Some officials believe that a sailing ship dating back to the 1850's was discovered on a New Jersey beach on Wednesday, according to "Good Morning America."
Recently, drillers were readying a protective sea wall and came across what is believed to be the skeleton of the Ayrshire, a Scottish brig that hit a sand bar in 1850.
EIC Associates was hired by the state of New Jersey to reinforce the coastline, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the damages caused by the storm. Workers wouldn't have been surprised if they came across lumber or an old car, John Ducey, mayor of Brick, NJ, told ABC.
The drilling team hit an object while working near 8th Avenue in the township's Normandy Beach section, Ducey said, according to Brick Shorebeat. The impact off of the object broke the pile driver.
"The state tried it again with another machine and broke that one too," Ducey told Brick Shorebeat. "Then they started digging and began pulling up pieces of a ship."
"I was shocked," Ducey said. "I thought it was kind of cool that a ship from the 1850s was 20 feet under the sand."
The crew drilled for four months before hitting upon the wreckage. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said the thick timber could be from a ship or a barge, according to ABC. The agency did confirm that the boat would have been designed before the 1900's.
Peg-type construction was a style of ship building used prior to the 20th century.
"A ship has much more historical value than a barge," said DEP spokesperson Bob Constantine. "It could very well be a ship, but we don't know yet."
Daniel Lied, an expert at the New Jersey Shipwreck Museum in the InfoAge Science Center, believes that there may be more ship under what was already uncovered, according to ABC.
Shipwrecks happened "once a week on average" in the 19th century, Lied said.
The first time a Francis life-car, a metal life raft with a roof, was used was during the Ayrshire shipwreck, Lied told ABC. One hundred ninety-nine of the 201 immigrants, Irish and English, were saved by a Francis life-car.
"The first time it was ever used, and it was used quite successfully," Lied said. "If this wreckage is indeed the remains of Ayrshire, that makes this wreckage highly historical, one of the most historical ship wrecks in the U.S."
The work on the sea wall is going to continue, but only in other areas until the wreckage is investigated.
"Once we have a marine archaeologist look at it, we're going to probe into the ground, get a sense of how big the area is, and then we'll go from there," Constantine told ABC.
"Something like preserving a ship is important," Ducey told ABC. "So if it delays the project a bit, I have no problem with that."
