SJC Beach Services and St. Augustine Lighthouse Team Up to Preserve Fragments of Historic Shipwreck Found on Matanzas Beach

• 12 September 2025
• Category: SJC News Parks and Recreation
• Tags: 2025

Timber from ship dating back to 19^th century or earlier buried and marked by GPS

St. Johns County Beach Services teamed up with the St. Augustine Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) on Aug. 26 to preserve two fragments of a historic shipwreck spotted by County staff on Matanzas Beach. The Office of Public Affairs produced a video to highlight this collaboration.

Early that morning, Beach Services staff spotted the large timbers, with one being transported back to the Beach Services office on Pope Road before LAMP researchers identified both as part of a shipwreck dating back to at least the 1800s. They were likely brought ashore by the movement of Hurricane Erin in the Atlantic Ocean. Pictures and measurements were taken for later examination before Beach Services helped bury the remaining timber under wet sand.

LAMP Director Chuck Meide praised the County’s efforts in helping to preserve a remnant of Florida’s maritime past for research by his team.

“We are really appreciative of St. Johns County, and especially Beach Services,” Meide said. “As soon as they realized they had a historic shipwreck timber, they reached out to us at LAMP and assisted us every step of the way. We got permission from the State of Florida to bury it, and [Beaches staff] showed up here with their Bobcat and helped us get this thing buried nice and deep so it will stay safe from looters and safe from the sun.”

Meide and Airielle Cathers, LAMP’s dive safety officer, explained that GPS equipment was used both to mark the timber’s location on the beach and to take even more detailed measurements of it.

“[It’s] what we call photogrammetry,” Cathers said. “It’s taking hundreds to thousands of individual photographs that we can then stitch together… and now all we have to do is go home and feed all these images into our computer and we will have an accurate three-dimensional model.”

“Every step of the way, the County was awesome,” Meide said. “Wonderful place to live in St. Augustine, in St. Johns County, and they really came to the rescue of this historic shipwreck.”