Tales & Legends

Dramatic sea wrecks, mysterious discoveries, feats of bravery, madness, and murder.

Daring Save

In January 1885, during one of the coldest, most violent snowstorms, the schooner Australia ran aground near the Cape Elizabeth Light sand the schooner’s captain was swept away by ferocious waves.

Frozen in Ice

On the night of December 22, 1850, when a small schooner was crushed against the ledges near Owl’s Head Light with one mate, his bride-to-be, and a deckhand aboard.

A Keeper’s Fraud

One lighthouse keeper on Whitehead Island, accused of fraud, sold surplus whale oil obtained by falsifying government records.

Ghostly Tune

Turtle-shaped Seguin Island, the site of Maine’s first offshore station, is one of the foggiest places in the US, socked in for as much as one-third of every year.

A Fated Crash

With his debts mounting, Captain Thomas O’Neil of the Annie C. Maguire was in legal trouble in December 1886. Portland’s sheriff had asked the keeper of the Portland Head Light.

The Verge of Insanity

It might seem that the lonely lighthouse life would encourage communication between those who manned it together. But even two people were too many for one keeper who lived at the Halfway Rock Light in the 1880s.

Wood Island’s Haunted Lighthouse

In June 1896, a beach bum named Howard Hobbs shot Biddeford Pool’s Sheriff, Fred Milliken, and hurried off to the light station on Wood Island.