The Tay: Tracking a 1911 Shipwreck on Acadia's Sand Beach

Back-to-back storms in January 2024 did serious damage across Acadia National Park, and on Sand Beach they uncovered the Tay, a Canadian lumber schooner wrecked in 1911. Wooden sailing ships like her carried lumber and coal between New Brunswick, Portland, Boston and other ports.

Timbers of the Tay on Sand Beach. NPS photo.

Not the first time

Every few decades, it seems, Acadia gets storms with big waves and southerly winds strong enough to cut into the dunes and strip sand off the beach. A storm in November 1950 exposed the Tay, and she stayed partly uncovered until at least 1960, when a writer for the Bar Harbor Times, LaRue Spiker, described the ribs of an old wreck jutting up from the sand about halfway along the beach.

According to Park Service records, the wreck was exposed again in autumn 1964 and December 1969, and photographs from 1972, 1979 and 1985 suggest it kept reappearing as the seasonal storms stripped and rebuilt the beach. Like many Maine beaches, Sand Beach tends to lose height in the stormy winter and gain sand back in summer as the prevailing winds change.

Broken up, mapped and tagged

In January 2024, though, persistently high water and repeated flooding at high tide moved the wreck, and it broke apart as it was battered against the exposed rocky floor of the beach. In late January park staff photographed, measured and mapped the remaining timbers and tagged the larger pieces, so they can be tracked if they move or float away. Each tag has a unique code that visitors can scan with a phone camera. The tagging is coordinated by the Shipwreck Tagging Archaeological Management Program (S.T.A.M.P.) of the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center.

A tag with its unique code, beside a scale bar. NPS photo.

Coming and going

Sand Beach sits in a cove sheltered by rocky headlands on both sides, so sand washed off it does not go far. Within a few weeks of the tagging, sand had almost completely buried the Tay's timbers and covered most of the rocks. Another storm in March stripped the sand away again and washed the timbers off the beach. With visitors' help, the Tay's fate can now be followed more closely.

Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.

Sources

• Catherine Schmitt, Schoodic Institute, "Monitoring the Sand Beach Shipwreck," National Park Service, Acadia National Park. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/acadshipwreck.htm