Despite efforts to save the ships as tourist attractions, both were demolished in 1998 having been finally reduced to piles of debris by the elements.

Winter was an entrepreneur who had also bought the Wiscasset and Quebec Railroad in order to operate a Boston-to-Wiscasset coal and lumber business.

[7] This idea never came to pass though as Winter's business experienced financial setbacks that led to the railway being ripped up in 1934 in order to pay debts owed.

[10] The Hesper was built as a four-masted schooner in 1918 by Crowninshield Shipbuilding, which was located in Fall River, Massachusetts.

[1][12] Hesper's early career involved crossing the Atlantic Ocean frequently as she brought coal to Lisbon, and case oil to France.

This event occurred sometime in January 1928 when she broke free of her moorings during a Nor'easter causing her beach nearby on shore.

[3][7] Her first major fire occurred when her aft deckhouse was intentionally burned to celebrate the end of World War II.

[5][17] During this time a salvager was able to make off with a wooden plank of the ship that said "Hesper" on it possibly saving it from destruction.

[5][17] Her burnt out hulk eventually disintegrated into a pile of debris by 1994 as her bow and sides collapsed into the mud.

[16] The Luther Little was built as a four-masted schooner in December 1917 by the Read Brothers Company, which was located in Somerset, Massachusetts.

[20] Luther Little had a brief bit of excitement in her career, when in June 1918 her crew managed to rescue two balloonists who had crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Delaware.

[3] Both ships were forgotten about until 1965 when the Wiscasset Industrial Development Committee looked into possibly restoring the Luther Little as a tourist attraction.

[4] The next effort to save the Luther Little came in 1978 when a group known as Friends of the Wiscasset Schooners hoped to get enough private donations to stabilize the old ships.

At some point in time braces were added to Luther Little's three remaining masts in order to delay her demise.

[16] Luther Little's lower masts and a single topmast were saved by the town of Wiscasset as the debris was removed in 1998.

Decades of time in the mud had turned some of the oak wood used for the schooners into a shiny black 'cement" like material.

[16][21] Remains of the ships in the form of deteriorated iron such as the bollards are still at the local landfill according to a report done in July 2015.