Another reference to St. Elmo's Fire related to the Ghost Ship of Northumberland on the Uhaul truck the other day.
In 1905, New Brunswick scientist William Francis Ganong proposed that the legend may have arisen due to natural electrical phenomena such as St. Elmo's Fire that had been subject to "interpretation as the flaming rigging of a ship."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Ship_of_Northumberland_Strait