a beautiful young man swimming. 

He made very little money as a writer and lived in poverty. He moved to Brussels and aged only 29, he killed himself by drinking chloroform just after his birthday. 

We have done his winter ghost story, On Brighton Road which is short but good. The Ghost Ship is his most famous ghost story and, unlike On Brighton Road is humorous.  In his biography by Henry Savage, Middleton is said to have claimed he had a pirate for an ancestor who was hanged at Port Royal. But Savage notes that Middleton was not diligent with facts.

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