Documentation and identification of the two-masted schooner Neptune

Abstract

In late December 1982, remains of a wooden vessel were exposed by storm-induced winter beach erosion on the California coast near San Francisco. The environmentally exposed shipwreck remains were carefully documented, allowing a projected architectural reconstruction. Historical research provided a vessel-specific identification. The remains were identified as a starboard hull portion of the Neptune, a two-masted schooner involved in the lumber trade along the Pacific Coast from 1882 to 1900. Once common, the two-masted schooners of the Pacific Coast are now extinct; the documentation of Neptune’s wreckage was the first archaeological investigation of a vessel of this type. Now buried again by beach accretion, the remains provided the basis for a non-destructive maritime archaeological project that illustrates the maxim propounded by J. Richard Steffy (1977): “maximum results from minimum remains.” The documentation and identification of the Neptune is presented as a case study in approach and illustrates the significance of environmentally exposed wooden shipwreck remains.