"I have made a habit of standing on as many points along the New England coastline as possible and one can simply inhabit, in a moment, the moody, treacherous, rocky Gothic settings that gave rise to Lovecraftian imagery and weird, witchy, haunted tales. The atmosphere of a Gothic novel creeps over you; encroaching mist along the outcroppings. Nowhere felt as immersive to me as the coast I've described in southern Maine."
"The Dash, at any moment, may try in vain to dock again to change her fate. She might be an omen of inclement weather or she may appear to collect the spirit of a relative of a former crew member. A harbinger of death, the ship has repeatedly appeared to startle the living and carry the souls of the dead like Charon's boat across the river Styx in Greek myth."
"A wooden-hulled privateering vessel, a schooner built in the Harpswell-Freeport region in 1813, amid the ongoing War of 1812, to scout for (and plunder with full license of the United States) enemy British ships, the Dash was successful on what had been reportedly 15 notable, valiant runs. But on her 16th, she disappeared. All her Freeport-based crew were lost."
The southern Maine coast around Casco Bay and Harpswell-Freeport produces a moody, mist-laden Gothic atmosphere. A schooner called the Dash has appeared as a spectral vessel along these rocky shores for over two centuries. The Dash sometimes attempts to dock, appears as an omen of bad weather, or manifests to collect the spirit of a relative of a former crew member. The ship is described as a harbinger of death that carries souls like Charon's boat. The Dash was a wooden-hulled privateer built in 1813, successful on fifteen runs but vanished on its sixteenth, with all Freeport-based crew lost. John Greenleaf Whittier's poem 'The Dead Ship of Harpswell' published in June 1866 further immortalized the tragedy.
Read at Big Think
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