Researchers Jeremy Borrelli and Jason Raupp and their crew were submerged in the murky waters of the Cape Fear River when they stumbled across history.
At a dive site near Brunswick Town in 2025, the research team was conducting underwater mapping of a historic wharf. Operating in shallow water with less than a foot of visibility, they came across something they hadn’t expected to find: a wooden ribcage — the corpse of a historic shipwreck.
Borrelli and Raupp, who work at East Carolina University, believe they’ve identified the remains to a ship dating back to the middle of the 18th century, a pirate vessel involved in a raid on Brunswick Town named La Fortuna. But whatever the ship’s origin, it’s undoubtably a relic of some of Wilmington’s earliest history…