All hands turn out. There's a ship ashore in the door yard.

On Christmas Eve in 1886 the Annie C. McGuire ran aground on the rocky shoreline of Cape Elizabeth

Maine just below the iconic Portland headline

If you've visited the famous beacon,

you've likely seen for yourself

this simple but ever-present tribute

on those very rocks that's been painted and repainted for over a century.

The original letters inscribed there by the son of the Lighthouse Keeper whose family helped rescue the ship's passengers and crew.

The waters of Casco Bay and Main's coast are drenched with tales of shipwrecks and tragedy and lives lost at sea.

But among all the true stories and the legends that endure, the story of the Annie C. McGuire is among the most intriguing.

Was the Christmas Eve wreck at Portland Headlight an accident? Or was it intentional could it have been a crime? I'm

Kiley Lowe and this is the story of the Annie Seamagwire shipwreck on Dark Down East. Lighthouses and their keepers have protected the coastline of Maine for over 200 years,

standing proud on our shores and waving mariners into port.

They've withstood brutal storms, unceasing saltwater spray, millions of tourists, and then the fires, catastrophes and tragedies.

Through it all, 57 lighthouses remain active in vacation land, some of them private, a handful are inactive but still

standing, and three were destroyed and lost with time.

Digging through the history of Main's light stations

brought up the name of one man again and again. Jeremy Dantramant is a historian, an author, a speaker, and the leading expert on New England's historic

lighthouses.

I've invited him to Dark Down East to help me tell this story.

I grew up near Boston on the coast on the north shore of Boston and I was fascinated by the ocean as a kid for some reason I was just drawn to it like a lot of people

But as I was growing up in the Boston area there was a very popular historian by the name of Edward Rowe Snow, who was always on Boston radio and TV.

...