The Dripping Seaman      George Usborne was an English sea captain who came to Canada about 1800 and made his first fortune in the timber stands he held along the the St Lawrence River and in the Sanguenay River Valley. But he was chased from there by a ghost. And this is how it happened.      Usborne owned three large ocean going schooners and was engaged in shipping cargoes of square timber from Quebec City to Liverpool in England. He became very wealthy and built a huge stone mansion on the heights at Quebec City for his bride Ethel Mary Seaton Ogden, an American lady who he met while on lumbering business in Upper New York State.      For a time Usborne prospered honestly. But then he grew greedy. He began to try to make a killing by loading square timbers not only in the hold, but also on the decks. In a heavy storm this was fatal because the huge square timbers, sometimes weighing as much as a ton each, slid to one side of the deck and capsized the vessel.      One year Mary and George chose May 1st. to celebrate the end of the drive on the rivers and the departure of Usborne's ships to Liverpool loaded with the great square timbers of the Sanguenay River Valley. The celebration was held in the ballroom of the Usborne mansion attended by all the fair women of Quebec's high society wearing gowns imported from London, and by all the grave men of Quebec's high society sampling rare wines imported from Paris      While all this feasting and dancing was in progress, suddenly there was a loud knocking at the rarely-used ballroom door on the riverside.	Lumber schooners     Timber stowed on deck
All the music stopped. All the merriment ceased. When Mary and George opened the door, there stood a lone man in seaman's garb, dripping water on the doorstep, and covered with seaweed. While everyone stood rooted to the floor, he raised his arm, pointed a long bony finger at George Usborne, opened his mouth as though to cry out an accusation. Although his lips moved, no words were heard. And the sailor disappeared. No trace of him at all on the doorstep except a pool of water. Just there and gone.      Some time later, George Usborne discovered that his ships had gone down on the night of May 1st, the very night the dripping seaman appeared at the ballroom door.      George Usborne went bankrupt and for several years, tried to start again at Quebec City. But Mary didn't want to live any longer in the stone mansion on the heights. It was haunted by the ghost of the dripping seaman who appeared every May 1st on the doorstep of the riverside entrance to the ballroom. George Usborne then tried to sell the beautiful stone mansion, but no one would buy it because it was haunted. So George and Mary had to abandon it. They moved to Portage-du-Fort in the Ottawa Valley where the timber trade was just burgeoning, and there they began anew.     To separate fact from fiction in the above story click here
In 1876 J.M.Lemoine described George's mansion: "Geo. Usborne, Esq., was the occupant of Cap Rouge cottage. The estate consisted of close on one hundred acres of land, extending north across the king's highway, with a river frontage of about twenty acres, the lot on the south side of the road is laid out, one half in a park, the remainder in two or three fruit and flower gardens, divided by brick walls to trail vines and ripen fruit. It lies quite sheltered with a southerly exposure, bounded by the lofty, perpendicular river banks; the base, some two hundred feet below, skirted by a narrow road, washed by the waves of the St. Lawrence."