Nova Scotia historian weighs in on mysterious Newfoundland shipwreck

There has been plenty of reaction to and interest in a massive, seemingly ancient shipwreck in southwestern Newfoundland.

The overturned hull was first spotted on Jan. 20 just off the beach near Cape Ray, N.L., and the wreck has attracted a steady stream of local admirers and interest from experts.

Among them is Nova Scotia author, diver and historian Bob Chaulk, who says he thought the wreck was a scam when he first saw it.

“I’ve been on that beach, and it’s totally open to the North Atlantic, but I guess it’s not a scam. It’s an old wooden vessel of some sort that I assume has just been washed up out of the sand,” he says.

Chaulk also assumes the ship ran into trouble while going though the Cabot Strait.

“(It) probably got dismasted and maybe everybody was lost, we don’t know, don’t know a thing about it of course, but it would have come in, grounded, and probably just been there for years,” he says.

The area where the ship is located would be easy to dive in, according to Chaulk, due to shallow waters.

“I think they could get a pretty good feel for the age of it because it’s got bronze, I assume, I heard copper, nails but I would say it’s probably bronze, because copper is soft and wooden pegs called treenails that you sail together with,” he says. “That would age it at least going back a certain point, and then going back into antiquity, because that’s what they always used.”

Chaulk says more wrecks could come to shore, like the one in Newfoundland, due to increased storm activity in the Atlantic region.

“It’s gotta be a sandy area, where you’ve got a sandy bottom, because if it’s not covered in sand then a wooden vessel deteriorates very quickly,” he says. “You measure it in decades, not in centuries.”

Chaulk is no stranger to shipwrecks. He is a historian for the SS Atlantic Heritage Park in Terence Bay, N.S., and has recently written a book about wrecks from the Halifax Explosion in 1917.

He calls the SS Atlantic, which sank in 1873, “the best kept secret in Nova Scotia history.”

“So few people have heard of the Atlantic, it’s the biggest shipwreck in Nova Scotia history, second biggest in Canadian history,” he says.

Of the approximately 975 aboard, more than 500 died, according to the SS Atlantic Heritage Park Society, and are buried there.

“The three biggest disasters in Canadian history – two of them happened in Nova Scotia, the Halifax Explosion and the Atlantic,” Chaulk adds.

But why do people continue to be fascinated by shipwrecks?

Chaulk says it’s because they are simply “something from the past.”

“Everybody wants (the Newfoundland wreck) to be really old. You keep hearing its old, 16-17th (century), that kind of thing,” he says. “It’s a throwback to an earlier time that supposedly was simpler, it wasn’t simple for the people living at that time, certainly wasn’t simple for those folk.”

With files from The Canadian Press and CTV’s Todd Battis.