Palatine Light

The legend is derived from the historical shipwreck of the Princess Augusta at Block Island in 1738. The ship is known from some contemporaneous accounts and from depositions taken from the surviving crew after the wreck, which were discovered in 1925 and reprinted in 1939. The 220-ton British ship Augusta sailed from Rotterdam in August 1738 under Captain George Long and a crew of fourteen, transporting 240 immigrants to English colonies in America. The passengers were German Palatines, natives of the Palatinate region, and as such the ship was described as the "Palatine ship" in contemporaneous documents, which accounts for the later confusion over its name. The ship was heading for Philadelphia; from there, the passengers may have intended to reach a German-owned settlement on the James River in Virginia which attracted some 3,000 of their countrymen. The depositions paint an unsympathetic view of Brook, who rowed to shore with the entire crew while leaving the passengers aboard. The Block Islanders evidently did what they could to help, convincing Brook to let the passengers off the ship the next day and later retrieving their possessions when he left them aboard. They also buried about 20 who died after the wreck; the Block Island Historical Society placed a marker at the site of the "Palatine Graves" in 1947. The authorities took depositions from the crew, but what happened afterward is unclear. It appears that the crew faced no charges for their actions, and they and most surviving passengers made it to the mainland, after which little is known of them. Two survivors remained on Block Island and settled there. Most accounts indicate that the ship was determined unsalvageable and was pushed out to sea to sink. It may have been set on fire to scuttle it. In some accounts, a woman was driven mad by her suffering, sometimes named as Mary Van Der Line; she was forgotten, according to these accounts, and went down with the ship. ==Folklore accounts==

There is a rich oral tradition regarding the event, with many sightings being reported during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The legend was immortalized by poet John Greenleaf Whittier in "The Palatine", which faithfully adapts the traditional story in verse. Whittier heard the tale in 1865 from Newport resident Joseph P. Hazard, whose family were key informants for collectors of 19th-century New England folklore. It was printed in the Atlantic Monthly in 1867, appeared in his collection The Tent on the Beach later that year, and became one of his best known works. The popularity of the "Palatine" name is largely due to Whittier's poem. Both legends agreed that a female passenger had refused to leave the ship as it sank, and those who claim to witness its reappearances say that her screams are heard from the ship. However, Charlotte Taylor of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission has noted that no physical evidence has ever been found to substantiate that claim, nor the legend itself. ==Popular culture==

In the 2020 horror film The Block Island Sound, a character speculates that the Palatine shipwreck was caused by the crew being infected by a parasite that drew it in to a sea monster, in the manner of toxoplasmosis and cats. ==Notes==