The Samuel Haley house on Smuttynose Island, with the Star Island hotel in the background. Photo by Peter Randall '63

In a converted carriage house behind the John Paul Jones House in Portsmouth, Dennis Robinson '73 spends long days hunched over a computer keyboard, banging out copy for SeacoastNH.com, a popular Web site that he created with designer Tim Dubuque '83. Though Robinson barely ekes out a living with his Web site, his passion for telling stories about the Seacoast region's history has driven him to create some 2,000 online pages, which attract some 6,000 visitors every day.

The Isles of Shoals merit a section of their own, filled with historical prose and poetry, essays and opinion pieces, photography and even a bulletin board to post questions and answers. Robinson receives hundreds of queries and comments from people around the world, who want to visit or know more about the tiny isles. "They're just little rocks, but what makes them compelling is all the accumulated history and the legends and myths that surround them," explains Robinson.

In an often irreverent writing style, Robinson has assembled the "pantheon of characters" who populated these hard-scrabble islands. He memorializes the revered Grand Dame of the Isles, Celia Thaxter, with selections from her writings, which he calls "Celia's Greatest Hits." Elsewhere he recreates the grisly events of March 5, 1873, on Smuttynose Island, when a Prussian drifter named Louis Wagner hacked to death two Norwegian women, Karen and Anethe Christensen.

The murders -- the subject of a best-selling novel, The Weight of Water, by Anita Shreve, and an upcoming film directed by Oliver Stone -- still arouse great interest and passion, Robinson says. He often hears from people who vehemently dispute Wagner's guilt, despite what he believes is the overwhelming evidence that led to his hanging. (Shreve's fictional tale implicates Maren Hontvet, the lone survivor of the attack, and rumors persist that she, or any number of others, including one of Thaxter's sons, might have been responsible for the crime.) "Every time I say Louis did it, I get attacked," Robinson says, shaking his head. "Let the legends live side by side with the facts."