Students at Wiscasset Middle High School may get the opportunity to restore pieces of the Hesper and Luther Little but before the project begins selectmen want to hear more from teacher Rob Cronk.

Cronk, head of the technology education program, has offered to supervise students who would undertake the effort as a community project.

Students would sort through and inventory the odds and ends left from the old schooners that are scattered in three different piles at the old landfill. They include a set of iron bollards, numerous turnbuckles, a length of chain, spars, several lengths of the masts and a sizable piece of bow section with HESPER carved into it. One of the ship’s iron donkey boilers is sitting there at the landfill as well.

“I think it would be fun, challenging and we could make it very educational,” Cronk wrote in a recent letter to Selectman Judy Flanagan. Flanagan shared the letter with the board Tuesday night.

According to Cronk the possibilities are endless for what students might learn and accomplish. He shared a number of his own ideas among them making the project part of next year’s WMHS technology curriculum.

Last year WHMS tech ed. students refurbished Wiscasset’s memorial town cannon. The effort earned them praise and a Spirit of America award.

Selectmen plan to invite Cronk to a future meeting to share more of his ideas. 

The schooners’ remains were saved after the derelict ships were demolished nearly 18 years ago. The ships, fondly recalled as, “the last of the four-masted schooners” sat grounded on the Wiscasset waterfront for decades.