Accidental find.

We went over to walk the Samson sandbar at low tide recently and as I anchored the boat just north of Nut Rock, I noticed a long curved line down in the sand below the boat.  'That needs further investigation' I thought. Well, we had our walk on the bar with the dog, then went back to the boat to get my snorkeling gear on. I then dropped into the water to investigate the curve under the boat. I arrived in roughly the centre of the curve and duck dived down to have a closer look. It turned out to be a thick hefty length of iron chain. I then chose to follow it along off to my right towards Stoney Island.  However, after about 30m the chain disappeared down under the sand. I then turned to go other way and went along it for about another 30m-60m now in total. At its end I found this in the video below. 

(The wife is in the following video to give it some scale)

 There was obviously some incident had occurred in this position- and the anchor being around circa 1900 gives the incident a rough date in time. The chain ran from this anchor in the east to west towards stoney island where the chain disappeared in the sand. This must mean that the vessel was dragging towards that island and had to quickly cast away its gear to get away from danger. Maybe the vessel went ashore there but was later got off on a higher tide-who knows!!?. I was just amazed to see this thing where it now lies to still be there- for whatevever happened there- the chain and anchor were clearly salvageable and the locals were very good at that kind of thing- so why was it left behind? Not only that but this anchor stands up in a very well used local channel. It lays between nut rock and the entrance to Tresco channel. How noone has hit it thus far is amazing. Maybe someone has and I've just not heard of it yet. Our small boat could just about touch on it on a very low spring tide so bigger boats must be in more danger of it- and its not marked on any chart. But I supposed no bigger boat need go over that way until the tide is high enough for them to enter Tresco channel via nut rock anyway. Still we had a bit of fun with this hazard on this day recently.