A story in Whitby — a seaside town located on the North Yorkshire coast in the North East of England, between Scarborough and Redcar — tells of the day Henry VIII decided to send his men to wreck the local Abbey (yeah, it’s the Dracula one, I talked about it here). The King’s men stripped the Abbey of its riches, and this included the bells, as the King wanted them transported to London either to sell them or to melt them and forge new cannons for his warships.
The people of Whitby didn’t take it well.
The King’s men carefully carried the bells down the 199 Abbey steps, while people in town were throwing silent curses at them, loaded them on the ship bound for London and… the ship sank. Some people say it was a favour from the local merfolk, though I find it improbable since the other legend connecting Whitby to mermaids is one where two exhausted mermaids are captured after a storm, held captive and almost stoned to death.
Anyway, the ship sank with the bells and it’s said that you can still hear the ringing of the Whitby Abbey bells underneath the waves just off the Black Nab in the North Sea. Whether hearing them is a good or a bad omen I couldn’t tell you, but one can easily guess.
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