Palatine Light

The Palatine Light is a ghost ship that is said to appear off Block Island, Rhode Island in New England. It is believed to be an apparition of the 18th-century ship named the Palatine or the Princess Augusta. The ship is claimed to appear as bursting into flames and proceeds to sink into the ocean. It is considered ominous to see the ship; as it is believed to be the harbinger of storms.

In 1811, Block Island resident Dr. Willey described the Palatine Light as “the light looks like a blaze of fire six or seven miles from the northern part of Block Island. Sometimes it’s small, like the light from a distant window. Sometimes it’s as big as a ship and wavers like a torch.”

There are many different stories to account for the legend of the Palatine Light and these have been embellished and changed over the years; however, there is evidence that these legends stem from an actual shipwreck (the sinking Princess Augusta in 1738).

Historical background
The legend originates from the historical shipwreck of the Princess Augusta at Block Island in 1738. The ship is known from contemporary accounts and from depositions taken from the surviving crew after the wreck. The ship Augusta sailed from Rotterdam in August 1738 transporting 240 German immigrants to British colonies in North America. The passengers were from the Palatinate region of Germany, and as such the ship was described as the "Palatine ship" in contemporaneous sources, which accounts for the later confusion over its name.

The Princess Augusta's voyage was beset by terrible luck; the water supply was contaminated, causing a "fever and flux" that killed two hundred of the passengers and half the crew, including the captain. Severe storms pushed the ship off course to the north, where the survivors spent three months enduring extreme weather and depleting stores. With dwindling supplies of water and provisions, the crew forced the helpless survivors to buy them. When the passengers ran out of money many starved to death and their bodies were thrown overboard. Gales pushed the damaged and leaking Augusta to Block Island. It wrecked amid a snowstorm at on the island's northernmost end on December 27, 1738.

Most accounts indicate that the ship traveled out to sea and sank; the ship might have been set on fire to scuttle it. No remains of the wreck have ever been found.

The Legends
Between Christmas and New Years, a spectral light is said to sometimes appear over the sea off the northern point of Block Island. Some say it is the ghost ship that haunts the area and it has become known as the Palatine Light.

There are two different versions of this Ghost Ship. One version of the story paints the islanders as helpful and caring, while the other version has it that the islanders were wreckers that lured the ship to its destruction.

Ghosts of Passengers Abandoned by the Ships Crew
In one version of the legend a Dutch ship carrying immigrants encountered bad weather and the ships crew mutinied, robbing the passengers and leaving the ship to run aground off Block Island where it was plundered by wreckers. The islanders watched in horror as the crew set the ship on fire and the tide carried the ship back out to sea; one of the passengers remained on board and her screams could be heard as the flaming ship sank beneath the waves. Thus, Palatine's light is the ghosts of the passengers.

Curse of the Mariners Murdered by the Islanders
In another version popularized in a poem John Greenleaf Whittier in 1867, the ship was lured onto Block Island by the islanders, who plundered the ship, murdered the survivors, and then set it on fire. The year afterwards the ship appeared in a storm, returning to haunt and bring bad luck to the islanders for their atrocities.