A Lost Soul on the Phantom Ship
(Mary Gibbard, my 10th Great Grandmother)
I miss England. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve seen my family and experienced the vibrancy of London. London is a busy, chaotic city of about 400,000 people. Oh what a contrast to New Haven with about 800 settlers.
With such a small population, life is definitely lived in a fishbowl. Since my husband, Stephen, is the Deputy Governor of the Colony of New Haven, I live my life as an example to the other women. It’s not always easy. My Puritan faith sustains me. I manage the household and garden while raising my children. Everything I say and do is analyzed publicly. I willingly fulfill my duty, but it would be nice to have a break and visit the family that I haven’t seen in so many years.
As it so happened, Stephen and others in our community combined our resources to build what we called the ‘Great Shippe’ to increase our trading opportunities. New Haven has really been struggling, and Stephen and the others believe that with our own ship we can encourage trade and become more successful.
I am fortunate that Stephen supports my desire to visit England and my family. In return, I will be Stephen’s representative in this endeavor. I am happy to do this and am ready for this journey to begin, although I will miss my husband and children.
January 1646
Unfortunately, the sailing has been delayed due to inauspicious circumstances. It is now January 1646 which is the height of winter. The cargo has been loaded, and it is time to leave. After the cargo was loaded, Captain George Lamberton had an eerie premonition. He shared his thoughts with some of the colonists, “This ship will be our grave (Describe).”
The weather on the day of departure is absolutely brutal. We are totally iced in; the harbor is frozen solid. The only way that we can possibly get to open water is for every able-bodied man and boy to chop and saw through the ice. It was a tremendous undertaking to get us through those three miles.
I have tried to prepare myself to live aboard the Good Shippe for the four to eight weeks necessary to reach England. I thought I knew what my temporary home would be like, but the conditions were unfathomable. There was no heat and the damp and freezing conditions were paralyzing. The 70 passengers had to share the ‘tween deck with each other as well as a few goats and chickens. The violent North Atlantic winds we encountered were terrifying.
The Silence
After the Great Shippe broke the ice, there was complete silence. There was no sighting of the ship anywhere. The New Haven colonists eagerly awaited news from the ships arriving from England. Tragically, there was absolutely no news of any kind. The colony sank into despair as time went on. The Great Shippe never reached England. However, that is not the end of the story.
June 1648
The Phantom Ship
A tremendous thunderstorm exploded in the skies of New Haven Harbor. The storm finally eased about an hour before sunset. Many members of the community gathered at the harbor and collectively experienced an unsettling mirage. They saw the Great Shippe. Witnesses were able to see details of the ship. As the observers continued to stare in disbelief, “The ship didn’t just fade; it underwent a rapid wreck in the sky. The main topmast fell, then the masts broke and finally, the hull capsized and dissolved into a smoky mist (Mather).”
The Explanation
Many people at the time felt this apparition was “God sending them a visual answer to their prayers to show them exactly how their loved ones died.”
Today, some people allude to “collective hallucination” as a possible explanation as the colonists dealt with the continued trauma of not knowing what happened.
The most popular reason though is that it was a Fata Morgana which is a scientific interpretation for “a rare, complex mirage that occurs after a severe thunderstorm that deals with temperature inversion and unstable air temperatures (Describe).”
Regardless of how it happened, the fact that so many people saw the vision of the Phantom Ship provided the colonists with closure.
After the Phantom Ship
George Lamberton was the captain of the Great Shippe. He was married to Margaret Lewin. Captain Lamberton was lost to sea aboard the Great Shippe now known as the Phantom Ship.
My 10th great grandfather, Stephen Goodyear, Deputy Governor of New Haven, Connecticut, was married to Mary Gibbard. Mary was lost to sea aboard the Great Shippe now known as the Phantom Ship.
After the shared mirage of the Phantom Shippe appeared, Stephen Goodyear married Margaret Lewin Lamberton.
The account of the Great Shippe was immortalized by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem, The Phantom Ship.
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 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!”
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 done with friends so dear.
And at last their prayers were answered:–
It was in the month of June,
An hour before the sunset
Of a windy afternoon,
When, steadily steering landward,
A ship was seen below,
And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so 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 clouds.
And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one,
And the hulk dilated and vanished,
As a 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.
Sources
“1644 The Phantom Ship.” Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut, 2011, www.colonialwarsct.org/1644_phantom_ship.htm. Accessed 28 Jan. 2023.
“Describe the Phantom Ship of 1646” prompt. Gemini, Jan 27 version, Google, 27 Jan. 2026, gemini.google.com.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “The Phantom Ship.” PoetryVerse, www.poetryverse.com/henry-wadsworth-longfellow-poems/phantom-ship. Accessed 27 Jan. 2026.
Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana. Silas Andrus and Son,1853j. Google Books, https://book.google.com/books?id=0_8UAAAYAAJ.