A maritime specialist was expected to visit a Nantucket beach Monday to examine battered wooden beams uncovered by the weekend’s powerful nor’easter. The timbers may be part of a 19th-century shipwreck hidden for generations beneath the island’s southern shoreline.
The Egan Maritime Institute said its exhibits and collections manager would document the site and forward the findings to state underwater archaeologists. Together, the officials will try to determine which vessel the newly revealed wreckage belonged to.
The broken beams are held together with corroded iron fasteners and were discovered near a stretch of beach where suspected remains of the Warren Sawyer, a wooden schooner that went down in 1884, have surfaced in the past.
Egan officials, whose nonprofit organization operates the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum, stressed Monday that the wreckage has not yet been conclusively identified.
The slow-moving nor’easter pummeled the Northeast over the weekend, bringing torrential rain, powerful winds and hazardous waves. Flooding affected low-lying areas from New Jersey through New England, while power outages peaked at more than 100,000 customers Sunday.
Several boats were washed ashore in Massachusetts as the storm’s pounding surf intensified concerns over coastal erosion, sending waves into beaches and seawalls.
Jason Graziadei/Nantucket Current via AP
The Warren Sawyer ran aground on Dec. 22, 1884, while transporting 1,115 bales of cotton and 28 tons of scrap iron from New Orleans to Boston, according to the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources. The captain and all seven crew members were eventually rescued.
The schooner stayed largely intact on Miacomet Beach for two weeks, giving island residents time to recover 700 bales of cotton with skids and teams of oxen. A second storm struck on Jan. 6, 1885, ripping the vessel apart and spreading sections of its hull, leftover cargo and rigging across more than half a mile of shoreline.
More than 100 years later, suspected pieces of the ship continue to reappear as shifting sand exposes the wreck.
Jason Graziadei, a Nantucket resident of 20 years and editor of the online publication Nantucket Current, said he headed to the beach Saturday with his 8-year-old son after hearing that possible wreckage had emerged along the island’s south shore.
They found the beams on a drive-on beach near the town wastewater facility, an area commonly known as the “Sewer Beds.” Storm-driven erosion had carved a sharp drop-off, forcing them to leave their vehicle and continue on foot.
For Graziadei, the location made the discovery especially striking: the wreckage lay directly beneath a path where beachgoers had been driving throughout the summer.
“Given where it was and where it emerged, it means that everyone who was driving onto the beach this summer was just directly over this,” Graziadei said. “I just think it is so funny and so cool.”
The Nantucket Current posted video online of the shipwreck on the beach, showing waves crashing against the wooden beams.
His son was fascinated, Graziadei said, asking what became of the sailors and why the schooner had run aground. The pair were able to approach the exposed timbers closely.
“It’s amazing to think from, you know, over 100 years old that it’s still there,” Graziadei said.
In late 2022, state archaeologists examined an approximately 42-foot section of hull exposed on Miacomet Beach and determined it was probably part of the Warren Sawyer. Another section, measuring about 15 feet square and believed to be the lower stern, appeared in February 2023. Shifting sand covered it again before archaeologists could return to record the find.
“Graveyards of the Atlantic”
Nantucket sits within a region often called the “graveyards of the Atlantic,” where an estimated 750 or more shipwrecks rest in surrounding waters. Last September, divers identified a wreck off Nantucket as a World War I-era fishing vessel that sank nearly 100 years ago with more than 20 people aboard.
The Egan Maritime Institute asked the public to leave the newly uncovered timbers untouched. Massachusetts law prohibits removing, damaging or moving underwater archaeological resources.
According to the Nantucket Current, the Inquirer and Mirror newspaper published this account of the Warren Sawyer shipwreck in 1945:
“Patrolman Eugene Clisby sighted the schooner’s lights of Miacomet Rip and hastened to the station to ‘call all hands.’ The surf was raging, completely enveloping the craft with only the swaying masts visible in the blackness of the night. Capt. Veeder shot a line over the jib-stay, putting it this far forward to avoid hitting anyone on board. But the sailors were too numbed with the cold to attempt going forward to secure it. Finally patrolman Williams, during a smooth sea, rushed down the beach and with a hand-line swung a line over her bow. The sailors made their way across the sea-washed decks and secured the line. A hawser was made fast and a breeches buoy rigged.
“With the schooner lurching under the impact of the seas, it was a difficult task to keep a steady strain on the hawser, but the experienced life savers worked unceasingly and with the coming of the morning of the 23rd, all hands had been safely landed on the beach.”
