19th century shipwreck washes up on North Carolina beach

The remains of a ship from the 1800s washed upon the shore of a beach in North Carolina. The State Port Pilot reports how what’s known as a “King Tide”—a kind of high tide that occurs during a new or full moon—that had struck Bald Head Island ended up doing more than drenching the area.

The tide actually revealed a 12-by-60-foot shipwreck which included wooden ribs and tons of pieces of iron, artifacts which a group of archaeologists is currently studying in order to determine how old they are exactly as well as what kind of ship they once formed.

“That’s a fairly large artifact,” tells maritime history expert, Kevin P. Duffus, to the publication. “If I were doing the analysis, I would take into account the iron fasteners and wooden timber, suggesting a late 19th century vessel, most likely a large schooner.”

WRAL.com continues to report how shipwrecks are not uncommon to North Carolina’s shores: The official Outer Banks website estimates that roughly 3,000 such pieces of history have risen from their watery graves for those standing on modern sands to observe. In fact, there’s so many of them, that the website claims the Outer Banks “has a reputation of being the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

https://www.pennlive.com/life/2022/02/19th-century-shipwreck-washes-up-on-north-carolina-beach.html