York Town News
Visitor from the past returns
By Jennifer L. Saunders
Local resident John Rundlett was just a teenager when he first saw the remnants of what historians believe is a centuries-old shipwreck on Short Sands Beach. Here, Rundlett points out one of the large wooden pegs used in the construction of the boat.
Photo by Jennifer L. Saunders
YORK BEACH - Imagine it is the year 1800 and picture what this coastal town might have looked like back then, and you just may be able to conjure up what the sailors of this historic boat once saw.
In an occurrence that only seems to happen every 20 to 30 years, the Patriot's Day Nor'easter brought an old friend back to York Beach. Well, actually, the 50-foot wreck of an ancient sailing vessel has been there for decades - if not generations - buried beneath about six feet of sand on Short Sands Beach.
With the astronomical high tide that accompanied last week's nor'easter, the nameless boat was once again brought to the surface as an estimated seven feet of sand were swept away to sea and cast up onto the parking lots and streets of York Beach.
Meanwhile, longtime local residents and historians alike agree this is something you don't see every day.
"It's actually sad because I remember it being much bigger. The front was arched," longtime local resident John Rundlett said, standing on Short Sands Beach last Thursday, April 19, to see what he described as the "bones of a boat" that had been buried beneath the sands since he was a teenager.
Rundlett, whose parents Verna and Henry Rundlett were famous locally for their love of York and their tireless commitment to the preservation of such York icons as the Cape Neddick Light Station, grew up in York Beach, and remembered seeing the boat with his brother while they were teenagers during the blizzard of 1978.
At that time, speculation ranged from the possibility that this was a Viking ship that found its way much farther south than history has ever recorded, or that it was an old fishing boat from York's early history. Prior to that, the last recorded showing of the boat was in 1958.
"It's always been there in our minds," Rundlett said of the boat beneath the sands, adding he would love to find out more about the old craft, its history, who might have built it, why it was abandoned on the beach and whether it could be preserved.
Old York Historical Society Director Scott Stevens came to the beach with his wife Nancy last Thursday to look at the shipwreck. Stevens confirmed there are other wrecks in and around York's beaches, but said he had never seen this one before.
Stevens then contacted a maritime archaeologist to examine the boat, and learned it has previously been archived by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission as an archaeological site.
"We were told that the best short-term solution is to cover it with clean sand to protect it from disturbance by passersby," Stevens said, explaining that is a decision that would have to be made by the town.
The problem with an archaeological study of a boat such as this is the expense, experts agree, at a time when state and local funds are limited at best. Preserving such a relic is costly as the wood must be stabilized and the hull would have to be stored in a facility that could house a 50-foot boat.
The boat is of wooden construction with large dowel-like pegs still visible in some of the boats "ribs" and the remainder of what historians speculated might be iron fasteners also used on portions of the boat. There is a large beam down the middle that some bystanders and historians have speculated might actually be a fallen mast.
Dr. Arthur Spiess, senior archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission in Augusta, said an educated guess by an archaeologist who looked at the boat after the blizzard of 1978 was that it was a small sloop, dating from around 1800.
"This is an historic resource. It is an archaeological site," he said. "It could conceivably tell us something about boat building in the area around the time of the Revolution."
Maritime archaeologists are in discussion about the site, he said, urging residents and visitors who see the boat to leave it alone so that it can be preserved as well as possible for future study.
Town Planner Steve Burns and Geographical Information Systems Manager Brett Horr went to the beach to take global positioning system (GPS) points of the boat for the state's archives.
The state holds such data, Burns explained, because "everything we have in town is subject to the right-to-know law, but that isn't the case with the state."
Instead, the state provides maps with reference to there being a "known archaeological resource" within a certain area, but does not provide the specific information.
"They want people to know about them, but they don't want people knowing too much about them," Burns said, explaining the hazard of having such sites looted or destroyed.
In the case of what is believed to be the remnants of an old sloop on York Beach, he said, "You've got thousands and thousands of people right on top of it and you don't even know it's there."
Greater York Region Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Cathy Goodwin had never seen the boat before last weekend's storm unearthed it, but said it definitely had people talking about what else is buried beneath the sands of York's beaches.
"There are only two times in my life that I remember seeing it," said local resident and York Police Chief Douglas Bracy, adding, "People don't realize the beaches change as drastically as they do when you get a storm like that," which tore away about seven feet of sand.
"The last time I remember that was the storm of '78," Selectmen Vice Chairman Dwight Bardwell said on Monday.
Sandra Rhodes of York Beach, who had just come home from some days away, stood overlooking Short Sands Beach and the remainder of the ancient ship last week.
"I've been here for 25 years, and I've never seen it before," she said.
Old York Historical Society Research Librarian Virginia Spiller, who managed Spiller's in York Beach with her husband Dexter for years, remembered the boat as the subject of a 13-year-old edition of local columnist Peter Moore's "Unknown History of York," where it was then described as a "pinky," a type of fishing boat common in York in the early 19th century.
"We don't have any primary sources on the boat at Old York," Spiller said, adding she would welcome more information about the vessel. "In every bad storm, it comes back."
Sightings in the past half-century include a nor'easter that hit York in April of 1958, the blizzard of 1978 and last week's nor'easter, which pounded the shores of York 49 years after the first formally recorded sighting of the boat in recent memory.
"There are other vessels buried in various places," Spiller explained, including the Arabella, which sunk in Cape Neddick on Oct. 17, 1885, and the Robert W., a lumber schooner, that wrecked on Long Sands Beach in the 1920s.
And there is the historic Nottingham, which sank off Boon Island back in 1710 and is recorded in a text printed in 1836 and preserved at the Old York Historical Society Research Library.
"We have 67 shipwrecks in York's waters," Burns said, referencing the historic resources chapter of the Comprehensive Plan.
The town has records of ships going down in the rivers and ocean, he said, but including the York Beach site, there are known locations for only 29 of those wrecks at this time.
"There are certain things in the town that you always remember," Rundlett said, watching over the remnants of the vessel at Short Sands. "Here's history right at our fingertips."
