This wreck was formerly thought to be the Yankee. However, the "G&D" was identified as the Yankee, leaving this wreck unidentified. It consists of engine, boilers, driveshaft, and propeller, and is reputed to be a good lobster wreck.
In this modern age of radio, these signal flags are a quaint anachronism that is no longer used, although they were once very important in ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communications. Each flag stands for both a letter value and a shorthand message. The letters are expressed here in the modern international phonetic alphabet, in which A-B-C would be spoken Alpha-Bravo-Charlie (see below).
While not exactly shipwreck artifacts, lobster traps, scallop dredges, and other fishing equipment are not uncommon sights on and around New Jersey shipwrecks.
A packet ship of the early 1800s. Of note is the way the sails on the mainmast are set backward, against the sails on the fore- and mizzen- masts. Known as "backing", this was how a square-rigged ship "put on the brakes" to slow or stop without actually furling the sails.
Wind power has been used by mankind for millennia. Almost every human culture has constructed sailing vessels of some kind, from crude log or reed rafts to the highly developed wind-jammers of the early twentieth century. Many of these vessels were the most complex and technologically advanced machines of their time - equivalent to our jet airliners.
Old vessels make excellent artificial reefs. They provide high profile structure for pelagic fish, low profile structure for demersal fish, as well as surface area for the attachment of mussels, barnacles, tubeworms, and other food organisms. Shipwrecks have been the basis for the state's bottom fisheries which feature sea bass, tautog, ling, cod, and pollock. and for recreational scuba diving activities. The New Jersey coast has a large number of shipwrecks, estimates range from 500 to 3,000. These wrecks are the result of 200 years of maritime disasters and enemy submarine operations during World Wars I and II.