DATE: Saturday, March 1, 1997               TAG: 9703010295

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY LANE DeGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: HATTERAS VILLAGE                  LENGTH:   80 lines

STORM SWEEPS SAND FROM THE REMAINS OF CENTURY-OLD SAILING SHIP AT HATTERAS

The salt-encrusted, barnacle-covered skeleton of a century-old sailing ship has been exhumed by the sea.

A storm, similar perhaps to the one that sank the massive vessel, recently swept the sand off the ship's weathered remains.

Some Hatteras Islanders said they remember seeing the same wreckage unearthed about 50 years ago, before it was reburied by a dune near the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

More than 600 documented wrecks - and scores of undocumented disasters - are scattered off the Outer Banks between Corolla and Ocracoke Island. Others are buried in the moving barrier island sand dunes that flank 90 miles of North Carolina's northern coast.

This shipwreck, discovered two weeks ago by a Hatteras Island homeowner, is bigger than most of its brethren.

About 90 feet of its wide, wooden rib cage is exposed between the ocean and a row of rental cottages.

Shipwreck expert Joseph Schwarzer estimates that the skeleton is about 150 feet long and about 30 feet wide. He said the ship probably sailed between 1850 and 1900.

``This thing's a lulu. It's huge!'' Schwarzer said Thursday from his Hatteras Island office. Schwarzer presides over the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum project, which is planned for Hatteras Village. The museum headquarters are about a 10-minute walk from the newly discovered shipwreck.

``It sort of fulfills your idea of what a shipwreck should look like,'' he said of the new site.

The section of ship left lying beside a boardwalk is part of the vessel's frame and ceiling planking from inside the hull, Schwarzer said. It is up to 20 planks across, the wrist-thick boards hand-hewn with painstaking precision. Hundreds of rusty, iron nails stand - like swaggering sailors - in crooked lines atop the wreckage.

Schwarzer said he has no idea what kind of ship this skeleton once supported, what happened to its captain and crew and why it was sailing off the Outer Banks, in some of the world's most dangerous waters.

There are 4,026 shipwrecks along the North Carolina coast, he said. Documents date ``from 1600 to yesterday.''

Barbara Brooks, of the state's division of underwater archaeology in the Department of Cultural Resources, said there are ``no specific plans to further identify that ship. But some of our scientists may come up to look at it later in the year.''

Shaped like a trapezoid, with the widest end against the dune, the wreck is rust colored from where the corroding iron seeped, with saltwater, into the cracked, worn wood. The timbers are parallel to the tideline. The flat section resembles a bed of nails blanketed by a sheet of small, broken shells.

Ronald and Jane Kelly of Girard, Ohio, were among scores of people who visited the shipwreck site on the National Park Service's Cape Hatteras National Seashore this month. They were vacationing in Hatteras Village and heard about the find through a hotel owner. They said they were impressed with the majesty of the ship.

``It's very unique and interesting. The enormous workings of 100 years ago that men would have had to put into making such a ship are amazing,'' Ronald Kelly said. ``I've never seen any one as large or as long as this.

``Usually, you have to dig up such rare archaeological discoveries. Here, the ocean does all the work for you.''

Sand piled atop the wreckage probably helped preserve the ship's remains, Schwarzer said. The best way to save the rest of the shipwreck, the museum curator said, is to leave it alone and let nature rebury it.

``It would be prohibitively expensive to try to excavate and preserve this ship,'' Schwarzer said. ``We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for a structure this size. It's much better left where it landed and came to rest so long ago.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

SHIPWRECK UNCOVERED

LANE DeGREGORY/The Virginian-Pilot

This shipwreck, discovered two weeks ago by a Hatteras Island

homeowner, is bigger than most of its brethren. About 90 feet of

its wide, wooden rib cage is exposed between the ocean and a row of

rental cottages. The section of ship left lying beside a boardwalk

is part of the vessel's frame and ceiling planking from inside the

hull. It is up to 20 planks across, the wrist-thick boards hand-hewn

with painstaking precision. Hundreds of rusty, iron nails stand -

like swaggering sailors - in crooked lines atop the wreckage.