Zebrina, shown in the foreground of this Frank Spry card, was probably photographed in 1911 according to the Harbourmaster's Journal for that period. This vessel was built in 1873 at Whitstable, by Gann, as a three masted barge built schooner, meaning that she had a square section flat bottomed hull. She was best known as the ‘Marie Celeste’ of WW1 after she was found aground, with some sails set, on a French beach with no sign of the crew. At the time it was thought she had been a U-Boat victim, where the crew had abandoned ship before the submarine was perhaps scared off by naval activity. A subsequent investigation, described in When Ships Go Down by David Masters published in 1932, came to the conclusion the crew of five had been washed overboard in a squall and the craft had sailed or drifted downwind to end up high and dry on the sands without them. 

The mystery has been revisited in a number of recent websites, some of which refer to her as a “Ghost Ship”, and speculative details have been added over time such that she has now become something of a legend. The story was even used to introduce a plot line in the recent TV series “1923”. More pictures and text will be added in a Postcard of the Month feature in the Community Blog section soon.

Zebrina continued sailing after the war and was later converted to a motor barge, ending up in 1953 as a hulk/houseboat in Velder Creek off Langstone Harbour. She was eventually set on fire. Her timbers are probably buried under the housing estate built on land reclaimed from the creek.

The smaller vessel moored behind Zebrina is the Charlotte Sophia described elsewhere in the section on Vessels.