Simba and I visited the Mary E. Morris Shipwreck on Oak Island, North Carolina, where massive weathered timbers preserve the story of a three-masted schooner driven ashore by a powerful hurricane more than 130 years ago. Today, the surviving pieces are displayed at Shipwreck Park, but these aren’t timbers from a reconstruction or replica. They are remnants of the actual vessel that wrecked along this coastline in 1893.
The story is especially fascinating because the Mary E. Morris essentially disappeared twice. After the hurricane drove the schooner onto the North Carolina coast and broke the vessel apart, shifting sand gradually buried much of the wreckage. For generations, the remains were largely hidden beneath Oak Island’s beach until another hurricane arrived more than a century later and unexpectedly exposed substantial portions of the old wooden ship.
What began as a maritime disaster in the 19th century therefore became an unusual archaeological discovery in the 20th. The same type of powerful coastal weather that destroyed the Mary E. Morris ultimately helped reveal its remains again.
⛵ A Three-Masted Wooden Schooner
The Mary E. Morris was a large wooden sailing vessel measuring approximately 138 feet long and weighing around 400 tons. As a three-masted schooner, the vessel belonged to a type of working ship once commonly seen carrying cargo along the American coastline…