On October 25, a boiler malfunctioned, and the ship caught fire near Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Rockland. A storm hit almost immediately, and the Royal Tar sheltered for a few days in harbors in far northern Maine. To make room for the animals, their cages and the carts that would be used to transport them on land, two of the steamship's four lifeboats were removed prior to sailing.

93 persons, passengers and crew were onboard-as well as a traveling menagerie, a zoo of sorts, including a lion, an elephant, two camels, monkeys, exotic birds and horses. John, New Brunswick, Canada, on October 21, 1836, bound for Eastport and then Portland, Maine.

One of the most memorable of Maine's many shipwrecks is the disaster that struck the steamship Royal Tar in October 1836. The sites of some wrecks have been studied others are the subject of conjecture, such as the 1635 galleon called the Angel Gabriel, rumored to lie somewhere in the Pemaquid Bay near Bristol. Some wrecks are visible, generally at low tide others have been lost forever. Some involved passenger ships like the Lyric others were military or commercial vessels. The wreck of the Lyric and Fidelia Hathaway's swim to shore in The Last True Poets of the Sea are fictional, but there are indeed nearly one thousand shipwrecks off Maine's rocky coastline, all with stories of their own.

4.This article relates to The Last True Poets of the Sea.

Whether or not they find the Lyric, the journey Violet takes-and the bridges she builds along the way-may be the start of something like survival. She finds a fellow wreck hunter in Liv Stone, an amateur local historian whose sparkling intelligence and guarded gray eyes make Violet ache in an exhilarating new way. Desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric, lain hidden in a watery grave for over a century. Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment, Violet is haunted by her family’s missing piece – the lost shipwreck she and Sam dreamed of discovering when they were children. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life. Tall, funny, musical Violet can’t stop partying with the wrong people. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine, the town Violet and Sam returned to every summer.īut wrecks seem to run in the family.

When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great-grandmother didn’t drown like the rest of the passengers. At least that’s what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. The Larkin family isn’t just lucky-they persevere.

The last true poets of the sea