Ronald Haskell was a 36-year-old White/Caucasian man from the Little Deer Isle area of Hancock County, Maine, a coastal community shaped by working waterfronts, boats, weather, and the risks of earning a living from the sea. Public case information lists him as missing from Little Deer Isle on November 11, 1993, and identifies his NamUs case as MP56352.
He was described as having brown hair and a build listed at approximately 5 feet 9 inches to 6 feet 1 inch tall, weighing about 180 to 200 pounds. His case is recorded in NamUs, the national missing-persons system used by Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner to help track and manage missing-person case files in the state.
On the day he disappeared, Ronald was working from his boat and hauling lobster traps. The account preserved in public case summaries is brief but stark: while he was out on the water, his boat sank. The vessel was later recovered from the ocean floor, but Ronald was not recovered with it. That single detail leaves the heart of the case in the space between what was found and what was not; there was a boat brought back from below, but no return of the man who had gone out to work.
Ronald’s disappearance fits within a larger and painful history along Maine’s coast, where commercial fishing has long demanded skill, endurance, and courage, but has also carried life-threatening danger. A Maine Legislature joint resolution honoring fishermen lost at sea described fishing as a challenging and often treacherous livelihood and noted that even experienced fishermen can fall victim to dangerous conditions. In that resolution, Ronald Haskell of Little Deer Isle is specifically named among Maine fishermen lost at sea, with November 11, 1993, listed beside his name.
The public record does not provide a long timeline of the search or a detailed reconstruction of the sinking. It does, however, make clear that the United States Coast Guard was the investigating agency connected to the case, and that the disappearance was tied to Ronald being in his boat while hauling back lobster traps. The available sources do not describe a confirmed recovery of Ronald, and the NamUs listing remains the central public record for the case. For those who knew and loved him, the lack of fuller public detail does not make the loss any smaller; it leaves a family and community with the ache of an ordinary workday that became final and unresolved.
Ronald Haskell’s case begins with a lobsterman leaving from Little Deer Isle, Maine, on November 11, 1993, to do the demanding work of hauling traps, and it turns on the sudden sinking of his boat. The boat was eventually recovered from the ocean floor, but Ronald was not. Public sources identify him as a missing man in NamUs case MP56352, describe him as a brown-haired White/Caucasian male around 36 years old at the time, and place him among Maine fishermen remembered for being lost at sea. In overview, this is the case of a working Maine fisherman whose vessel was found but whose whereabouts remained unanswered, a disappearance rooted in the hazards of the sea and remembered with sympathy for the people left without the closure of bringing him home.Last Seen: Nov 11, 1993
