The recent nor’easter that killed eight people also excavated sand from the coastline of York’s Short Sands Beach, revealing the hull of a Revolutionary War-era ship. The ship rests about 20 yards from a parking lot located near the shoreline. Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time this has happened with this particular ship either. The ship has become a point of historical pride, and only appears after devestating storms. It was visible back in 1958, which lead people to question its origins. Two decades laster, another terrible storm provided a better glimpse of the vessel, writes The Washington Post. “Based on the type of construction, marine archaeologist Warren Riess hypothesized that the vessel is a sloop of about Revolutionary War age,” Sharon Cummins wrote for Seacoast Online. Then again in 2007, a storm revealed the ship. Sloops, or small square-rigged sailing warships with two or three masts, were important for the Continental Navy during the Revolutionary War. The ships harassed Royal Navy warships that delivered supplies and menaced revolutionaries on the shore. Not much is known about the uncovered sloop in York but the Maine Historic Preservation Commission declared it an archaeological site. A database search of 2,500 shipwrecks across the globe, from the Revolution to the nuclear age, did not return any records indicating it was a known American sloop, Navy history command spokeswoman Sandra Gall told The Washington Post.
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