The Ghost Pirates (1909) by

The Ghost Pirates is a novel by William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1909. The economic style of writing has led horror writer Robert Weinberg to describe The Ghost Pirates as "one of the finest examples of the tightly written novel ever published. In it, Hodgson never describes in any remarkable details the ghosts - if this is indeed what they are, since their true nature is left ambiguous - he merely reports on their gradual commandeering of the ship.