Don’t Rock This Boat : Ghosts and a Gangster Are Linked to Vessel

An aged motor yacht reputedly owned by Al Capone is for sale at its Ventura Harbor mooring.

Among the boat’s liabilities, owner Doug Finchman said, are hundreds of paint chips, a few missing hull planks--and one ghost.

The haunting is based on independent reports of icy whirlwinds developing deep in the hull of the 76-foot vessel, and loose electrical wires that suddenly reach out and grab people.

Finchman, a marine repairman who became skipper of the Duchess III when the previous owner gave him the boat to satisfy a lien, said Capone’s ownership is part of the boat’s oral history.

Neither claim has been definitively proved to hold water, or come anywhere close to it.

In an attempt to verify its provenance, Dan Kilgore, a researcher for the television show “The Untouchables,” visited the boat this week.

Kilgore said Capone retired to Miami after serving a federal prison sentence for tax evasion. Among the ex-gangster’s amenities was a motor yacht. After Capone died in 1947, his widow sold the house and contents to a collector, but the boat was not in the inventory.

“If it could be verified, it would be a big find,” Kilgore said.

At an April 15 auction of Capone’s household items in Miami, shot glasses with the initial “C” sold for $1,500 and a water pitcher fetched $1,800.

“The boat is definitely from the right period,” Kilgore said. “There are people who knew the Capone family who can look at the pictures I took today and will be able to recognize things--if this was Capone’s boat.”

Attempts to verify the claim of a haunting have been less methodical.

Richard, a retired heavy equipment operator from Ventura who refused to give his last name, said he saw the ghost of a German officer during his first and only time on the boat.

“When I got into the bedroom, I looked in the mirror and I saw this reflection of a German officer with medals and everything. I looked behind me to see if there was anybody standing there, and when I turned around again, the reflection was still there.”

Richard said that for two days after the sighting, he could not rid himself of the smell of burning hair. The burning smell comes from an explosion that destroyed half of the pilot house, Finchman guessed, adding that he was told someone died in the blast.

The damage from the explosion has since been repaired, but the rest of the boat would require $50,000 in work to restore it, Finchman estimates.

For his part, Finchman is willing to accept considerably less than the $25,000 total of his original lien. “Make an offer,” he said.