Nautical Superstitions - David Miller's blog post

            Something that was particularly striking in this second reading was the way in which Pym, Augustus, and Peters manage to get the drop on the Grampus’ crewmembers who sided with the first mate: By having Pym disguises himself as the corpse of a recently-deceased crewmember (Hartman Rogers, who appears to have been poisoned by the crewmembers loyal to the first mate). Poe’s obsessions with all things macabre aside (which this part of the novel unapologetically plays on), the fact that this fairly outlandish plan manages to work is a fairly accurate reflection of the very paranoid and superstitious demeanor of many sailors at the time (honest or not). During a time when traveling by sea was pretty heavily dependent on then-unpredictable factors such as weather and the structural integrity of materials like wood and twine, it was common for sailors to focus heavily on perceived “omens” that were capable of bringing good or bad fortune that could be the difference between a successful voyage and a disastrous one. A famous example of something that would bring “bad luck” upon a ship was an Albatross, especially if one kills it (as shown in the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). An example of a “good luck” omen was having a cat aboard a ship. In the story, Pym describes the crewmembers as having “superstitious terrors” and “guilty consciences” (line 77), and unsurprisingly, the plan works so well that not only do the crew believe that they are indeed seeing Rogers’ ghost, but the mate himself dies of fright at the sight of the “ghost.”