1626 Shipwreck Confirmed

n 1626, Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford recorded details of a shipwreck off Cape Cod that had and the oldest known colonial shipwreck in North America—came to public notice in 1863 when a storm revealed a surprisingly intact frame that was relocated in 1889 to a local museum. The wreck’s location jibed with what Bradford had written. A recent study, published in , firms up the hypothesis. Using tree rings to date the ship’s timbers, researchers found a match for oaks and elms lumbered in southern England between 1556 and 1646. The Irish indentures were rescued by the Nauset, a local tribe whose members knew some English. The workers stayed a year with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony before heading to Virginia for work on tobacco farms. Jamestown, Virginia, had been the doomed ship’s destination.