The Princess Augusta

On the internet, I looked up the "Princess Augusta," the ship that carried my ancestor to America. Sure enough, there is his name - transcribed from the ship's passenger list with an asterisk indicating that it was written in his own handwriting, and that he was 19 years old. Amazing. That was in 1736. He arrived in the new world in September.

Hopefully he fared better on his voyage than the folks who sailed the fair Princess two years later, when it ran aground on December 26th 1738, on Sandy Point, the northern tip of Block Island near Long Island Sound, and was ultimately broken up on the rocks. The accounts of that sailing were grim indeed, inspiring a poem to be written by John Greenleaf Whittier, in 1867, "The Wreck of the Palatine" (the name by which the Princess Augusta is generally known.)

There was an 'acting captain' on that voyage, since the master and some of the crew along with many of the passengers had died of "a fever and flux." The reports indicate considerable plunder and mistreatment of the passengers by the crew and there is some confusion about whether the passengers ultimately fared better or worse at the hands of the Block Islanders who rescued them. The poem favors the latter theory, suggesting that the ship was lured to the rocks so she could be plundered by the islanders.

And for centuries the Princess Augusta has returned on the anniversary of her destruction as a 'ghost ship,' glowing fire when it appears.

Cool.