Caleuche

The engine had been coughing for a while and by rights should have stopped altogether. A family was running for their island across open water, the father nursing the motor along without much hope, when a ship appeared off to one side, holding a course parallel to theirs and closing slowly. As it came nearer it was smaller than it had looked, a fishing launch rather than a ship. Nearer still, only a rowing boat. By the time it drew level it was a bare log travelling against the current, pointed the same way they were. The motor ran until they were tied up at home.

That account was given in Puerto Aysén in 2016, and in the channels of the Chiloé archipelago it needs no footnote. Everyone knows what shrinks like that. They also know better than to say its name too casually, which is why the older fishermen will call it el Marino, the Sailor, the way you might refer to a landlord you owe money to.

The Caleuche is a sailing ship. It comes at night and in fog, lit from stem to stern, with the racket of a party going on inside it. It moves faster than anything its size should, travels on the surface or beneath it as it prefers, vanishes when it chooses, and turns itself into animals or into ordinary inert things, a rock, a drifting trunk. Its other names are working names rather than poetry. Buque de Arte, the Ship of Art, art here meaning the trade, the sorcerers’ craft. Barcoiche, which does for the vessel and for the men crewing it.

Those men are the drowned and the sorcerers who deal with it, and none of them die. The party does not stop. The music carries across water, and a mortal who hears it properly is already in trouble. Crewmen are sometimes granted leave to visit the families they left ashore, but for one night only, and only once, ever.

In one community in the south of the archipelago, where the ngillatun was still being held in the 1940s, the offering for the Caleuche was carried out to a beach open to the Golfo de Corcovado, a stretch where the ship and its sailors were seen often. Food was left on the sand. The offerings for the Pincoya and the Sirena stayed inside the estuary, set on a stone beside the fish corral, because those two belong to the shallows and this one does not.

The sailors come ashore looking like the last people anyone would expect. Tall, fair, immaculate, in uniform, moving with the ease of men who have never gone short. The anthropologist David Núñez, who gathered many of these accounts across Chiloé and Aysén, makes the obvious point about that costume: in a colonial society this poor and this stratified, a supernatural suitor had to turn up dressed as the people who actually held the power. They can also heal. In one telling a group of them knocked late at a house and asked the old man inside to guide them to a place inland where there was wine and there were women. He told them he could not walk. One of the sailors asked to see the bad foot, worked at it for a moment, and the old man found himself walking them there.

Three women were standing on a beach when a group of cahueles, the dolphins, came in close and began showing off in the water in front of them. One of the women said aloud that she would marry the third one. That night a sailor knocked at her door. He had come, he said, to hold her to her word.

Wealth is the other half of the arrangement and it is never free. A family that agrees to hand over one of its own is repaid generously, in fish and shellfish and also in cash and goods of value. The debt runs both directions. A tall, well dressed stranger arrived at a house in 1992 saying he had been sent by the Buque de Arte to collect the contributions owed on the shellfish and the fish, and warned that the abundance would dry up shortly if nobody paid. The man of the house heard him out and refused: the shellfish came from God, and he was not paying an unknown caller for them. On the island of Caucahué, some years later, another stranger walked the flats at low tide demanding payment from the people gathering there. What the witnesses remembered afterwards was how fast he went, and that the slick stones and the soft sand did not slow him in the slightest.

Not all of the recruitment is a bargain. At the Piedra de Lile off Laitec there was a white sea lion for a season, conspicuous enough that people talked about it. A man from Caylin decided to go and shoot it. His crew told him to leave it alone. He did it anyway, and not long afterwards he was crossing by boat to a wake and was never heard of again.

Where the ship came from is a harder question than the stories make it look. In 1880 and 1881 the court at Ancud broke up the Recta Provincia, the sorcerers’ organisation, and the accused talked at length. They described the cave at Quicaví and its lock of alchemical metal that later melted in a fire, the printed book in leather-backed boards that a Spanish visitor had left behind, the macuñ lit by a small reservoir of human oil, the two guardians kept underground and fed on goat meat. The camahueto comes up, because its horn was used as medicine. The ship does not. In the declarations printed from that file, the famous vessel of the Chilote sorcerers is simply not there. The earliest description of it under the heading of chilote mythology arrives fifteen years later, in a book on Chiloé published in 1896 by Darío Cavada, who signed himself N.N.N.

Nobody has settled the name, either. Manuel Romo Sánchez’s dictionary of Chilote witchcraft supplies Mapudungun roots for calcu and buta, and even for arrealhue, the shout a sorcerer gives on taking to the air. For Caleuche it supplies nothing at all.

The list of what the ship can do runs long: speed, submersion, invisibility, transformation, healing, the granting of money and catch, and a proprietary interest in anything striking that washes up, which is why a launch captain working the Chonos archipelago will put a handsome stone back down on the beach rather than carry it aboard. What it cannot do is the more interesting half. It is not all-powerful and its own tradition says so plainly: a person with patience, nerve and the right knowledge can get out from under it, though never destroy it. The householder in 1992 said no and kept his shellfish. And it has since picked up a limitation no sorcerer imposed, from a regional health campaign that papered the archipelago with warnings about shellfish poisoning. The posters read: the Caleuche is a myth, red tide is not.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Caleuche?

The Caleuche is a ghost ship from the Chilote mythology of the Chiloé archipelago in southern Chile. It appears at night and in fog, lit from end to end and loud with a party that never stops, and it can travel above or below the water, turn invisible, or shrink into an animal or a floating log. Its other names are Buque de Arte, the Ship of Art, and Barcoiche.

Who crews the Caleuche?

The crew are sailors drowned in shipwrecks and the sorcerers who deal with the ship, and none of them die. Crewmen are occasionally allowed ashore to visit the families they left behind, but only for a single night and only once. Ashore they appear as tall, fair, immaculately dressed men in uniform, and they can heal the sick.

What does the Caleuche want from people?

It trades wealth for people. A family that agrees to give up one of its members is repaid with abundant fish and shellfish and with money and valuables, and agents of the ship come ashore in person to collect contributions owed on the catch. It also takes people without any bargain, as punishment for breaking the rules of the coast, such as killing an animal that was under its protection.

Can anyone escape the Caleuche?

Yes. Chilote tradition is clear that the ship is not all-powerful, and that an ordinary person with patience, courage and the right knowledge can get free of it, though nobody can destroy it. One recorded householder simply refused to pay the contribution demanded in the ship’s name and kept his shellfish.

Is the Caleuche mentioned in the Chiloé witch trials?

No. When the court at Ancud broke up the sorcerers’ organisation known as the Recta Provincia in 1880 and 1881, the accused described the cave at Quicaví, the macuñ, the underground guardians and the camahueto, but no ship. The earliest known description of the Caleuche as part of chilote mythology comes from a book on Chiloé published in 1896 by Darío Cavada under the pen name N.N.N.

Related Entries

Pincoya, Millalobo, Trauco, La Voladora, Imbunche, Camahueto, Basilisco Chilote, Peuchen, Caicai-Vilu, Trentren-Vilu, Ngen, Ngillatun, Encantado, Klabautermann, Naglfar