Wreckage Found May Be That of "Crissie Wright"

Carteret News-Times, Wednesday, June 8, 2011- Cheryl Burke

Mural Portraying Crissie Wright in Post Office by Simka Simkhovitch - 1939

BEAUFORT — A nonprofit marine archaeology company here thinks it may have found a legendary shipwreck off Shackleford Banks.

Rob Smith, president of Surface Interval Dive Co., based in Beaufort, said he believes his company has found the three-masted schooner Crissie Wright, which ran aground and partially sank in shallow water off Shackleford Banks on Jan. 8, 1886, near the now-vanished community of Wade’s Shore. All but one of its crew perished in the wreck.

“I’d been looking for the wreck on and off for the last 12 years,” he said Tuesday. “Then in April we found a debris field. And on our last trip on May 29 our magnetometer started singing like Ethel Merman. Our readings showed a large wreck and it’s in the right location. I’m 85 percent sure it’s the Crissie Wright.” MORE . . .