A nor’easter flooded towns along the coast of New York and New Jersey last weekend. Winds knocked out power to more than 100,000 homes. But that’s not all. The storm also revealed a buried shipwreck in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
Wait—what’s a nor’easter? It’s a storm on the east coast of North America. These storms usually bring lots of rain or snow. Why the name? The storm’s strongest winds often come from the northeast.
The Egan Maritime Institute sent experts to study the wreck site. They will work to figure out which ship the wreckage came from.
Could it be from Warren Sawyer? People have found other pieces of the wooden schooner in the area.
Warren Sawyer ran aground on December 22, 1884. It was carrying 1,115 bales of cotton and 28 tons of scrap iron to Boston, Massachusetts. Thankfully, its captain and seven-member crew were rescued.
The schooner sat on the beach for two weeks. Islanders salvaged 700 bales of cotton. Then on January 6, 1885, another storm tore the ship apart. It scattered it across the beach. Sand covered many of the pieces.
Jason Graziadei has lived on the island for two decades. He went to the beach on Saturday with his eight-year-old son.
They found the wooden beams on a drive-on beach. He says they had to park their car and walk down to the beach. That’s because erosion from the storm had formed a steep drop-off.
The wreckage was on a route beachgoers had been driving all summer.
“Everyone who was driving onto the beach this summer was just directly over this,” Mr. Graziadei says, referring to the wreckage. “I just think it is so funny and so cool.”
Mr. Graziadei says his son was excited by the discovery.
“It’s amazing . . . that it’s still there” after more than a century, Mr. Graziadei says.
Nantucket is one of the areas known as the “graveyards of the Atlantic.” Researchers think there are more than 750 wrecks in the surrounding waters.
Did you know that there is a story about a shipwreck and a storm caused by a wind called a northeaster in the Bible? The Apostle Paul was on that ship. Read Acts 27.
