According to Island Beach State Park officials, the ship’s sudden reappearance is the result of a routine seasonal cycle. Winter storms remove sand from the shoreline, narrowing beaches. Most of that sand returns during calmer summer months. Occasionally, though, erosion peels back the coast just enough to reveal what’s been hiding underneath for more than a century. Most of the time, it’s nothing. But sometimes, it’s a shipwreck from 1883 that once carried a bunch of Puerto Rican oranges.
