The monster nor’easter battering the East Coast has done more than flood roads and hammer homes. On Nantucket, it peeled back the beach and exposed a piece of maritime history buried beneath the sand for more than a century.
Heavy surf and erosion along the island’s south shore revealed large wooden timbers believed to belong to the Warren Sawyer, a three-masted schooner that wrecked near Miacomet Beach on December 22, 1884. That makes the wreck approximately 142 years old as of 2026. Island resident David DeHart first spotted the timbers Saturday at Point of Breakers and alerted Nantucket Current editor Jason Graziadei.
Check out footage of the unearthed relic below:
“I drove out there with my son Owen and sure enough, it was right there where David said it was,” Graziadei told NPR. The exposed wreckage sits in the same area where pieces believed to be from the Warren Sawyer appeared in 2022 and 2023.
David Robinson, director and chief archaeologist for the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources, said the evidence strongly points to the same ship. “It’s in the same place,” Robinson told the Current, adding that identifying it as the Warren Sawyer is “the logical conclusion” based on the photos and video.
Related: Watch: 15-Foot Waves Hammer Massachusetts Coast During Monster Nor’easter
The Sawyer was sailing from New Orleans to Boston carrying 1,115 bales of cotton and 28 tons of scrap iron when gale-force winds blew it off course. It ran aground around 11 p.m.; its captain and seven-man crew were rescued. Salvagers later recovered roughly 700 cotton bales before another storm ripped the schooner apart in January 1885.
This weekend delivered a modern echo of that violence. The National Weather Service warned Nantucket and surrounding Massachusetts coastline of 6-to-10-foot breaking waves, coastal flooding and beach erosion, while forecasters warned offshore seas could approach 25 feet.
Graziadei called it “fascinating” to touch Nantucket history that cars were literally driving over this summer.
Sometimes a monster storm doesn’t just destroy the coastline.
It reveals what the coastline has been hiding.
Related: Watch: Cruise Ship Takes on 20-Foot Waves During Brutal Nor’easter
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