Child discovers historic 200-year-old shipwreck with a metal detector

A kid with a metal detector has discovered a shipwreck that’s almost two centuries old in Ontario, Canada.

Lucas Atchison, 10, was only eight years old at the time when he struck figurative gold on a family Point Farms Provincial Park near Goderich in 2023.

Atchison was using his metal detector, a birthday gift, and found a steel spike that he thought warranted extra investigation.

The boy dug and found that the spike was connected to a piece of wood that also had several more spikes on it.

Eventually, it was discovered that the wood and spikes were connected to a much larger wreck of an entire ship.

According to CBC News, Atchison and his family reported their finding to the park staff as well as volunteer group, Ontario Marine Heritage Committee.

Archaeologists investigated and concluded that the wreck was most like an old schooner – a sailing ship with two or more masts – which they believed may have been used to transport goods, based on its sturdier double frames.

Sadly, they weren’t able to identify the exact identity of the vessel. Work is ongoing to try and identify it, which includes drawings being made from various angles.

19th century catalogues are also being assessed which detailed the insurance requirements for ships, and which would have had the number of spikes, or fasteners, that each ship’s frame had to have.

Experts think the most likely candidate is a schooner named St Anthony. It was built in 1856 and was in the process of transporting wheat from Chicago to Buffalo when it was wrecked in Ontario’s Lake Huron, according to a Buffalo Daily Republic news clip from the time.

“It was described as having gone ashore four miles north of Goderich, which fits about where this wreckage is, and this would only represent a very small piece,” marine historian Patrick Folkes told CBC News.

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