'I did not expect to find a shipwreck!' says boy whose treasure is being excavated

Andrea Bellemare · CBC News

· Posted: May 10, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

During a household travel to Point Farms Provincial Park northbound of Goderich, Ont. successful 2023, Lucas Atchison was utilizing a metallic detector that helium got arsenic a acquisition for his birthday, erstwhile helium recovered thing large and old.

"We were connected the beach, we got our metallic detector out, and arsenic soon arsenic we acceptable it up, ding! It was a spike from the shipwreck,"  Lucas said, who is present 10.  

He recalls alerting his dad, who astatine archetypal thought the spike whitethorn person been utilized to necktie up a boat. But Lucas wasn't convinced, and the brace started digging deeper. What they recovered was much spikes attached to wood.

"Then Dad told me, 'Lucas this is simply a shipwreck,'" the lad explained. "When I woke up that greeting I did not expect to find a shipwreck!"

Dad Jason Atchison said they reported the find to provincial parks staff, and past reached retired to the Ontario Marine Heritage Committee (OMHC), a non-profit unpaid radical dedicated to signaling and preserving marine history.

This week, with Lucas keeping a adjacent oculus connected the work, excavation connected the shipwreck began with an OMHC squad digging to spot precisely what Lucas found. 

Excavation enactment begins

The approvals process to excavation takes time, with regulatory requirements needing to beryllium met, according to marine archeologist Scarlett Janusas and marine historiographer Patrick Folkes.

They first met the Atchisons successful the autumn of 2023 astatine the formation to amusement them wherever they should beryllium looking. Then, connected Wednesday, a group of volunteers from the OMHC arrived with dense machinery supplied by the provincial park, and past switching to manus shovels, trowels and brushes to spot what the soil had buried. 

So far, Janusas said they recovered a smaller information of the vessel than they had hoped, but determined the conception was frames from the broadside of the ship. 

"We had treble frames, which seems to suggest that it was stronger-built vessel and we judge that it was a schooner," said Janusas. "A schooner is usually a two-masted sailing vessel, usually wooden."

Maybe the St. Anthony?

There wasn't capable of the vessel to definitively find its identity, but Folkes says 1 campaigner is the schooner St. Anthony.

"[It] was wrecked successful October of 1856 connected a voyage … from Chicago to Buffalo, New York with a load of grain," helium said. "It was described arsenic having gone ashore 4 miles northbound of Goderich, which fits astir wherever this wreckage is, and this would lone correspond a precise tiny piece."

The volunteers volition implicit standard drawings of the wreck, including a program presumption (from connected top) and illustration (side view) of the wreck.

Folkes says that 19th period security requirements would specify however galore fasteners, oregon spikes, should beryllium placed successful the frames and astatine what distance. Those details, helium said, volition assistance help find the ship's age.

What comes adjacent mightiness beryllium surprising. The volunteers volition then rebury the vessel to sphere it.

"We capable the spread backmost in, hide it and make an anaerobic environment, i.e. without oxygen, truthful you don't person immoderate benignant of parasites successful determination oregon immoderate different organisms that volition devour oregon destruct the wreckage," said Janusas.

"It's not a cleanable solution but it does support the operation of that vessel astir apt for astatine slightest different 50 years."