Access: Always accessible.
Directions: From Coleman Hall, walk to College Street and turn left. Take College
Street until you reach Coffin Street. The site is on the far corner of College and Coffin.
GIS: 43° 54‘ 25.09“ N --- 69°
57‘ 40.58“ W
Just off campus once stood the home of Robert Peter Tristram Coffin. Tristram liked to write Maine ghost stories and in the book John Dawn he writes about the Dead Ship of Harpswell, or the Ghost Ship of Harpswell as it is commonly known. The ghost ship was a masted ship that attacked British ships in the War of 1812. Christened the Dash, it vanished with all hands on a stormy night in 1815. Months later fishermen would report hearing a ship bear down on them in the fog and then see a phantom ship glide by with Dash inscribed on her bow. As the legend grew, people said that the ship appeared whenever a family member of one of the sixty original crew members died.
The last reported sighting of the Dash was during World War II when she appeared on a radar screen. When an intercept ship was sent in to investigate they saw a masted ship called Dash vanish into the fog.