Hodgson is easily one of my favorites. Someone needs to publish an edition of this book that includes a glossary of nautical terms and an accompanying diagram of a ship. ( )

A vintage ghost story set at sea. There were a lot of nautical terms that went over my head, but not so many as to make me feel lost in the narrative. Perfect for when you want an older ghost story but feel like a change a scene from the more usual haunted house. ( )

dnf @ 15% i loved the carnacki stories but i keep staring at he pages and my brain just won't focus on what's going on. i think i'll have to listen to this one as an audio book if i ever go back to it :/

In 'The Ghost Pirates', William Hope Hodgson seems to be working at slightly longer length in this novel when compared to some of his other books. And in contrast to some of his shorter novels, the weirdness quotient doesn’t ramp up all that quickly here, though he keeps saying “Something truly uncanny then happened…” and then it’s only slightly odd – nothing hair-raising the way it was in 'The Boats of the Glen Carrig', for example. Mind you, it shares that story’s load of naval proto-technobabble and I kept thinking of Edmund Blackadder’s encounter with Sir Walter Raleigh “and his Golden BeHind”. And guess what? The ghosts turned out to be pirates at the end, after all! (Or was it that the pirates were ghosts?) Hodgson pulls another reveal out of the hat in this one; the narrator turns out to have his mate’s ticket, but that hardly really influences what happens even though the ship’s captain suggests it might. The story ends very suddenly. All die. O the embarrassment (as Joe Haldeman once wrote).

Great ghost story. Hodgson puts you on the ship. Great story and characters. ( )