The Palatine Light of Block Island

A ship carrying emigrants from Rotterdam wrecked on Block Island, Rhode Island, in December 1738. A ghost-ship legend grew from the wreck, and tellers say a burning ship appears each year.

Wikipedia records that the 220-ton British ship Augusta left Rotterdam that August, 1738, with Captain George Long in command, fourteen crew and 240 immigrants bound for English colonies in America. It gives the wreck as happening in a snowstorm, at 2 p.m. on 27 December 1738, at Sandy Point, on the northern tip of Block Island. A podcast about the wreck calls the vessel the Princess Augusta and describes the wreck as tragic and historic.

The ghost-ship story came afterwards. The New England Legends podcast says islanders name it the Palatine Light. The New England Historical Society tells it this way: one passenger, Mary Vanderline, lost her reason through suffering and refused to abandon her belongings. Every year in the week after Christmas, it says, islanders can watch a ship ablaze and hear her screams over the surf.