The Phantom was a 19th-century Sandy Hook pilot boat built in 1867 from the designs by Dennison J. Lawlor.

On arrival in New Hampshire, the pilots provided entertainment on board with prominent businessmen.

[1][3] The sister pilot-boats, Pet and Phantom, were built on a model by the noted Boston builder and designer of pilot-boats, fishermen and yachts, Dennison J. Lawlor, at the Lawlor shipyard of East Boston, Massachusetts for the New York pilots.

[4][5] The Phantom was later sold to the Sandy Hook pilots and operated out of the port of New York for several years.

[6] On April 28, 1874, the pilot-boat Phantom sent Captain Samuel C. Martin on board the barque Die Helmath from Germany.

[7] On March 14, 1886, the SS Oregon of the Cunard Line was hit by a coal schooner off Fire Island with 845 people on board.

11 rescued 400 passengers and crew by placing some of them in the deck room on the small pilot-boat and transporting them safely to the North German Lloyd liner Fulda.

[8] The Phantom also towed into Sandy Hook eight life boats belonging to the Oregon.

[9][10][11] The State Department received from the British Government four gold and six silver medals awarded to the pilot and seamen of the Phantom for service rendered to the Oregon.

In 1846, Warren Simpson under Captain J. K. Lunt entered the pilot service as an apprentice on the Phantom.

[21] On January 18, 1857, the Phantom, during a snowstorm, was dragged ashore on the south side of Georges Island, Massachusetts, but was able to safely return to the Boston Harbor.

[18] On February 7, 1857, James Bradley was the boatkeeper of the pilot-boat Phantom in East Boston.

[22] Artist Alfred Waud did a marine pencil drawing of the Boston Pilot Boat Fleet in 1859, which appeared in the Ballou's Pictorial of 1859.

[18]: p33  The story in the Ballou's Pictorial said "These boats are all well-built, of exquisite model and crack sailors, and manned by as fine a set of men as ever trod a deck or handled a sheet.

They ride the waves like sea-ducks, and with their hardy crews are constantly exposed to the roughest weather.