A powerful Nor'easter that lashed the Massachusetts island of Nantucket over the weekend also peeled back layers of sand along its south shore, revealing the wooden ribs of a shipwreck that researchers believe may be the remains of a schooner lost in 1884.
The discovery began with an unexpected phone call. Jason Graziadei, editor-in-chief of the Nantucket Current, was covering the storm when he received a message from a resident, David DeHart, who wrote: "I found what I believe to be a shipwreck uncovered by the storm."
Graziadei said he and his son Owen drove out to see for themselves. "I drove out there with my son Owen and sure enough, it was right there where David said it was," he told NPR by email.
The tip pointed to Point of Breakers, a beach on Nantucket's south shore. There, newly exposed timbers jutted from the sand in the curved outline of a hull — timbers that had been hidden from view until the storm scoured away the sediment that normally covers them.
What makes the find especially notable is that it is not the first time these timbers have appeared. Ship fragments were documented at the same location in 2022, suggesting that powerful coastal storms repeatedly strip the site bare and then re-bury it.
The earlier investigation was led by David Robinson, director and chief archeologist for the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archeological Resources. After inspecting the 2022 findings, Robinson spent several months conducting research alongside the Egan Maritime Institute and the Nantucket Historical Association.
That work produced a likely — but not definitive — identification. Robinson determined that the remnants probably belonged to a schooner named the Warren Sawyer.
"As with most historical archaeological research," Robinson told the Current in 2023, the team worked through "the available literature, archival, photographic, and archaeological evidence we collectively assembled for the site to try to arrive at a conclusive determination as to whether or not the wreckage is from the tern [sailing vessel], Warren Sawyer."
The caution in that language is standard practice in underwater archaeology. A hull shape alone does not identify a vessel; establishing a link requires matching construction techniques, materials, dimensions and site geography against historical records, contemporary photographs and archival accounts.
The Warren Sawyer fits those criteria on paper. The vessel was a cargo ship that left New Orleans bound for Boston, carrying bales of cotton and scrap iron, and it went down on the night of Dec. 22, 1884. Local historical accounts have long associated the south shore area with that wreck, making the site a plausible resting place even after more than a century and a half.
The reappearance of the timbers illustrates a pattern that maritime archaeologists describe as an endlessly repeating cycle: storms uncover wrecks, shifting sands bury them again, and later storms expose them once more. Each exposure can add detail, though it can also accelerate deterioration. Wooden structures buried in wet, oxygen-poor sand can survive for well over a century, but once they are opened to air, waves and salt, they begin to break down.
For Nantucket, a place whose economy and identity have long revolved around ships and the sea, the re-exposure carries a particular resonance. The island sits at the crossroads of Atlantic shipping routes, and the surrounding waters are littered with the wrecks of vessels that foundered in storms or navigational errors. Artifacts from those losses continue to surface along the island's beaches.
Researchers would typically return to the site to document the newly exposed structure in place before further erosion removes it, and to compare what is now visible against the 2022 record. Whether the 1884 identification holds will depend on the evidence assembled during that next round of work.
For the resident who made the call, the discovery was simpler. DeHart's message, sent while a storm was still battering the island, set in motion a chain of events that connected a Nor'easter's cleanup work to a shipwreck that had been hidden — and briefly visible — for more than a century.
Graziadei, who documented the exposed timbers in photographs for the Nantucket Current, said the find was "right there" where DeHart described it, a stretch of south shore beach where a vanished ship has now reappeared twice in four years.
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