Nauset Beach in Cape Cod National Seashore

There is something unreal about stepping onto a beach at daybreak. The sun is just beginning to peek at the sand from over the horizon. The sky slowly becomes a blinding white. The sand is untouched from the night before. Each step gives--enough for there to be considerable burning in a runner's legs. The exertion leads to heavier breathing of short deep breaths of salty ocean air. Seagulls dance in the sky above, basking in the warmth of the sun's fresh rays and the empty beach. Waves break. More salty breaths. The ocean air combined with the exertion from running on sand makes the runner's skin and hair sticky. More waves break. The tall, empty lifeguard stand is in clear view. It's time to pick up the pace and race the Atlantic. The race is over, with no clear winner. The runner walks off of Nauset's sands to a soundtrack of waves crashing, seagulls crying, and deep salty breaths.

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The beach in winter: bitterly cold, ceaselessly windy, and full of surprises. Although shipwrecks were common in Cape Cod waters for about a century, it is still shocking—and fascinating—to stumble upon a ship’s ruins in a place so familiar. Some shipwrecks are of interest to the Cape Cod National Seashore, but others are unidentifiable, and viewers have to ponder their history and study the barnacled planks and rusty nails themselves for clues. Most amazing of all? Often, the wrecks are not washed up, but simply uncovered by the pounding winter surf. When a wreck appears—like this one, which was found about a mile outside of the protected beach in October of 2010—people flock to see it, knowing that within a matter of days, it may disappear again.

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