Nor’easter unearths pieces of 19th-century shipwreck in Massachusetts

The nor’easter storm that pummeled New England over the weekend looks to have exposed large segments of a 19th-century schooner shipwrecked in the so-called graveyard of the Atlantic.The Warren Sawyer was sailing from New Orleans to Boston carrying cotton and scrap iron when the three-masted wooden vessel ran aground in Nantucket on 22 December 1884. Its captain and crew of seven were rescued and the ship began to break up after several weeks on the shoreline.Now marine investigators in Massachusetts are looking at splintered timbers fastened together by rusted iron that emerged from the sand during the weekend storm close to where smaller remnants of the lost schooner have been located previously.The Egan Maritime Institute, a Nantucket-based educational non-profit, by Monday said it was sending staff in the coming days to examine the site and fragments. And the group said it would prepare a report for state archaeologists to help identify the vessel they came from.The institute, in a statement to the Associated Press, said it was too soon to be sure the newly emerged segments were definitely from the Warren Sawyer.Nantucket, it said, was one of the “graveyards of the Atlantic” and its “treacherous shoals and inclement weather” contributed to more than 750 wrecks during the 19th century when hundreds of vessels would traverse the island’s waters daily without modern maritime navigation equipment.But the proximity to the recorded site of the Warren Sawyer’s demise convinced journalist Jason Graziadei, editor of the online news site the Nantucket Current, that it was likely.Graziadei said he went to the beach on Saturday during the storm with his eight-year-old son after receiving a tip about wreckage on the island’s south shore, and he posted video of what he saw to YouTube.He said they found the wooden beams on a drive-on beach by the town’s wastewater facility known as the sewer beds after parking and climbing down to the beach because erosion from the storm had formed a steep drop-off.“Given where it was and where it emerged, it means that everyone who was driving on to the beach this summer was just directly over this,” Graziadei said. “It’s amazing to think from, you know, over 100 years old that it’s still there.”Records from the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources show the Warren Sawyer was carrying 1,115 bales of cotton and 28 tons (25.4 metric tonnes) of scrap iron from New Orleans to Boston when it ran aground.The schooner remained intact on the island’s Miacomet Beach for two weeks, allowing islanders to save 700 bales of cotton using skids and teams of oxen. On 6 January 1885, another storm tore the ship apart, scattering pieces of its hull, remaining cargo and cordage across more than half a mile of beach.Remnants believed to be from the ship have continued to emerge from the sand. Massachusetts state archaeologists inspected a roughly 42ft (12.8-meter) section of hull exposed on Miacomet Beach in late 2022 and concluded it was probably part of the Warren Sawyer.A roughly 15ft square section of the lower stern appeared nearby in February 2023, but shifting sands buried it again before state archaeologists could return to document it.The Egan Institute urged visitors not to disturb the newly exposed wreckage. Massachusetts law prohibits removing, damaging or displacing underwater archaeological resources.The Associated Press contributed to this report