What started as a simple fishing outing between a grandfather and his grandson in Florida turned into an unexpected brush with history.
Thomas Peterson, a lifelong Hernando County resident who jokingly calls himself a “Florida redneck,” says he stumbled upon the remains of an old vessel in the shallow waters of Aripeka, a small Gulf Coast town about 50 miles north of Tampa.
“I looked down and saw what I thought looked like a boat covered in green stuff, almost like shag carpet,” Peterson told FOX 13 Tampa Bay. “The boys said it was a dock, but I said, ‘No, this is a boat. That’s pretty cool—I just found history.’”
At low tide, wooden beams and planks could be seen sticking out of the mud flats. Long, parallel timbers suggested the skeleton of a once-seaworthy ship. Alongside the wreckage, Peterson picked up a piece of purple glass, which he thinks may have been part of a liquor bottle.
Peterson believes the vessel could be a 19th-century rum-runner, possibly dating back more than 150 years—well before the Prohibition era that made smuggling liquor notorious. “I’ve been fishing in that same spot for ten years with my grandson. That’s where he caught his first big redfish,” he said.
Archaeologists are now examining the site to determine the wreck’s age and origin. According to Florida law, archaeological finds are considered public resources and can only be studied by licensed experts before being preserved by the state.
Though shipwrecks aren’t unusual along the coasts, each one adds a new layer to maritime history. Earlier this year, researchers uncovered four 18th-century wrecks in North Carolina’s Cape Fear region, and in April, a centuries-old ship was unearthed beneath a former fish market in Spain.
