A nor'easter that hammered New England over the weekend carved steep drop-offs into Nantucket's south shore and, in the process, pulled back the curtain on what appears to be a substantial section of the Warren Sawyer — a three-masted wooden schooner wrecked on 22 December 1884 while hauling 1,115 bales of cotton and 28 tons of scrap iron from New Orleans to Boston. Journalist Jason Graziadei, editor of the Nantucket Current, got a tip Saturday and drove to the beach with his eight-year-old son. They found splintered timbers fastened with rusted iron emerging from the sand near the town's wastewater facility — a drive-on beach where, Graziadei noted, summer visitors had been parking directly over the wreck without knowing it. He posted video of the find to YouTube. The Egan Maritime Institute, a Nantucket-based educational nonprofit, said Monday it would send staff to examine the site and prepare a report for Massachusetts state archaeologists. The institute stopped short of confirming the identity: Nantucket's shoals claimed more than 750 vessels during the 19th century, when hundreds of ships passed daily without modern navigation equipment. But the location aligns closely with the Warren Sawyer's recorded resting place. This isn't the first time the schooner has resurfaced. State archaeologists inspected a roughly 42-foot section of hull exposed on Miacomet Beach in late 2022 and concluded it was probably part of the Warren Sawyer. A 15-foot-square section of lower stern appeared in February 2023 but was buried again by shifting sands before archaeologists could return to document it. The original ship stayed intact for two weeks after grounding, long enough for islanders to salvage 700 bales of cotton using skids and teams of oxen before a second storm on 6 January 1885 tore it apart across half a mile of beach. Records from the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources document the wreck. State law prohibits removing, damaging, or displacing underwater archaeological resources, and the Egan Institute urged visitors not to disturb the newly exposed fragments. What makes this story quietly remarkable is the mechanism: the same coastal erosion that threatens Nantucket's infrastructure and property values is also doing free excavation work that no archaeology budget could fund. Every major storm is a dice roll — it can bury evidence or reveal it. The 2023 stern section appeared and vanished in weeks. Whether this latest exposure lasts long enough for proper documentation depends entirely on the next weather system.
