Dutchess County Historical Society Yearbook Vol 059 1974

THE SEED IS PLANTED IN AMERICAN SOIL

By Robert Pierce It is regrettable that maritime records fail to list the names of the ten merchant ships which with their destitute Palatines in the early months of 1710 sailed from the southern coast of England for the New World. Seven only are mentioned: The Berkley Castle, the Globe, the Leon, the Midfort, the Lyon, the Palatine, and the Herbert --- the last called a frigate. The Berkley Castle abandoned the venture and returned forthwith to Plymouth, possibly alarmed by the severity of a malefic contagion on shipboard, or apprehensive of perils attendant with a midwinter crossing of the awesome Atlantic, whose ship lanes were at best poorly charted and whose vagaries of wave and weather were the dread of the most able and experienced mariners.

On June 13, 1710 under a veil of disease, death, and despair the first ship of the battered flotilla, the Lyon, with Governor Robert Hunter aboard, arrived at Nutten Island (now Governor's Island). He was at once taken to New York harbor, leaving his fellow-passengers on the island for purposes of quarantine. On June 16 Hunter wrote Secretary Popple of the London Lords of Trade: "I arrived here (New York) two days ago. We still want three of the Palatinb ships and those arrived are in a deplorable sickly condition." Later he wrote: "All of the Palatine ships separated by the weather are arrived safe except the Herbert frigate, where our tents and arms are. She was cast away on the east end of Long Island on the 7th of July. We still want the Berkley Castle which we left at Plymouth, the poor people have been mighty sick....We have lost 470 of our number."

Meanwhile on Nutten Island a tent city had been raised to house the German community, still suffering acutely from the ravages of the voyage. People died in large numbers. A local coffin maker reported that "business was never better", and for the pursuit of his occupation he petitioned the city for 59 pounds, 6 shillings sterling in payment for the burial of 250 Palatines, deceased since the recent landing.

As for the missing "Herbert", it is not improbable that there can be found today native families of eastern Long Island whose pedigrees are traceable to Palatines who escaped alive from the wrecked frigate. Says the Reverend Sanford Cobbin his Story of the Palatines: "To this day are shown on the west shore of Block Island some almost obliterated graves, said to be the lost seamen of the Ship." And in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History is to be found the following: "A light is at times seen from the island upon the surface of the ocean, which in its form has suggested to the imagination a resemblance to a burning ship under full sail, and it is called the Palatine Light and Palatine Ship."

London records, it will be remembered, showed the Zacharias Flegler family as five in number at the time of its departure for New York. The Subsistence List, however, at the American port after the disembarkation of the Palatines in July of 1710 shows only Flegler himself and one child ten years of age. This child was undoubtedly the son, Philip Solomon Flegler, born in Germany in 1701. ,It is to be reckoned, therefore, that when at sea or shortly after landing 30