A powerful nor’easter recently pummeled the East Coast and uncovered what appears to be a 19th-century shipwreck.
Jason Graziadei, the editor-in-chief of the Nantucket Current, spotted the wooden debris on the island’s south shore on Saturday.
He believes the wreckage belongs to the Warren Sawyer. This three-masted wooden schooner wrecked near Miacomet Beach exactly 142 years ago.
A history of surfacing wreckage
This is not the first time the ocean has returned pieces of this doomed vessel.
A Nantucket resident first spotted fragments of the ship while biking along the southern shore in December 2022. More wreckage appeared just a half-mile away in February 2023.
Researchers previously examined historical and archaeological evidence and concluded the 2022 wreckage most likely belonged to the Warren Sawyer.
The ill-fated ship crashed on December 22, 1884. It was traveling from New Orleans to Boston loaded with 1,115 bales of cotton and 28 tons of scrap metal.
The investigation continues
Experts are already mobilizing to investigate this new discovery. The Egan Maritime Institute plans to survey the beach and issue a formal report to the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources.
While the new wreckage looks similar to the hull remains examined in 2022, officials still need to confirm its exact identity.
Shipwrecks are incredibly common in this area. In fact, Nantucket is famously known as a ‘graveyard of the Atlantic’. The surrounding waters hold an estimated 750 sunken ships.