A barren offshore rock six miles from York Beach where a 1710 shipwreck drove survivors to cannibalism; the 133-foot granite tower has stood since 1855
Boon Island (6 miles offshore from York Beach), York, ME 03909
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Boat tour ticket required; prices vary by operator and season. The island itself is not publicly landable.
Access
Limited Access
Ocean boat tour; the island is a bare rock outcropping not open for landing by general visitors
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1855 · 1710 Nottingham Galley Shipwreck and Cannibalism Survival Event · Lighthouse History · National Register of Historic Places · Maritime History of New England
Boon Island sits about six miles southeast of York Beach, Maine, at the southern end of the Gulf of Maine. The island is roughly an acre of bare granite ledge, barely above the waterline at high tide, with no trees, soil, or fresh water. Its isolation and position in a major shipping lane made it both dangerous and — once the 19th century lighthouse was established — essential to coastal navigation.
The event that defined the island's history occurred in December 1710. The brigantine Nottingham Galley, commanded by Captain John Deane and carrying a cargo of cheese, wine, and cordage from England, struck the island's rocks in the early hours of December 11 in worsening weather. The ship broke apart quickly. Fourteen men made it onto the island alive.
The survivors had no shelter, no fire-making materials, no food, and minimal clothing in December on the open Atlantic. Over 24 days they exhausted what could be salvaged from the wreck. When the ship's carpenter died, the survivors made the decision to consume the body. Captain Deane wrote two competing accounts of the wreck — one acknowledging the cannibalism in detail, one softening it — and both circulated in England and the colonies within a year of the rescue. The carpenter's name was not preserved in any surviving primary record.
Subsequent wrecks on the same rocks prompted Maine to establish a light station. Several earlier wooden structures were destroyed by storms. The current 133-foot granite tower was completed in 1855 and has been in continuous service since. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The U.S. Coast Guard automated the light in 1978; the island is not open to public landing.
Sources
The dominant ghost tradition associated with Boon Island involves a lighthouse keeper who died during a severe storm in the mid-19th century. His wife, alone on the island with his body, continued to tend the light through several nights until a boat from the mainland could reach her. When rescuers arrived they found her alive but in a condition witnesses described as near-insane from the isolation, the cold, and the proximity of her husband's body. She did not speak coherently for some time after her removal from the island.
The keeper's wife is the most frequently cited figure in Boon Island ghost accounts. New England lighthouse historians documented the story in the late 19th century. Boat tour operators have incorporated it into their narration for decades. The New England Lighthouse website's treatment of Boon Island draws directly on this tradition and notes that the wife's reported behavior on rescue — wandering the rocks, refusing to leave the light — has generated reports of a female figure seen on the island by passing mariners who did not know the story.
The 1710 cannibalism wreck adds a distinct layer. Captain Deane's published account of the event circulated widely in England and the colonies within months of the rescue, making it one of the first maritime disaster narratives in American print culture. The island's reputation as a place of extremity — men pushed past ordinary limits by survival necessity — predates the lighthouse ghost tradition by more than a century.
Kenneth Roberts used the Nottingham Galley wreck as the basis for his 1956 novel Boon Island, which renewed public interest in the event and is the primary reason the 1710 wreck remains well-known today. Boat tour narration draws on both the Roberts novel and the primary historical record.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
New England Eco Adventures runs narrated speedboat tours from York Harbor to Boon Island and back, covering the 1710 Nottingham Galley cannibalism wreck, the history of the lighthouse keepers, and the ghost traditions associated with the island. Circumnavigates the island; does not land visitors on the rock.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Mammoth Cave, KY
Mammoth Cave is the world's longest known cave system with over 426 surveyed miles of passages. The cave was developed as a tourist site beginning in the 1810s and is internationally significant for the work of enslaved African American guide Stephen Bishop, who mapped much of the system in the 1840s and 1850s. The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve.
York, ME
Cape Neddick Light, locally known as the Nubble, sits on a small tidal island at Cape Neddick Point and was completed in 1879. Its construction was prompted in part by a series of shipwrecks on the headland's rocks, most significantly the loss of the brig Isadore on Thanksgiving night 1842, which killed all 14 crew members when a nor'easter drove the ship onto the ledges below Bald Head Cliffs. The lighthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remains an active aid to navigation.
Manitou Springs, CO
Brothers George and John Pickett discovered the cave entrance in Williams Canyon in 1880 during a hike with Rev. Roselle T. Cross. Ohio stonecutter George Washington Snider excavated the passages that year, uncovered the large chamber he named Canopy Hall, and began offering guided tours in February 1881 — making Cave of the Winds one of the oldest continuously operating show caves in the United States.