From "History of Essex County, Massachusetts," Vol. I, page292
"Captain Turner received his commission as 'Captaine of the military company at Saugus' in [04] March 1633 from the General Court."

The following epitaph honors Captain Nathaniel Turner:
"Deep in Atlantic caves his body sleeps,
Where the dark sea its ceaseless motion keeps,
While phantom ships are wrecked along the shore,
To warn his friends that he will come no more!
But He who governs all with impulse free,
Can bring from Bashan, and the deepest sea,
And when he calls, our Turner must return,
Though now his ashes fill no sacred urn."

From "History of Lynn, Essex Co., MA.", by Alonzo Lewis and James R. Newhall, pp. 128-130
"Nathaniel Turner [Capt.], lived on Nanant Street and owned the whole of Sagamore Hill. He applied to be admitted a freeman, 19 October 1630, but did not take the oath until 03 July 1632. He was representative in the first seven sessions of the General Court, and a member of the first County Court at Salem in 1636. In 1633, he was appointed Captain of the Militia, and in 1636 and 1637 he had command of several expeditions against the Pequot Indians. In 1637 his house was burnt. In 1638, he became a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Co. [he was 12th on the roll] and the same year sold his land on Sagamore Hill to Mr. Edward Holyoke, and removed, with others, to Quilipeake, where a new settlement was begun, called New Haven. His name is preserved in Turner's Falls. In 1639 he was one of the seven members of the first church at New Haven. In 1640 he purchased for the town of Ponus, the Indian Sagamore, the tract of land which is now the town of Stamford, for which he paid in 'coats, shoes, hatchets, etc.' His active and useful life was soon after terminated in a melancholy manner. In January, 1647, he sailed for England, with Captain Lamberton, in a vessel which was never heard from again. Governor Winthrop informs us that in June, 1648, the apparition of a ship was seen under full sail, moving up the harbor of New Haven, a little before sunset, in a pleasant afternoon, and that as it approached the shore, it slowly vanished. This was thought to have a reference to the fate of Capt. Lamberton's ship."

From "Early New Haven," by Sarah Day Woodward, page 27:
The ship "was laden with pease and some wheat, all in bulk, with about two hundred West Indies hides and stores of beaver and plates, worth in all about five thousand pounds. Seventy persons embarked in her, ten of whom were members of the Church. Mr. Thomas Gregson, who was going to England to procure a charter for the colony, Captain Nathaniel Turner, and Mrs. Goodyear, wife of the Deputy Governor, 'a right, godly woman' were among them. In January 1646, the harbor being frozen over, a passage was cut through the ice with saws for three miles, out to the open waters of the harbor. Mr. Davenport and a great company of people went out upon the ice to give the last farewell to their friends. Mr. Davenport made a prayer, in which he said, with marked emphasis 'Lord, if it be thy pleasure to bury these our friends in the bottom of the sea, they are thine, save them." Then the vessel spread it's sails, and began its voyage to England. It was never heard from. Soon after she started a great tempest arose and it was thought she foundered in the gale."