Did You Know There’s a Ship Hidden in the Sand of a New Hampshire Beach?

It’s easy to make fun of those guys at the beach walking around looking for coins. But if you’ve got a ship detector...!

Just after the New Year in 1905, the Lizzie Carr was transporting lumber from Maine to New York City when a Nor’easter approached, according to Rye’s Seacoast Science Center. The ship’s captain decided to dock two miles south of what we know as Wallis Sands Beach (just down the street from one of the top "secret" beaches in the U.S.).

The captain’s plan was to ride things out, but the storm would eventually cause the ship to collide with rocks onshore, the hull giving way leaving all seven crew members fighting for their lives. Sadly, one was lost at sea and presumed dead.

Fast forward to 2000, and another major storm brought big waves to the Seacoast – and a surprise to people visiting Pirates Cove beach: the Lizzie Carr.

95 years later, residents (many of whom, ironically, live in houses built using the very lumber carried by the ship) were unfamiliar with the Lizzie Carr. However, a Plymouth State professor and his students were able to confirm it was indeed the ship that had gone missing nearly a century prior.

If you visit the Seacoast Science Center (a tremendous stop if you have kids, by the way), you can see a preserved section of the ship that was installed over the course of a year in 2004 (much of which was dedicated just to letting the remains of the schooner built in 1868 dry).

However, if you walk along Wallis Sands, be careful; you might stumble along the buried remains of the Lizzie Carr.