More pieces of Wiscasset's legendary schooners, Hesper and Luther Little, have turned up, including a length of weathered bow section with the name HESPER carved into it. What happens next will be up to Wiscasset selectmen.

Chairman Ben Rines Jr. said the schooner relics are on the agenda for their next meeting 6 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 17 at the town office. “There will be a general discussion to see if there’s any interest in displaying any of these items,” Rines said Tuesday morning, Nov. 10.

Three members of the town crew, Bill Thayer, Matt Huber and Steve Christiansen, discovered the almost forgotten relics last week. The section containing the name, thought to have been lost, was discovered face down amid other scattered remains of the old ships. These and other pieces of the Hesper and Luther Little were saved when they were razed in 1998.

“I had a vague idea, the piece containing the name had been put aside but nobody seemed to recall just where,” Christiansen said. “It was actually Bill who remembered.”

Thayer led Christiansen to where he remembered leaving the bow section more than 17 years ago. With Huber’s help, they uncovered it, and another piece no one seemed to remember much about.

“They were out in the open air but undercover and somewhat protected from the elements,” added Christiansen.

The two pieces were lifted from the pile and placed on a flatbed trailer until selectmen decide what to do with them. The section with Hesper carved into it is about 14 feet long and charred along the top, showing where the ship had caught fire one steamy Fourth of July night. A paper tacked to it identifies it as having come from the schooner’s “portside bow.”

The other piece, of about the same length, also came from the “prow,” or front section of the ship. It was beneath the bowsprit and likely saved because of the scroll work carved into it. It may also have come off the Hesper.

Selectman Judy Flanagan said she was aware there were still pieces of the old ships at the old landfill. She hopes maybe some of them could be preserved and perhaps put on display.

“Not everyone will get excited by this,” she told the Wiscasset Newspaper. “It’s up to the rest of us that do care about our town’s past to see that these pieces of the old ships are saved.”

After the Luther Little’s bow section collapsed into the mudflat in 1998, the powers that be decided it was time for the ships to go. The Hesper, too, had also lost any resemblance of a ship, its blackened hull having caved in on itself a year or so before.

During their demolition, a good deal of the ships’ parts, including their iron fittings and masts, were salvaged. They were saved by the town and inventoried. At least a partial list of these pieces appeared on the front page of the Wiscasset Newspaper. According to the list, these included: stern pieces, the billet head, mizzen topmast, fore boom, foremast topmast end piece, spanker masthead iron, mizzen mast, two mizzen peak halyard bands, the main mast, fore topmast, fore mast, fore deck capstan, main topmast, staysail boom tripod, and several of the iron bollards from the Luther Little’s foredeck.

Also saved were sections of the starboard railing, and the starboard forward section of the taffrail, including fashion iron. Other items not listed but found at the landfill include a length of rusted chain and two davit rails used to lower and hoist the lifeboat. Scattered among the piles are a few of the iron turnbuckles and top fittings. Although both shipswere sailing vessels, the Hesper was also equipped with a coal-fired “donkey boiler” used to generate steam power. The rusted boiler, surrounded by brush, is sitting behind a storage building.

Over the years there’s been talk of restoring some of these pieces for display but nothing has happened yet. The odds and ends from the old ships continue to lie where they were placed 17 years ago in three separate piles, one now overgrown with brush and ground cover. When the ships were first demolished, several pieces were given to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.

In response to an email, Nathan R. Lipfert, senior curator of Maine Maritime Museum, stated in 2005, the town of Wiscasset gave MMM five major pieces from the Luther Little, “the top of a lower mast, the bottom of a topmast, the butt of a mast, a piece of rider keelson with a mast step, and the steel cap from the foremast.” Lipfert added these items were among ship pieces the town had saved as having historical significance. 

“We selected them from storage buildings at the landfill. In 1999, a private individual gave us the steering gear for the vessel, which he had had for more than 20 years,” he continued. “We have also received many photographs of the two vessels over the years, most showing them rotting away at Wiscasset, and a few odd bits of tourist-type memorabilia.”

For decades, the Hesper and Luther Little, nicknamed “the last of the four-masted schooners,” sat grounded on the Wiscasset waterfront. Although many people fondly remember the old ships, they’re practically unknown to a younger generation born after 1998 when the ships were broken up and hauled away.

Rines admitted 17 years is a long time. “I have many memories of the old ships but there’s plenty of people living here now that never laid eyes on them, or have only seen pictures,” he said.