Freezing waves crashed into Shawn Bath and Trevor Croft as they braved the unforgiving swells of the north Atlantic. Snow fell gently as the pair of local residents took turns with a hacksaw: one cutting through the planks of a centuries-old shipwreck while the other kept a close watch on the cresting breakers.
“Each wave lifts you up and can toss you around. And the ship is full of copper, brass and wood spikes sticking up everywhere, so there’s potential for injury,” said Bath, a former urchin diver who, with Croft, runs a local marine cleanup project. “But it’s just super exciting to be a part of the whole thing.”
A shipwreck that mysteriously appeared off the southern coast of Newfoundland last month is at risk of disappearing just as quickly, as storms batter the remains of the vessel. Keenly aware that they’re in a race against time and forces of nature, dozens in the Canadian coastal community of Cape Ray have banded together to protect the wreck from what could be its second demise.
The wreck is submerged even at the lowest tides, a troubling development for those who have visited the site frequently. Last week, residents fastened lines to the wreck to hold it in place.
“The last couple of days, the ship has taken quite a pounding. We’ve had a strong wind and a lot of snow. And the ship’s been breaking up over the last few days with pieces washing ashore,” said Bath. “That’s good – it means we can recover [the fragments]. But right now we need to get the ship out of water before the next storm comes.”
Over the weekend, residents were joined by a team of provincial archaeologists and a shipwreck expert as they worked to get samples from the wreck. Wading through chest-deep water, Croft and Bath sawed off planks and gathered fasteners, wooden dowels, copper rods and pieces of brass.
For Neil Burgess, the president of the Shipwreck Preservation Society of Newfoundland and Labrador, the ship represents a tantalizing mystery.
“The legend of Newfoundland is that there’s 10,000 shipwrecks around the coasts. And the reality is we’ve only been able to see maybe 200 of those wrecks,” he said. “In terms of our understanding of the nautical history of the province, it’s like we’re looking through a keyhole, and trying to understand an entire room.”
Standing on the shore, Burgess, who had travelled more than 10 hours across the island to visit the wreck, marvelled at the sheer size of the ship, which is at least 79ft (24 metres) long.
He hopes dendrochronology – studying the pattern of tree rings, here on the ship’s timbers, and matching those up with known-age trees from the past – can help determine where the ship came from.
“If we can put a name to the ship, then we can start filling in missing pieces of the mystery. Where was the ship coming from? Who was on it and what cargo was it carrying? Was it carrying immigrants from Europe to Canada or Newfoundland, and were people lost? Were there any survivors?”
Already, a handful of clues have jumped out.
“Some of the timbers were obviously made of oak, so we know this ship was not built in Newfoundland,” he said. “Most of the ships that were coming by in the 1800s were coming from Britain, or Ireland. But there were also ships coming from France or Spain and the eastern United States.”
Residents of Cape Ray have eagerly watched as the wreck has received international attention. They hope the small town, battered last year by Hurricane Fiona, could draw tourists in the coming years to see the preserved wreck.
But that hope has kicked off another looming worry: funding the recovery.
In recent days, the provincial government has given the community permission to salvage what it can of the ship.
“The government kind of washed its hands of the wreck, so it’s up to the town of Cape Ray, and its 300 people, to get the job done,” said Croft.
That job involves plowing a route to the beach through 4ft of snow. Croft says a large excavator would be needed, along with a heavy-duty tow truck to haul the wreck on shore, where it could be dismantled for transport.
“That’s the biggest problem we have right now - finding the funds to do it,” he said.
The town has started a GoFundMe page to raise money for the equipment rentals.
“We’ve got this opportunity to save something before it goes underwater again. Something like this hardly ever comes around in your lifetime. So we have to get it done. We can’t drop the ball,” said Bath. “I don’t know where it’s from. I don’t know how old it is. But I do know it means a lot to this small town.”