The Sea Chest
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image from Author's
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The Sea Chest: Author's Note
Although The Sea Chest is a fictional story, and Sanctuary Island a fictional island, there is a legend about a severe storm in the Atlantic in the mid-1870’s that wrecked a vessel off the coast of Southport Island, Maine. According to the story, The Hendricks Head lightkeeper was unable to do anything for the vessel due to the ferocity of the storm. Afterwards, he found a bundle of feather mattresses washed ashore. Inside was a sea chest holding a baby girl and a note from her parents, the captain and his wife, committing the child into God’s hands. The story says that the keeper and his wife had recently lost their own child and that they adopted the baby, named her Seaborne, and raised her as their only child. However, no mention of the child exists in the lighthouse log of the time.
Local historians
believe the
legend arose from a 1900 C.C. Munn novel entitled Uncle Terry.
The story was perpetuated in Edward Rowe Snow’s Famous Lighthouses
of
New England.
The story of
the baby in the sea chest is interesting from an historical
perspective, as many people cling to the truth of the story, as first
published by historian and author Edward Rowe Snow in his book, Famous Lighthouses of New England.
And yet the sleuthing work of historian Barbara Rumsey of the Boothbay
Region Historical Society reveals a different story. You can read
Snow's original account and Rumsey's articles online.
Boothbay Region Historical Society
The Baby That Washed Ashore at Hendricks Head
Boothbay Region Historical Society
The Baby That Washed Ashore at Hendricks Head