Nor’easter Exposes 1884 Schooner Wreck at Nantucket

Storms tore through the US East Coast late last month, and when they passed, Nantucket's south shore was different. Wooden timbers, iron-fastened and hull-shaped, had broken through the sand at Point of Breakers and were jutting into the daylight. The remains are believed to be what is left of the Warren Sawyer, a three-masted cargo schooner that wrecked on the island on December 22, 1884.

The Sawyer was loaded and headed north. She had left New Orleans carrying 1,115 bales of cotton and 28 tons of scrap iron, bound for Boston, when gale-force winds knocked her off course. She grounded on the south shore of Nantucket and never made it. More than 140 years later, back-to-back nor'easters pulled at the same stretch of beach and brought the timbers up again.

Island resident David DeHart noticed the exposed hull during the storm and passed word to the Nantucket Current. The same remains had surfaced at that spot in 2022 before storm-driven sand covered them again. Maritime historians and preservation experts are now travelling to the island to document what the weather has left visible this time.

A MarineRadar data cluster centred on the North Atlantic near Nantucket shows a fresh surge in vessel and navigator activity: 18 unique devices recorded in the past 48 hours in an area that had no prior tracked presence. The interest lines up with a story still unfolding on the shoreline.