SKELETONS IN THE SAND
The thrill of shipwreck discovery is often found beneath the water. The excitement of discovery, whether you are the first diver or the most recent, comes as you drop down in the ocean or at the bottom of a lake or river. That being said, diving, especially for wreck divers, comes with the expectation that at some time, you will find a wreck down there. Ships sink, after all. What most people do not expect, especially the non-diving public, is that beachcombing also leads to shipwreck discovery.
If you stop to think about it, it’s almost natural that you’d find a wreck on the beach. Tales of shipwrecks include numerous accounts of ships crashing ashore, driven by a gale, or driven into the rocks or sand by crews who lost their way. Nineteenth-century prose was well-suited to tell these tales. An English compendium, Great Shipwrecks: A Record of Perils and Disasters at Sea, 1544 to 1877, offers many examples. The wreck of the British ship Amphitrite on the French coast of the English Channel in August 1833 is described as the ship hits the shoals and strands off shore.
As night falls, it is clear that rescue is not possible; “the darkness increases, the winds increase in fury, the waves increase in force and violence; we can scarcely distinguish the boat. The billows compel the most intrepid to fall back. All at once a mast is cast at the foot of the spectators; then casks, then fragments of wreck, then dead bodies.”
As the crowds left, some of them picking up a souvenir, the “fragments of wreck” disappeared with each rise and fall of the tide, leaving clean sand and fading memories as years turned into decades and centuries. Even iron and steel ships, also cast ashore, seemingly disappeared, battered into pieces and sinking into the sand. They
