One Last Ghost Story: The Burning of the Palatine

Well, last night was Halloween, and what a great Halloween it was!  Weather turned out to be good, my neighborhood has electricity, and we got gobs and gobs of candy!

We also took part in our town’s latest and not-so-greatest idea for creating a “safe” trick-or-treating environment: truck-or-treat.

Have you heard of this?  Maybe I’m the last to know.

In our case, people gather their cars on the town common, open their trunks, and hand out candy to parades of little kids walking by.  Last year, when half the town was still without power and electrical lines and tree branches still hung precariously on many streets, trunk-or-treating saved Halloween.  This year, it was somewhat less necessary.  And it kind of gives me the willies.

The idea seems like a good one:  gather the kids in one place and create a safe trick-or-treating environment.  Only think about the behavior this encourages:  walking up to a stranger’s car because of the promise of candy in the truck.  That’s just an abduction waiting to happen.

On the other hand...

But while that’s all behind us, there’s still time for one last ghost story:

This one, like my last one, comes out of Rhode Island.  I grew up close to the ocean, and from some of the Rhode Island beaches where I would build sand castles and look for shells and sea glass, I could look out on the vastness of the blue-gray waters, and the unimaginable secrets held in its depths.

Rhode Island has not one, but many islands, almost all of which are found within Narragansett Bay.  But a little ways out into the Atlantic Ocean lies the tiny island of Block Island, all by itself.  As you can imagine, the people on Block Island make their living largely off the ocean, and have for centuries, one way or the other.

Back in the 18^th century, sailing along the waters off southern New England was a dangerous affair.  Between storms and rocks, many ships met their end, including many that ended up run aground on the shores of Block Island.  In those cases, there were residents of the island who would come out and ransack the ship, scavenging anything they could get their hands on.

Supposedly, some even hung lanterns or built signal fires near the most dangerous rocks, hoping to attract ship to be wrecked on the rocks.  And some say that is exactly what happened to the Princess Augusta in 1738.

The Princess Augusta was carrying a load of immigrants, nothing of value at all, but it was caught in a storm of Long Island.  The legends are unclear if the ship struck the rocks of Block Island by accident, or if they were lured onto the rocks by wreckers, but wreck it did.

The wreckers who made it to the ship found nothing of value, but helped all the passengers onto shore.  All, that is, except for one woman, sometimes described as a “mad woman,” who refused to leave.  The ship was set ablaze, at which point the rising tide and winds pushed the Princess Augusta back off the rocks.  The ship drifted off to the edge of the horizon, blazing like a Viking funeral, and all the while, the people ashore could hear the mad woman’s screams.

The following year, on the anniversary of the wreck, awestruck islanders watched as the Princess Augusta appeared again off shore, still engulfed in flames, and the mad woman’s screams once again filled their ears, before drifting once again beyond the horizon.

This horrifying story became even more legendary when the poet John Greenleaf Whittier used it as the inspiration for his poem, “Wreck of the Palatine.”

And to this day, residents of Block Island still say that one night a year, usually the night of a storm, near the anniversary of wreck back in 1738, you can still see the light of the burning ship on the horizon, now known as the “Palatine Light.”

And if the wind is blowing just the right way, the mad woman’s screams can still be heard.