Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-12-21
aDnAD SHIPS" ON MAINE COAST.
Old 6eamen Who Claim That They
 Have Seen the Phantom Vessels.

OlO 60amen Wn0 Claim That They Have Seen the Phantom Vessels. There are still living in Harpswell, Me, aged men who believe in the
 "dead ship''a picturesque tradition familiar to them from childhood and
 readily accepted as truth by these old
 men of the sea, who share the super stitions of all sailors and whose fam
 cies lean to the romantic and pie turesQue.
 Harpswell Ia not the only locality
 that numbers a phantom ship among
 her traditional and misty belongings,
 but her phantom has been immortal
 ized in the verse of Longfellow and Is thus distinguished from the com
 mon sort of ghost ships that are told of ship chandleries all along shore
 from Passport to Kittery. Longfel-
 low had the story of the Harpswell
 apparition from old sailors of Harps- well Neck, who were full of supersti- tiOus lore and believe in their TO-
 mances of the sea as much as they
 did in the stories of John Paul Jones
 or the fight oil Monhegan between the Enterprise and the Boxer.
 The Harpswell people declared that the dead ship came often to their shores, although sne never reached the harbor. She came always at dusk and generally in stormy weather, ap- bearing in the ofing and coming straight on, with all sail set, only to fade away like mist when close in.
 Not only the Harpswell folk, but the fishermen of the islands of Casco
 bay, believed in the phantom, and in
 the i'll omen of her coming-that her appearance off snore was sure I sign that within a month crape
 would hang upon the door of one of those who had seen her. Longfel- low. who had spent much time in the
 company of these sailor-fishermen, heard and was familiar with all their tales, and selecting the most pie tuesque of these he wove them into the poem that is 50 familiar to read
 CTS of his works. The Harpswell tars told the poet all the details of the ghost ships ap- pearance-how she seemed always to
 come in fog or mist, although the
 weather at the time might be per-
 fectly clear. No crew was to be seen
 upon her decks, no hand at her helm
 and she came on with neither flap of sail nor creak of block-like
 veritable spirit ship. She was much like the celebrated Flying Dutchman
 or the phantom vessel of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner"
 Y,> Lx
 formed his friendship at Harpswell there were still living upon the Neck old men who knew the name that was borne by the phantom ship when she was reality of oak and iron and sailed the seas with a sturdy
 Yankee crew. The fishermen afiirm- ed that they had been personally ac- Quainted with her captain and with members of her crew. all of whom were lost when the ship went down on the reefs oil the Neck and thus became phantom; and the poet tells us that in his day there sat in the shipyards of Freeport aged men who had hewed the heavy oaken timbers that made her frame. From all this the belief of early Harpswell men in the phantom ship seems nat ural enough. and their belief has been handed down to the present generation. although no one claims to have seen the phantom in recent years: Her last appearance, 1t is said. was about the year 1878, at which time she was seen by four or five persos, some of whom were posi- tive as to the apparation looming up on Harpswell Neck in the November dusk.