A powerful nor'easter that battered the Northeast coastline over the weekend has exposed weathered wooden beams on a Nantucket beach, which maritime experts believe could be the remnants of an 1884 shipwreck.
A maritime expert from the Egan Maritime Institute is scheduled to visit the site on Monday to survey the wreckage. The findings will be reported to state underwater archaeologists for further investigation to determine the specific vessel. The exposed timbers, bound by rusted iron, have appeared near an area where fragments believed to belong to the Warren Sawyer, a wooden schooner that sank in 1884, have been found previously.
While the Egan Maritime Institute, which operates the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum, has cautioned that the wreckage has not yet been definitively identified, the location is consistent with previous discoveries. The Warren Sawyer ran aground on December 22, 1884, while en route from New Orleans to Boston carrying cotton and scrap iron. The ship's captain and its seven crew members were rescued. For two weeks, the schooner remained largely intact on Miacomet Beach, allowing locals to salvage some of its cargo. However, another storm on January 6, 1885, broke the ship apart, scattering its hull, remaining cargo, and rigging along more than half a mile of shoreline.
Jason Graziadei, editor of the Nantucket Current, discovered the timbers on Saturday with his son on a beach commonly known as the “Sewer Beds.” He noted that the storm's erosion had created a steep drop-off, requiring them to walk to the site. Graziadei found it remarkable that the wreckage emerged directly beneath a popular driving beach, commenting that beachgoers had been driving directly over the historical site throughout the summer.
State archaeologists previously examined a roughly 42-foot section of hull exposed on Miacomet Beach in late 2022. They concluded it was likely part of the Warren Sawyer. A subsequent discovery of a smaller section in February 2023 was reburied by shifting sands before it could be fully documented.
Nantucket is part of the region known as the "graveyards of the Atlantic," with an estimated 750 shipwrecks in its surrounding waters. The Egan Maritime Institute has urged the public not to disturb the newly exposed wreckage, as Massachusetts law prohibits the removal or damage of underwater archaeological resources.