A dive team working on the southwest coast to help with Hurricane Fiona clean-up played a significant role in helping local archaeologists gather information on a mysterious wooden ship wreck on the beach at Cape Ray.
A team from the Provincial Archaeology Department arrived on the southwest coast on the weekend to collect samples from the wreck to learn more about it.
Trevor Croft and Shawn Bath with the Clean Harbours Initiative have been working in the area for some time and were able to secure the wreck which started to drift off the beach and help the archaeology team.
Shawn Bath (Photo courtesy Clean Harbours Initiative via Facebook)
Croft says divers were necessary because the wreck is almost completely underwater.
He says the archaeology team was expecting the wreck to be closer to shore, but it’s shifted a few hundred feet since first turning up about two weeks ago.
Croft says they recovered a number of items for analysis, including wood, brass and copper.
While giving the wreckage a definitive ID may not be possible, archaeologists are hoping to learn more about what type of vessel it was, it’s age, the materials used to build it and possibly its country of origin.
