The Phantom Ship

Dr. Francis Brewster was born abt. 1600 in Bristol, England and married there to Lucretia (Lucy) Jones abt. 1623. [See "Family Histories" Generation 12.]

In the year 1644 he and other New Haven, CT merchants, including Theophilus Eaton, Steven Goodyear, and Thomas Gregson, hired John Wakeman and company to build an ocean going vessel. It was poorly built and very “walt-side”. Upon its completion it was entrusted with a cargo of wheat, peas, hides, beaver and peltry and writings of John Davenport at New Haven and Thomas Hooker at Hartford.

In the middle of January 1646 the vessel ploughed through three miles of ice in New Haven harbor and out into the Atlantic Ocean. Passengers on board were Dr. Brewster, Thomas Gregson, Nathaniel Turner, George Lamberton and others. The vessel never reached its destination. After many months a vision of the ship appeared over the harbor at New Haven.

Embarkation of the Phantom Ship

By Jesse Talbot
Collection of the New Haven Colony Historical Society

Two Quinnipiac Indians along with John Davenport and other New Haven inhabitants watched as the Phantom Ship ploughs through the ice of New Haven Harbor on its fateful voyage in 1646.

THE PHANTOM SHIP
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 In Mather’s Magnalia Christi,

Of the old colonial time,

May be found in prose the legend

That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,

And the keen and frosty airs,

That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men’s prayer.

“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 shall be!”

And the ships that came from England,

When the winter months were gone,

Brought no tidings of this vessel

Nor of Master Lamberton.

This put the people to praying

That the Lord would let them hear

What in his greater wisdom

He had gone with friends so dear.

And at last their prayers were answered:

It was in the month of June,

An hour before sunset

Of a windy afternoon,

When, steadily steering landward,

A ship was seen below,

And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,

Who sailed long ago.

On she came with a cloud of canvas,

Right against the wind that blew

Until the eye could distinguish

The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts.

Hanging tangled in the shrouds,

And her sails were loosened and lifted,

And blown away like the clouds.

And the masts, with all their rigging,

Fell slowly, one by one.

And the hulk dilated and vanished,

As sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw this marvel

Each said unto his friend,

That this was the mould of their vessel.

And thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village

Gave thanks to God in prayer,

That, to quiet their troubled spirits,

He had sent this Ship of Air.