Divers have found proof that a shipwreck off the North Carolina coast is a steam ship that sank in 1838.
A tiny tag and a candlestick holder recovered from the wreck site bear the name of the ship ‘S.B Pulaski’ – for Steam Boat Pulaski – on its bottom, recovery firm Blue Water Ventures International have confirmed.
‘This is a game changer. I have believed for so long we were in the right spot, and there’s nothing like the feeling of having something like this confirmed,’ the company’s Keith Webb said.
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The smoking gun: a tiny tag with S.B Pulaski written on it that confirms the wreck is that of the famed steam ship
A candlestick holder from the ship has also been recovered, providing more evidence that the wreck of the S.B Pulaski lies off the coast of North Carolina
Dr. Joseph Schwarzer, director of the North Carolina Maritime Museums, was among the historians waiting for Webb to prove he was in the right spot.
Schwarzer was hoping for the ship’s bell, but he says a candlestick holder with the ship’s name is just as good.
‘That really is a smoking gun,’ Schwarzer said. ‘It’s like finding proof of something which was not just history, but almost legendary.
‘This is empirical evidence. The wreck is no longer folklore, on the pages of a book.
‘There is an actually object that proves it is out there.’
The wreck is 40 miles off the coast, more than 10 miles farther out to sea than historians originally believed the Pulaski went down.
A 1919 account in ‘The Georgia Historical Quarterly’ said a boiler explosion caused the ship to split in half.
The Pulaski had sailed from Savannah, Georgia, on June 13, 1838, and reached Charleston, South Carolina, that same day, according to the quarterly entry written by an unidentified man described as a survivor.
The ship was bound for Baltimore when it sank, killing about half of the 200 people aboard.
Schwarzer says historians want to know whether the boiler really caused the Pulaski to sink or whether there was another reason.
The Pulaski was ferrying politicians such as William B Rochester, a politician and the son of the New York city’s namesake, and members of the Lamar family, a wealthy Southern dynasty.
The former and at least five of the latter died. The ship made a stop – its last landfall – in Charleston, South Carolina.
An account of the ship’s tragic end by a Mrs Hugh McLeod reads: ‘The passengers were from the elite of [Savannah].
‘Sojourners returning to their distant homes, and others from farther South and West, assembled on the deck, presenting a picture of unusual brightness; so many happy faces animated by hope and expectation.
‘[The Pulaski] inspired confidence. She appeared so strong, and looked so comfortable.’
While traveling down the Eastern Seaboard one night in June, it exploded at around 11pm. Of the 200 passengers and crew on board, around 100 are believed to have died.
The Pulaski, a steamboat, was ferrying elite Southerners from Savannah, Georgia to Baltimore, Maryland when it exploded. Around 100 of the 200 passengers and crew on board died
A survivor’s account in the Wilmington Advertiser tells of ‘the wailing of the hopeless beings who were floating around in every direction, upon pieces of the wreck, to seek land’.
McLeod’s account, compiled from survivor’s recollections, reads: ‘The boat parted in two with a tremendous crash, and the bow and stern rose somewhat out of the water, but the latter again continued to sink until the water reached the promenade deck, when it separated into two parts, upset and precipitated all on it into the water.’
The North Carolina Standard deemed the disaster to be ‘the most painful catastrophe that has ever occurred on upon the American coast’ up to that point.
The shipwreck was blamed on a starboard boiler explosion; accounts from the day blamed the steamboat’s engineers.
Survivors then floated in rafts days before finally making landfall and reuniting with family and friends.
The North Carolina Standard deemed the disaster to be ‘the most painful catastrophe that has ever occurred on upon the American coast’. Divers are pictured exploring the wreckage
Blue Water Ventures International and Endurance Exploration have been working to recover coins and other valuables from a wreckage site.
The coins that have been found by the operation’s divers so far are dated to no later than 1836.
They include early United States silver issues and Spanish silver coins from the late 1700s.
But the facts that the coinage found on the boat predates 1838 and that analysis of the wreckage corroborates a boiler explosion were seen as promising by the exploration team.
‘Finding the Pulaski is a big deal,’ Dr Schwarzer of the North Carolina Maritime Museums told the Charlotte Observer earlier this year.
‘Saying something was the ‘Titanic of its time’ is an overworked metaphor….But I will say it’s one of the more significant disasters in American maritime history.’
Other notable objects found include a men’s razor, a candlestick holder and a turkey platter, per the Observer.
Evidence that could confirm the wreckage is in fact the Pulaski include the ship’s bell and numbering on its boilers – neither of which have been found.
‘Saying something was the ‘Titanic of its time’ is an overworked metaphor….But I will say it’s one of the more significant disasters in American maritime history,’ Dr Joseph Schwarzer of the North Carolina Maritime Museums told the Charlotte Observer in reference to the Pulaski