The awesome power of the ocean hammers the coast of Washington with relentless energy, carving a continually changing shoreline at a place appropriately named Washaway Beach. It has been labeled the fastest eroding beach on the west coast. But as the waves batter the sandy shoreline, they expose the remains of the past long buried.
In 1921, a ship grounded at the mouth of Willipa Bay, broke apart, washed ashore and was soon buried in the sands. A year ago, the ocean began taking away what it had deposited in the past and slowly wooden beams began to appear in the shoreline bank. By December of last year 125 feet of a wooden deck and frame lay horizontal to the water. A late January storm slammed the coast with winds up to 70 miles per hour. Waves pounded the beach and the remains of the ship were freed from the bank that had held her for nearly a hundred years.
I wanted away for the weekend and the ocean seemed to be the perfect place to get away to. I called a friend who agreed to wander with me. After some discussion about which way to go, we ended up at Westport until we found a spot where we could go out on the beach. The storm that had lashed the coast a few weeks earlier had driven wood right up to the edge of the shore leaving the sand barren. We turned around and headed back in the opposite direction until the beach became narrower and soon the shore was lined with evergreens lying uprooted and left against the bank. Then our way was blocked by something lying across the beach. At first we thought it was a huge tree, but as we drew closer we found it was something much more fascinating. We stopped and joined those who had walked down to see the form lying in the sand and learned that we were looking at what was left of an old ship wreck. As I listened to the story being related by a local resident, I surveyed the scene before me.
'How appropriate.' I thought. 'Born to ride the waves. Hidden by sand and time for nearly a hundred years and now it seemed, she was attempting to return to the sea.'
When first discovered she was lying side to the ocean. Now she lay with her bow facing the sea from which she had come. Long spikes that once held decking in place rise from beams that once supported that deck. More spikes rise from the sand giving testimony to more beams and decking still buried below the surface. I wondered what it would look like if it were all visible. How big would be? How much was left?
What was the name of this ship? What happened to put her here? What did she carry? Where was she going? What happened to those aboard?
A little research upon arriving home did not really answer all of the questions. Most probably she was the Canadian Exporter, outbound with a load of lumber and other cargo that went aground and then broke up. Everyone got off safely before she broke in half. But there isn't really enough to make positive identification easy - just the wooden skeleton of a ship that gave in to the fury of the ocean waves.
Time, the ocean and human scavengers are all against her now. No one knows who owns whats left and time, the ocean and scavengers are striving to remove what is left.
I suppose every child hopes to find a shipwreck - always with the thought of buried pirate's treasure. But as I stood upon the waterlogged decking of this old ship, it was not treasure I thought of so much as the appearance of a ship that wanted to go back to sea, it was the lure of the unknown, a story untold.
