Tale of the cursed Ancient Mariner
The cursed Ancient Mariner of Coleridge's poem was probably based on a real life Bristol sailor, the privateer Captain Shelvocke. Shelvocke commanded the frigate Speedwell on a trip round Cape Horn to raid the Spanish Pacific colonies. Ferocious winds hit them and there were no fish or birds to be seen, apart from one black albatross which continually hovered near the boat...
A superstitious sailor, Simon Hatley, who suffered from fits of depression, blamed the albatross for the winds and finally shot it.... The result was disaster.
The Speedwell was wrecked but Shelvocke managed to build a serviceable craft out of the wreckage. He sailed this to China, sold it, abandoned his crew and came home to write his story. One theory is that Shelvocke's tale was read by Wordsworth, who suggested it to Coleridge as the subject of a poem. But as Coleridge lived in Bristol, there's no reason why he couldn't have picked up the idea himself.
The claim that killing an albatross brings bad luck seems to be based on the belief that the huge birds either housed the souls of dead sailors, or were guardian angels in disguise..
The Ancient Mariner - 'At length did cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name. It ate the food it never had eat, And round and round it flew. The ice did split with a thunder-fit; The helmsman steered us through' !
Shelvocke's skill as a sailor is made apparent by his successes. Although the Speedwell eventually comes to grief on the Pacific Island later made famous by Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Shelvocke managed to maraud and pillage his way up the west coast of South America from present-day Chile to Baja California in a series of captured enemy vessels. He then sailed for Macao before returning to England to write an account of the voyage in 1726...and lived in Bristol for some time.
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