Turn the lights down low, draw the shades and bolt the doors. There's a thick fog on the Hudson tonight and I'm in the mood for a good story.

    "The old sloop Martin Wynkoop had many owners and captains, and the name of always being unlucky. She was believed by all boatmen to be bewitched. Every one who owned her had bad luck while she was in their possession, and every Captain who sailed her was always doing damage.
    It is said that at the time she was launched a young man was killed and the vessel was cursed by his mother.
    Captain Edwin Young once sailed her. He was a first-class boatman, a man of good common sense who did not believe in ghosts, witches or anything supernatural; a man of great courage. Captain Young told the writer that this old hulk defied all natural laws, that he had known her to drift and drag her anchor and foul another vessel against both wind and tide. He said he never had a day's luck while sailing her, and gave up his command in disgust.
    The different crews of this old sloop would tell her that she was at anchor in the river; they would go ashore at night to enjoy themselves, and on returning would find her lighted from stem to stern, and merry music and witches dancing to ghost time, and that all would vanish in darkness as soon as their boat touched the vessel's side."

    This story comes from the book, History of Ulster County edited by Alphonso T. Clearwater and published by W. J. Van Deusen, Kingston, NY in 1907.

    There is only one Martin Wynkoop listed in Richard Wynkoop's 1904 edition of Wynkoop Genealogy in the United States of America, so the sloop is probably named after him. My guess is that this sloop and its story dates to the period just after 1821 or so. (Martin died in 1821.)

    286. Martin Wynkoop, (Petrus 109, Sheriff Johannes 15, Maj. Johannes 2, Cornelius 1,) was the son of Petrus Wynkoop and Mary Van Alstyne. Martin was born, (probably in Clermont, New York), on January 31, 1781 and baptized on March 4th of the same year. He died unmarried in Kingston, New York on June 28, 1821 at the age of forty. He is buried in the yard of the First Dutch Church in Kingston.
    He was the 2nd of six children. According to Nathaniel Bartlett Sylvester's History of Ulster County, "Martin Wynkoop" was a "stout sloop captain"¹, so that pretty much confirms that this sloop was named after him.

Chris

¹ Sylvester, Nathaniel Bartlett, History of Ulster County, New York, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Philadelphia, Everts & Peck, 1880, Part First, Page 174