A repair operation in New Jersey to undo the devastation of Hurricane Sandy on the coast unexpectedly turned up the wreckage of a missing cargo ship that was lost 90 years ago.
U.S. Army engineers dug up the smashed remains of a coal barge which was lost at the Barnegat Inlet, around 30 miles up the coast from Atlantic City.
The 200-ft vessel sank in unknown circumstances in February 1926 on a voyage from Boston to Norfolk, Virginia, and was buried under decades of shifting sands.
The Army Corps of Engineers stumbled on well-preserved wooden and metal remains while fixing the inlet’s North Jetty in summer 2014, part of a round of extensive repairs in the wake of Sandy, which ravaged the Jersey Shore in October 2012.
Unearthed remains from the ship included metal fastenings, nails and fragments of hull, as well as larger chunks which remains stubbornly struck in the sands.
After unearthing part of the ship, the Army handed the wreckage over to experts, who determined that the vessel must have been one of three lost on the same day in 1926.
Analysis by shipwreck experts, published in a 312-page report, determined that the ship was a wooden schooner barge – a cheap and widely-used transport vessel which carried heavy cargo like coal and lumber.
The unpowered vessels would have been dragged up and down the Eastern seaboard by tugboats, a strategy which allowed maximum cargo to be moved with few crew and little fuel.
The ships were so widely-used that they were not routinely named. According to Panamerican Consultants, who wrote the report, the ship would have had a number rather than a full title.
