Rough surf and heavy winds have exposed the remnants of a 19th-century shipwreck from beneath the sands of a New Jersey beach.

What is left of the cargo schooner named the Lawrence N. McKenzie appeared on the beach at Island Beach State Park, a narrow barrier island along the Jersey Shore in Ocean County.

State park officials provided the ship’s history and why it suddenly appeared this winter in a Facebook post:

The Lawrence N. McKenzie was a 98.2-foot schooner traveling from Puerto Rico to New York City with a cargo of oranges when it wrecked March 21, 1890. All eight crew on board survived the wreck. The vessel was built in 1883 with a homeport of Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Beach erosion during the winter months is common at Island Beach State Park and is part of a natural, cyclical process. Each year, high-energy waves and seasonal storms remove sand from the shoreline, resulting in narrower beaches and steeper profiles. Most beaches recover from the erosion during the calmer summer months — but for now, this winter’s erosion has revealed a glimpse into the park’s maritime history.

Photos posted on Facebook by the state park show thick, curving wooden ribs connected with diagonal, metal straps. Some of the wooden ribs appear to have metal spikes protruding from them.


Park authorities also said staff was monitoring the area, reminding visitors to “respect historic artifacts” and not to “touch or remove” them, subject to penalties by the state park police.

“Several historic shipwrecks have been exposed at Island Beach State Park over the years,” a park spokesman told Fox News Digital. “The Lawrence N. McKenzie has surfaced before, but not in more than a decade.”

Smithsonian Magazine reported:

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Abigail Covington, the vessel wrecked after sailing into heavy fog near Barnegat Bay. By the time members of the U.S. Life-Saving Service stationed in Cedar Creek, New Jersey, showed up to rescue the crew, the vessel had taken on six feet of water. The ship was declared a total loss.

That stretch of New Jersey’s coast was infamously challenging for ships to navigate because its sandy shoals and channels were always changing. It even took on a grim nickname: “the graveyard of the Atlantic.”

The McKenzie is not the only case involving 19th-century remains that has drawn attention in recent months. Last May, mysterious bones found in the 1990s and in 2013 on the Jersey Shore were identified.

They belonged to a 29-year-old schooner captain named Henry Goodsell who died 181 years ago when his ship, the Oriental, sunk in the Atlantic while hauling 60 tons of marble.

Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.