This is the story of someone with no common sense or understanding of red flags, who is thus condemned to suffer through an interminably long journey through every cliché connected with sea-based ghost stories: widow’s walks, disappearance at sea, faithless lovers and jealous husbands, pirates with hook hands… 

To be fair to our protagonist Carolyn, her mother couldn’t spot a red flag if a man was beating her to death with it, so I guess she never had much of a chance.