Nor'easter Uncovers Remains of 1884 Nantucket Shipwreck

A weekend storm didn't just churn up waves off Nantucket, it dragged a 19th-century shipwreck back into view. A nor'easter pounding the Massachusetts island on Saturday exposed a sizable section of timber and iron that experts say likely came from the Warren Sawyer, a three-masted vessel that ran aground on Nantucket on Dec. 22, 1884, while carrying cotton and scrap iron from New Orleans to Boston, the New York Times reports. The captain and seven-member crew were rescued. Islanders salvaged around 700 bales of cotton from the wreck before a storm tore the ship apart two weeks later.

A news report from the time said the ship took "merciless billows" from the ocean, with the mast snapping in two and a crowd "excitedly watching it fall into the sea." The Maria Mitchell Association's Jascin N. Leonardo Finger says shipwrecks were common in the area at the time and islanders often scavenged items from the wreckage, the Times reports. "People sometimes forget that we live 28 miles at sea and also what life was like out here," she says. "I think this is an unfortunate but good reminder." Maritime experts plan to visit the site to inspect the wreckage and confirm which vessel it came from. Experts say there are more than 750 shipwrecks in the waters around Nantucket.