Ouzel Galley

The Ouzel Galley was an Irish merchant ship that set sail from Dublin in the late seventeenth century and was presumed lost with all hands when she failed to return within the next three years. After a further two years had elapsed, however, she mysteriously reappeared with her full complement of crew and a valuable cargo of spices, exotic goods and, it is said, piratical spoils. The ship has entered Irish folklore, and her unexplained disappearance and unexpected reappearance are still the subject of a number of conspiracy theories.

The facts, so far as they can be ascertained, are quite straightforward. In the autumn of 1695 a merchant galley called the Ouzel (meaning blackbird) sailed out of Ringsend in Dublin under the command of Capt Eoghan Massey of Waterford. Her destination, it was supposed at the time, was the port of Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire (now İzmir in Turkey), where the vessel's owners – the Dublin shipping company of Ferris, Twigg & Cash – intended her to engage in a trading mission before returning to Dublin the following year. The Ouzel, however, did not return as scheduled; nor was she seen the year after that. When a third year passed without any sign of her or her crew, it was generally assumed by the people of Dublin that she had been lost at sea with all hands.

In 1698 a panel comprising the city's most eminent merchants was set up to settle the question of insurance. The panel's ruling was that the ship had indeed been lost and that its owners and insurers should receive their due compensation. The galley's complement of thirty-seven crew and three officers were declared dead and the insurance was paid out.

Two years later, however, in the autumn of 1700, the Ouzel made her unexpected reappearance, sailing up the River Liffey to scenes of both disbelief and wild jubilation. Captain Massey later described how the ship had fallen victim to Algerian corsairs on its outward journey. The crew were taken to North Africa, where they were forced to man the ship while their new masters engaged in acts of piracy against merchant vessels returning from the Caribbean or plying the lucrative Mediterranean shipping lanes. After five years of captivity, however, Capt Massey and his men took advantage of a drunken carousal to free themselves and retake the Ouzel, which they then promptly sailed back to Dublin, its hold still full of the pirates' booty.

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Wikipedia