Was Sheila Doone married to a
ghost for 27 years?
After 27 years as a widow Sheila Doone has discovered she has
officially been married to a ghost. Now to enjoy the rest of her
life and marry her new partner she has been told she must divorce
that ghost!
 Hers
is a disturbing and harrowing story. A trip to her local register
office brought home to her just how much the ghost and memory of
her husband John Doone rules her life.
In 1974 perhaps the most enduring marine mystery since the Marie
Celeste began when the Hull-based factory trawler, The Gaul, sank
off the North Cape amid rumours that she had been spying on the
Russian fleet. Not a trace of any of the 36 crew has ever been found,
but one alleged sighting of John Doone, the radio operator, in South
Africa in 1978, has tortured Sheila’s life ever since and
now seems to be the mysterious reason why she cannot marry her new
love Ernest.
Last year she and Ernest, a quiet unassuming man who prefers to
remain almost anonymous, went to Burnley Register office. They planned
to marry and seal the relationship which began 10 years previously
when they met on their way to a dance. Other widows of Gaul crew
members have married without problem but Sheila was told that the
only way she could do so was to divorce John Doone.
No death certificates have ever been issued for the crew members.
An official enquiry ruled that The Gaul sank in heavy seas but now
after the discovery of the wreck and haunting doubts over her role
as a “spyship” a further enquiry as to why she sank
and was never found has been ordered by Deputy Prime Minister John
Prescott, himself a Hull MP.
Two approaches to Mr Prescott pleading for his help in resolving
Sheila’s situation have proved fruitless. He says he cannot
get involved and although he has passed the matter to Sheila’s
MP, Gordon Prentice, he has failed to get in touch.
The fact that Sheila received a widow’s pension seems to count
for nothing.
 “
When the Registrar said I must divorce John I was amazed and upset,”
said Sheila. The shock and trauma upset her and Ernest deeply and
they are reluctant to talk openly after so many years of doubt,
intrigue and mystery. Now nearing 60 and not enjoying the best of
health, Sheila has endured much over the last 27 years and for the
last 10 Ernest has been a tower of strength as she has persistently
tried to unravel the mystery of why her husband disappeared and
just what did happen to the ill-fated Gaul.
Ernest has been by her side for many journeys to Hull from their
home in a quiet former Lancashire mill town . At first he knew nothing
of the Gaul mystery until a friend told him just how much Sheila
and her three children had endured since that fateful day in 1974.
In 1982 Sheila bumped into the daughter of a former workmate of
her husband, Alan Waterworth, and was stunned at what she was told.
The daughter said her father had seen John Doone in a bar in Port
Elizabeth, South Africa, in October 1978, four years after the sinking
of The Gaul. He had never spoken of it because he knew his former
work pal was supposed to be dead. He had not spoken to him but was
certain it had been him. When he approached him he ran out of The
Red Lion Hotel in Port Elizabeth. Attempts to trace him proved futile
and Alan Waterworth has since died, although his widow now lives
close to Sheila in North East Lancashire.
The story made national and international headlines and to this
day enquiries continue to gather any scrap of evidence that may
prove John Doone had been alive four years after he and 35 other
men were presumed to have perished in the icy waters off the North
Cape.
“ I will not divorce John,” says Sheila, a quietly spoken
woman who lives to this day in the house which she and John had
bought only days before he went to sea for the last time, leaving
her and three children to wonder at his fate. (continued in The
Unquiet Grave)
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