The Warren Sawyer was carrying cotton and scrap iron from New Orleans to Boston when a December storm ended its voyage on Nantucket. On the night of 22 December 1884, the three-masted schooner went ashore near Surfside. The captain and seven crewmen survived; the ship did not. Islanders recovered much of the cotton before a second storm scattered the remaining cargo and timbers along the beach. The places here connect the departure port, the wreck’s coastal setting and the station whose men carried out the rescue. Remains believed to belong to the schooner still reappear as the south shore changes.
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December 1884
New Orleans riverfront, Louisiana, United States
The Warren Sawyer left New Orleans carrying 1,115 bales of cotton and 28 tons of scrap iron for Boston. Cotton had long tied this Mississippi port to the mills and merchants of New England; the schooner was working an established coastal trade. No departure berth has been identified in the wreck accounts. This marker represents the port area, rather than a particular wharf.
22 December 1884; later exposures
Nantucket south shore, Massachusetts, United States
At about 11 p.m. on 22 December, the schooner grounded on Nantucket’s south shore. Captain Edwin L. Saunders had been driven offshore repeatedly and reported five days without an observation to establish his position. Islanders salvaged roughly 700 cotton bales before another storm broke the ship apart on 6 January 1885. Timbers associated with the wreck have since emerged from the shifting sand, including a September 2026 exposure whose identification was still being checked. The marker indicates the coastal area, not a surveyed position of the latest fragment.
Night of 22–23 December 1884
31 Western Avenue, Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States
The rescuers came from Surfside’s life-saving station, east of the grounding. They secured a line to the schooner and brought Saunders and his seven crewmen ashore in a breeches buoy: a suspended seat hauled along a rope above the surf. All eight survived. The station building still stands on Western Avenue. The photograph shows it in 1966, decades after its life-saving service ended.
