Outperformed commercially by Boston and by New York, and worried about serious loss of businesses and jobs, New Haven’s business elite are coming up with a bold new plan.
If that sounds contemporary and familiar, the story of little New Haven somehow lost between the bigger harbor towns north and south of us, was already playing out 367 years ago.
That’s why back in 1648 merchants pooled all the best that New England could offer Europe — exotic furs and timbers and the like — and loaded it on a “Great Shippe” to send to Europe to showcase our stuff.
Problem was the ship, laden with all the cargo, weighed in at 100 tons, likely too much for the voyage. It was also too quickly and poorly built, and it set out to sea from the harbor in the dead of winter … and, alas, for all these reasons and for mysterious others known not even to the Puritan ministers of our town but only to God … well, the shippe was never heard from again.
It sailed, however, very sturdily into memory and myth as a ghost ship or a phantom ship that was seen in the clouds on misty days and coming in toward home port, at least by those who were the relatives of the 70 souls lost in what was apparently a disaster that took the lives of all aboard, and along with all we had to offer, sent them down to the bottom of the sea.
To catch more of the story and to hear a reading of “The Phantom Shippe,” an 1850 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, click on the audio below for the latest episode of This Day in New Haven Hisotry or find it in iTunes or any podcast under “WNHH Community Radio.”
This whole week, while we broadcast from the Local History Room of the New Haven Free Public Library, we’re exploring the notion that another good way to time-travel is to explore poetry of long-ego eras. And specifically poetry written in and/or about New Haven.
Why? Because a wag or a poet (someone I can’t trace and if you, dear reader, knows the source, please let us know) said that one reason poetry is so important is that it contains all the headlines — that is, the emotional and universal and personal truths — that rarely if ever make into the news.
We’ve got that news on This Day In New Haven History; have a listen.
