by Unwirklich VinZant

Created on: October 02, 2009   Last Updated: October 13, 2009

Whether it be women or bananas you'd be surprised what is black listed at sea. Many superstitions about being at sea or on an ocean voyage seem nonsensical but are interesting. About half the time the explanation is twice as interesting, but much less non-sense. Below is a brief glimpse at the common superstitions at sea, for trivia, or safety, you decide.

No women allowed.

One of the best known superstitions at sea is that women are bad luck on a boat. I can say many female sea captains would disagree, but where did this little gem come from?

Imagine a ship full of men on a long lonely voyage with very few to one woman. Can you say distraction? If you entire crew is distracted chances are trouble will arise, but rather than seeing this realistic reasoning sea captains claimed women angered the sea, well, of course unless they were naked on board.

Bring a cat instead.

Black cats are well known to be unlucky on land, but there a sailor's best friend. The silly explanation here is that superstitions are reversed at sea, so since a black cat is bad on land its good at sea. Logically? I'd say the cats kept down the rats and other disease carrying vermin on-board resulting in less death, or good luck.

Speaking of black.

I can't give you logical explanations for these few sea bound superstitions but...

You should never wear black or carry black bags on a ship.

Priests should stay home with the women.

In both cases it's believed that because the color black is associated with death (priests wear black and perform funerals) they are bad luck on board. Things associated with death in general were considered bad luck such as flowers, starting a voyage on Friday (the day Christ was crucified and the day the Norse felt witches gathered), the first Monday of April (the day Cain slew Able) or August (the day Sondom and Gommrrah was destroyed), or December 31st (the day Judas hung himself), killing an Albatross or Gull (they carried the souls of the dead at sea), wearing the clothing of a dead sailor, and finally, a shark following the ship. (I'm sure you can see how sharks associate with death.)

No banana's about it.

It was believed that having bananas, most notably as your cargo was bad luck.

This could be because of the spiders that tend to live in banana bushels are deadly, or because rotting bananas let off a gas that can be deadly if concentrated, or even because vessels carrying bananas had to travel quickly and the sailors had no time to fish for food, if they

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