Tech ed. students at Wiscasset Middle High School will be offered the opportunity to restore pieces of the former schooners, Hesper and Luther Little.

Wiscasset selectmen decided to make the offer during a discussion of the old ships Tuesday night instructing Town Manager Marian Anderson to get in touch with the school. The decision followed a brief discussion of a legal opinion regarding ownership of the relics including a length of bow section a Westport Island man said he recovered 37 years ago.

Sharing an option she’d gotten from the law firm of Bernstein and Shur, Anderson said any claim for salvage rights needed to have been made within two years of when the item was recovered. She explained this was due to a statute of limitations. The piece in question was a length of the ship’s prow with the name HESPER carved into it. Jay Seigars claimed to have pulled it from the Sheepscot River the morning after the ship caught fire July 4, 1978. If the students take on the project and this piece is restored, selectmen promised to give Seigars credit for having recovered the item once it’s put on display. Seigars was 17 when he found the piece of ship’s wreckage floating south of the Westport bridge. Although he now resides on Westport Island, he is a Wiscasset native.

Selectmen’s Chairman Ben Rines Jr. said there were a number of other items from the old ships at the former landfill including some of the ships’ iron fittings. He suggested if a length of mast can be found that is suitable, the WMHS shop class might be able to fashion a replica of the Boston Cane. The cane could be then passed to the town’s oldest resident.

Selectmen declared Saturday, Dec. 19, as Ruth Kierstead Day. Kierstead, a retired Wiscasset teacher, will be celebrating her 100th birthday this month. Linda Winterberg accepted a framed proclamation signed by selectmen on Kierstead’s behalf.

At the request of the Shellfish Committee, selectmen closed the shores abutting Cushman Cove to shellfish harvesting for the first six months of the new year. The closure boundary prohibits clamming on both sides of the cove and runs from the northernmost point of land on Cushman Point in a northerly direction, to a point of land on the Wiscasset shore. The area affected is approximately eight acres of tidal flats. The closure is from Jan. 1 to June 1, 2016.

At the Jan. 5 meeting, the board will again take up the $2,000,000 financing options to pay off the cost of withdrawing from Regional School Unit 12. Selectmen are leaning towards a 10-year financing option with quarterly payments. The board hopes to have several banks bid on the financing.