Phantom NY Pilot Boat

Type

Schooner

Period

19th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: Phantom was a wooden pilot schooner designed by noted naval architect Dennison J. Lawlor and built at his East Boston yard in 1867. She was regarded as an exemplary vessel of the fast Boston/New York pilot-schooner type that Lawlor made his specialty. Specifications: Wikipedia's ship infobox gives her as an oak-built schooner of 51 tons (TM), 75 ft length, 21 ft beam, and 8 ft 3 in depth, fastened with iron and copper and sheathed in yellow metal. She carried the standard gaff-schooner rig of a New York/Sandy Hook pilot boat, with her pilot number "11" painted large on the mainsail for identification at sea. Service History: Purchased in Boston in 1867 by the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Association of Pilots, she was later sold to the Sandy Hook pilots and ran out of the port of New York as Pilot Boat No. 11. On March 14, 1886, she was first on the scene when the British liner SS Oregon began sinking off Long Island, and her crew oversaw the rescue of the roughly 852 people aboard. Phantom was lost with all hands — the boatkeeper, cook, and four seamen — when she went ashore at Sandy Hook, New Jersey during the Great Blizzard of 1888, one of several Sandy Hook pilot boats destroyed in that storm. Notable Facts: Her loss, along with that of the pilot boat Enchantress in the same blizzard, was part of the heavy toll on the competitive sail-pilot fleet that hastened the shift to steam-powered pilot vessels in the 1890s. The dramatic SS Oregon rescue was later depicted in a well-known marine painting by Antonio Jacobsen. Phantom is a popular subject for ship modelers today via the Model Shipways wooden kit (MS2027), offered in both 1:96 and 1:48 scales with a solid carved hull and full plans.