New Haven Colony - The Phantom Ship

The Phantom Ship

In the first years of the colony it only had ships capable of coastal travel. Trade with England was done with the Massachusetts Bay Colony as the middleman. In 1645 the Colony built an 80-ton ocean-going ship to be captained by George Lamberton, of New Haven, Connecticut who was a a merchant gentleman and a sea captain from London, England. He, and in the company of others, tried to establish a settlement in Delaware, but were resisted by the Swedes who had settled there. He was one of the original founders of the Colony of New Haven. He was allotted land in block 7 and owned over 266 acres. Captain Lamberton and others from New Haven built one of the first ships out of New England for a commercial venture to the West Indies. The ship disappeared in 1646, whose fate is the theme of Longfellow's poem "The Phantom Ship". The ship disappeared in 1646.

According to legend, six months later, following a June thunder shower near sunset, an apparition of the ship appeared on the horizon. Those on shore were said to have recognized their friends on deck. The ship's masts then appeared to snap, and in the pitch the passengers were thrown into the sea and the ship capsized. Town fathers were to say the event gave them closure.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem "The Phantom Ship" about the event which includes the lines:

A ship sailed from New Haven,

And the keen and frosty airs,

That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men's prayers.

"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"--

Thus prayed the old divine--

"To bury our friends in the ocean,

Take them, for they are thine!"

But Master Lamberton muttered,

And under his breath said he,

"This ship is so crank and walty

I fear our grave she will be!"

The disasters in Philadelphia and sinking of its ship were to weaken the Colony's future negotiating position.