Klabautermann

Resembling a spectral, child-like figure, a Klabautermann is clad in a sailor's raincoat with a matching pair of shoes. A small wooden hammer rests in its grasp, a fitting tool for a being bound to the upkeep of ships.

By nature these spirits are cheerful and industrious, reputed to warn a crew whenever their vessel drifts into peril. The more devotion a ship receives, the deeper grows its own care for the people aboard. Its human form reveals itself only to someone who genuinely loves their ship, and in old legend that very visibility carries a grim meaning, since the spirit reveals itself solely to those aboard a ship already fated to sink.

The spirit inhabiting the Going Merry showed striking power. After Shura scorched and battered the ship, she was found fully restored come morning, even reverted to the form she held before the upgrades fitted for the climb up the Knock Up Stream. With a spirit awakened, the Merry could steer herself while no one touched her sails or rudder, journeying from Water 7 to Enies Lobby through the savage storms of the Aqua Laguna, and she lowered a rope ladder over her side without aid.

The Merry also found a voice, seemingly speaking through telepathy. Only her own Straw Hat crew could hear her at first, yet at her funeral pyre her words reached the Galley-La shipwrights as well, despite their never having met her. She even grasped that her wounds had passed any hope of mending. Franky later spelled out the legend to Usopp, naming the spirit as the soul of a beloved ship and cautioning that a Klabautermann can never find rest should its vessel sink with the crew still aboard. The spirit begged Iceburg during the Aqua Laguna for one last voyage and called out to the Straw Hats both at Enies Lobby and at the Merry's farewell.