We wanted to see the sun come up and are met, instead, by this iceribbed ship

Courtesy of fleurdelis28: a ghost ship on Newcomb Hollow Beach.

The 50 feet of hand-cut oak ribs had probably been swallowed by the sea more than a century ago, the remnants of a schooner lost with some 1,500 other ships that have sunk in the unpredictable waters off Cape Cod.

But a violent storm this week churned history up off the sandy, ocean floor, spitting the remains of the 19th-century shipwreck onto Newcomb Hollow Beach.

The timbers and planks, held together by wooden pegs, offer a glimpse of the golden age of the schooner, when hundreds of sails dotted the horizon here as ships transported lumber, granite, and coal. Poking up like the bones of a mighty whale, the wreckage has become a magnet pulling the curious onto the frigid beach, where frozen sand crunched underfoot.

This deserves its own story.