An eight-year-old wielding a metal detector has discovered a nearly two-century-old shipwreck in Ontario, Canada.
During a family trip to the Point Farms Provincial Park near Goderich in 2023, Lucas Atchison, now 10, found a small steel spike with his metal detector, a birthday gift, and decided to dig further.
The spike was found attached to a piece of wood, which in turn had several more spikes on it.
Further inspection revealed that the spikes and the wood were part of an entire wrecked ship.
The boy and his family reported the discovery to park staff and the volunteer group called Ontario Marine Heritage Committee, CBC News reported.
Archaeologists found the ship was likely an old schooner, a type of two-masted, wooden sailing vessel. It had double frames, hinting it was a stronger-built ship to transport goods.
The exact identity of the ship remains unclear, however.
Researchers are now making drawings of the shipwreck from different angles to identify the vessel. They are also assessing 19th century catalogues detailing insurance requirements for ships.
Since such requirements included the number of fasteners, or spikes, that the frames of each type of ship must have, checking the catalogues could help identify the type of ship it was.
As of now, they suspect the schooner to be St Anthony.
St Anthony, built in 1856, was transporting wheat from Chicago to Buffalo when it got wrecked in Lake Huron in Ontario.
A Buffalo Daily Republic news clip from 1856 points to “schooner St Anthony of Erie” transporting a cargo of wheat near Goderich, Ontario. Another clip from November that year suggests the schooner with a 325-tonne hull ran aground near Goderich.
“Her cargo of wheat has all run through her bottom. It is thought she can be got off,” the news clip reads.
At least a portion of the ship seems to have sunk and stayed buried until 2023. "It was described as having gone ashore four miles north of Goderich, which fits about where this wreckage is, and this would only represent a very small piece,” marine historian Patrick Folkes told CBS News.
