
Originally Posted by
Simon Owens
Hi James, to follow on from your thinking. I am being very mindful not to speculate on The Man from Tregantle's story. Speculation, and too much thinking, can send you down a myriad of rabbit holes and waste lots of time and energy when investigating stories such as these. BUT, i woke up this morning with this thought on my mind.. It seems a little odd that when they found his body, (after perhaps around four years after he died), that he was found with no clothing on at all. All that was left was his skeleton. So I googled "merchant navy stripping of clothes" and up popped a post. Sometimes, seafarers that were crossing the equator for the first time would go through an initiation for Neptune, that could include the stripping of their clothes. And now I am going to speculate for the first time in this story. Could The Man from Tregantle have missed out on this initiation when he crossed the equator, his mates found out when back on land, and during a bit of a night out, he was removed of his clothing as a prank, and left alone to make his way back to wherever he was staying or going? Hence, wandering off the road to find protection, and sadly succumbing to the cold. Total speculation I know, but I am going to include it as a possibility in my loose theory. Pranks like this happen in every day life, not often, but they do happen. People's thoughts on this?