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Old wreck draws interest on Cape Cod beach

E-mail|Link|Comments () June 23, 2009 06:04 PM

(Gordon Peabody)

A detail of the wreckage. When was this boat built?

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

A ghost of the past has washed up on a Cape Cod beach, the wreckage of a wooden boat of an unknown age, said officials at the Cape Cod National Seashore today.

The wreckage, a section of timbers and planking that is about 40 feet long, washed up south of Ballston Beach in Truro, said Bob Grant, chief ranger at the seashore.

The remains appear to be similar to a wreck that washed up in January 2008 at Newcomb Hollow in Wellfleet and that was sucked back into the sea in April, Grant said. "Whether these are the same or not is not clear," he said.

With the beaches shrouded recently in rain and fog, whoever found the wreck probably had an eerie experience, he said. "You go walking on the beach and then you come across this. That's kind of a cool thing," he said.

Sue Moynihan, chief of interpretation and cultural resources at the national park, said she learned about the wreck Monday from a resident. She said the wreck looks different from the Wellfleet wreck, an unnamed schooner-turned-barge from the late 19th century, but experts believe it might be the same wreck just flipped over.

"I think anytime you see something of that size washed up on the beach -- I think that's exciting," she said.

Sebastian Junger, author of the 1990s bestseller "The Perfect Storm," which is about the modern-day wreck of a Gloucester fishing boat, was one of those who found the wreckage.

He told WOMR-FM in Provincetown it wasn't a typically rounded schooner hull, but it had this "sort of recurve" that reminded him of drawings of Spanish galleons. "It has that bulbous kind of look that Columbus's ships had," he said.

"It's startling when you look at it. … It isn't even close to our era," he told the station.

Gordon Peabody, a Truro resident who surveyed the wreck with Junger and then notified park service officials last week, said the wreck was "an intriguing mystery." He said he didn't think it was the Newcomb Hollow wreck.

He also said the wreckage was only part of a larger vessel.

"When I looked at it, I have to tell you that my heart stopped for a minute," he said, citing, among other things, the unusual curve of the hull.