Schooner Luther Little in 1978

Until 1998 there were two schooners moldering away next to the bridge in Wiscasset Maine. In 1932 Frank Winter brought them up the Sheepscot River after buying them at auction for $600 each, intending to use them to ship lumber to Boston and bring coal to Maine. The plans never materialized, and the 210-foot Hesper and the 204-foot Luther Little instead sat in the mud for decades, victimized by weather, vandals and fires. In time they became part of Wiscasset's identity; they are even depicted on the town's police uniforms and on the doors of police cars.
They also became an indelible part of the Maine coast. People driving by would spot the vessels and romanticize about shipwrecks --most of them not knowing that the ships actually were abandoned and left to rot in the public eye.
By the early 1990s the vessels were in disrepair, and in 1998 the town spent $70,000 to move them to an old landfill.

From an article in the LA Times