A determined marine archeologist has determined that the skeletal remains of shipwreck that keeps getting uncovered on a Maine beach is that of the Defiance, a 60-foot sloop that dates to before the Revolution.
Stefan Claesson, the scientist, recently told the Board of Selectmen in York, in southern Maine, that the remains probably belong to the Defiance, a narrow commercial vessel that washed ashore in a terrible storm in 1769. The ship, carrying pork, flour, English goods and a crew of four, was on its way from Salem, Massachusetts, to Portland, Maine, about 45 miles above York.
During the storm the Defiance dropped anchor off the beach. The storm was so severe that the crew had to cut the anchor line, and the ship crashed onto what is now Short Sands Beach. The ship was destroyed, but the crew escaped unhurt.
And there it remained, buried under five or six feet of sand, for centuries. But then, after a storm, the remains of the wooden hull first surfaced in 1958. They would reappear after more storms, only to be covered again by the natural movements of the ocean floor. The last time was in March, 2018.
All that’s left are the keel and some ribs and planks. But that was enough for Claesson, who owns Nearview, an aerial drone and archaeological surveying company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He sent wooden samples from the hull to the Tree-Ring Laboratory at Cornell University.
They said the timber matched a New England tree-ring date from 1753. The Defiance was built in 1754 in Massachusetts. The Cornell lab said the ship’s remains came from three different species that grew in New England at the time.
Claesson then searched through first-hand accounts of pre-Revolutionary War shipping at the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, where he found records of the Defiance’s last voyage. That’s when he brought the evidence to the York selectmen.
He now hopes the site will be preserved, and wants to put up netting and sand bags around the wreck to protect it. The Maine Historic Preservation Commission considers the wreck a significant historical find, a designation that means it would quality for the National Registry of Historic Places. Read more:
