The weekend nor’easter that flooded Maine streets, forced dozens of flight cancellations here and knocked out power for thousands also revealed a bit of history.
The York Police Department on Monday morning posted photographs on its Facebook page of a wooden skeleton reaching up from the sands of Short Sands Beach.
“Every once in a while after a storm the ocean moves enough sand for it to be seen,” the department posted, in part.
Good Monday morning! The pictures below are of the old ship that is buried at Short Sands Beach. Every once in a while…
Posted by York Maine Police Department on Monday, 5 March 2018
Local historian and blogger Sharon Cummins wrote in a post for seacoastonline.com that “the old relic appears infrequently, adding to its mystique.
“Each time, roughly once every decade or two, new maritime history buffs are born,” she continued.
Cummins reported that when the sunken ship skeleton was uncovered in 1958, locals believed it was the remains of a so-called pink, a small flat-bottomed square-rigger. But in 1980, when a spring storm revealed the mysterious ruins again, a marine archaeologist said it was likely a Revolutionary War-era sloop.
Elsewhere in York County, Cummins wrote that the weekend storm uncovered the outline of at least one other ship on the east end of Gooch’s Beach in Kennebunk as well. The identity of that vessel is uncertain, she wrote, but it may have been one of two ships known to have run aground in the area in the early 19th century.
For more history on shipwrecks in the area uncovered by the nor’easter, read Cummins’ post for seacoastonline.com or her blog, SoMeOldNews.com.
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