Bones of 19th-century ship are revealed by storm erosion in Fla.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – Not long after the Caroline Eddy set sail in 1880 from Florida with cargo bound for up the coast, a powerful hurricane nearly tore it apart, casting the crew, clinging to the rigging, adrift for two days before the wreck washed ashore.

Over 140 years later, a man walking along Crescent Beach this month noticed some timber sticking out of the sand after another tropical storm, Eta, battered the beach with days of high waves and powerful winds. Maritime archaeologists believe it may be the bones of the Caroline Eddy, preserved for over a century by a blanket of sand.

"It was sitting here under a sand dune all this time, and all of a sudden there it was, thanks to mother nature," said Chuck Meide, a maritime archaeologist with the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, based in St. Augustine, Fla.

Since the discovery, Meide and his team have worked to record and identify the remains, digging small holes in the sand that expose parts of the ship during low tide.

But documenting the ship is a race against time and waves. Two weeks ago, low tide exposed a nearly 5-foot view of exposed timbers; the next day a 20-foot section was visible. But the sands have since shifted, covering the ship completely.

With measurements, notes and thousands of photos, his team plans to create a digital three-dimensional model of the ship.

"We'll never see the wreck all open at the same time here on the beach, but we will on our computer screen," he said on Tuesday as a small crowd gathered around the roped-off area where the archaeologists were working.

"It's built solid enough to be a lumber vessel, has the right fastenings to be a ship from the 1800s and the right timbers for a ship of the 1800s," Meide said. "The Caroline Eddy is our prime suspect."

Records show that the Caroline Eddy was built in 1862 as a supply ship for the U.S. Army during the Civil War and was later sold to a merchant.