Shifting sand at both Wasque and Lucy Vincent Beach has uncovered what may be parts of two shipwrecks.
Last Sunday afternoon, Andrew Orcutt of Edgartown and Albany was out walking the shoreline near Wasque and the Norton Point breach. He discovered remnants of what appeared to be a ship in the wash.
The 84-foot fishing boat Kris & Amy grounded two miles east of East Chop on Hedge Fence Shoal on Monday afternoon and required the attention of several salvage firms to free her last night.
Senior Chief Jamey Kinney of Coast Guard Sector Woods Hole said that a call came in from the vessel at 12:55 p.m. that she had run aground in 11 feet of water. Coast Guard Station Woods Hole responded. The vessel, a sea scalloper with a blue hull and white superstructure, remained stuck through the afternoon.
The luxury steamship The City of Columbus sleeps deep in the shifting sands at the edge of Devil's Bridge, about a mile from the Gay Head Cliffs. The 275-foot vessel sank more than a century ago in one of the worst maritime disasters to occur in Vineyard waters, and last Sunday, on a clear autumn morning, three divers went down to see her for the first time.
Buried mostly, the ship is a shadow of herself, and only a few on the waterfront know precisely where she sits.
High seas and gusting winds over the weekend prevented the safe
removal of a 71-foot fishing boat that washed onto Norton Point Beach
Saturday morning.
Capt. Samuel Jackson, of Cuttyhunk, a brother of Capts. Levi and Robert Jackson of this place, did gallant rescue work with his boat and crew, participating with another boat in the saving of 20 lives — a life saving crew whose boat had capsized and the crew of the Barkentine Stephen G. Hart, ashore on the ledge of Sow and Pigs.
After nearly two days of foundering in the surf near a remote coastline in Aquinnah with hundreds of gallons of fuel on board, the Sherry Ann, a 46-foot offshore lobster boat out of Westport, was freed from her unwanted rocky berth and towed to a nearby salvage barge Thursday afternoon.
A Wesport lobster boat remained on the rocks and in the surf off a remote coastline in Aquinnah Wednesday night, with salvage efforts set to begin again on Thursday morning.
Coast Guard public affairs spokesmen said that while the 46-foot Sherry Ann had a gash in her hull and some 800 gallons of fuel on board, they believed there was no imminent danger of a fuel spill.
