From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea (British Library Tales of the Weird #1)

No Ships Pass by Lady Eleanor Smith ★★★★½

The intro was correct, this story, written in the early 1930s, could have been the basis for Lost.  Imagine a smaller cast that could not die.  Madness!

The Floating Forest by Herman Scheffauer ★★★★☆ 

You could read it as vengeance or fate, but either way the imagery was beautiful.

The Black Bell Bouy by Rupert Chesterton ★★★★☆ 

The most believable, and unexpectedly brutal, sea haunting story of the bunch. It is easier for me to ascribe malevolent personality to a wandering dark metallic ball than a ship.  Undoubtedly due to:

The Soul-Saver by Morgan Burke ★★★½☆ 

With shades of Steven King, Burke delivers paranormal horror ahead of his time.

Held by the Sargasso Sea by Frank H. Shaw ★★★½☆ 

While the anthropomorphic magical ship might be unbelievable, it felt real.  The decades of devotion between Chisholm and The Swordfish make the ending more than possible, they make it right.

From the Depths by F. Britten Austin ★★★½☆ 

I was hooked from the map!  There was an Indiana Jones quality to the accidentally discovered mysterious map.  And dun-dun-dun, is the captain secretly German?!?! Gasp, lol.  What followed diminished to a weak vengeful ghost story and a sad ending.  

Sargasso by Ward Muir ★★★☆☆ 

For an epistolary short sea-monster-mystery story, that was a bit of alright.  Hey, there was a tentacle.

Tracked: A Mystery of the Sea by C.N. Barham ★★★☆☆ 

“The vessel have been run down by a passing steamer, which, because merchants look on time as being of greater value than life, had inhumanely left it’s wretched victims to perish.” 

These days it’s massive cargo vessels hitting whales.  Bastards.

The Murdered Ships by James Francis Dwyer ★★★☆☆ 

A bit of a second u-boat story, a bit of a cursed pearls story, and a lot of an anthropomorphic ghost ships story.  The beginning was clumsy but it ended neatly.

Devereux’s Last Smoke by Izola Forrester ★★½☆☆ 

A vengeful newlywed comes back to crush his wife’s happiness.  The sad thing was, she thought only the best of him.

The Ship of Silence by Albert R. Wetjen ★★½☆☆ 

Excellent first line and premise, unfortunately this was twenty pages of tension signifying nothing.

From the Darkness and the Depths by Morgan Robertson ★★½☆☆ 

The author sounded more interesting than his presented work.  This was a forgettable sea monster story that I skimmed neared the end.

The Ship That Died by John Gilbert ★½☆☆☆

Not much of a story here.  We are never told why the ship’s metal melted, why it haunted the world, why it made sure there were no survivors.

The Mystery of the Water-Logged Ship by William Hope Hodgson  DNF

I fell asleep twice trying to get into this.

The High Seas by Elinor Mordaunt  DNF

Animal abuse, bullying, and it was heading to rape.  Hard pass.

I completed 13/15 stories that averaged 3.15 stars.  I will keep it at three stars because there was one outstanding gem and an effort to include lost female British authors.