Folklore, Fables, and Things that Go Bump in the Night

“The Case of Nix’s Mate”

Late on a hot summer’s day in the year 1689, Captain Roger Nix–a powerful, strapping sea-captain–gingerly guided his ship into Massachusetts Bay. He spotted on the Boston Harbor islands in the distance and called to his quartermaster; the rest of the crew could stay aboard, he explained, whilst he and the mate would go ashore. So the ship anchored, the captain and his mate would go ashore, and the night seemed to pass without incident.

Until, that is, about 3 o’clock in the morning, when the crew still on-board heard unearthly screams coming from the island. The crewmen out of bed–and rushing about at the wee hours to find a dinghy with which to row to the island and see what was the matter.

Such the crew did, and they found a terrible sight: Captain Nix dead, murdered, run through with his own sword. Only the quartermaster was still on the island. The crew stared at him, and he stammered out an explanation: he had been sleeping, he explained, when he had heard the cries; he woke to see two or three men, their clothes and hands blood-stained, running from the scene of the crime, boarding their own boat, and rowing off back to Boston.

Well, the mate’s own crew did not believe this story, and the strongest and sturdiest of the men changed him up and placed him in the brig, sailing into Boston harbor. A Puritan jury quickly convicted the unfortunate mate, and quickly sentenced him to be hanged–all while he screamed in vain of his innocence.

At the sight of the rope, however, he stopped his screaming and stood perfectly still, as if resigned to his fate. The minister asked him if he had any words before his hanging. He replied only that, were he innocent as he claimed, after his death God Almighty would make the blood-stained island wash away. With that the rope was placed about his neck, and the deed was done.

As it happens, a few days later the sheriff arrested three men for loitering, drunkenness, and not keeping the Sabbath, and one of the three, in a stupor, confessed to having killed “an old sea captain” on an island in the harbor. Sure enough, they were the murderers described by the first mate.

The judge and jury that had convicted the first mate did nothing. It is curious to record, however, that the judge died of a heart attack before the year was out–on the same day, curiously enough, as the Great Storm of ’89 overtook Boston and washed away the infamous island in the harbor. To this day, moreover, the area where it once sat is still called “Nix’s Mate Island.” 

Except, of course, that that didn’t happen. This legend, while still told around here (it has been re-printed in several folklore books), was fairly comprehensively debunked by B.A. Botkin in A Treasury of New England Folklore, 1947. Such a trial was never recorded, as it would have had to have been by British law, and the name “Nix’s Mate Island,” as connected to this story, was debunked as far back as 1700.

“…Master Coddington ask’d Dirke about the name of” a curious noise he’d just heard. “And Dirke told him the name of the noise in Dutch… ‘Nixie Shmalt…it meaneth the Wail of the Water Spirits…’ But Master Coddington thought it was the name of the Island, and set it down on a map he had ‘Nix’s Mate Island.’ … Massachusetts people had made up a fairy Tale about a Captain Nix and hys mate…”

Funny about folklore, eh?