The Salamander Point wreck is believed to be the remains of an armed merchantman from the colonial period, perhaps dating to about 1725. The wreck lies in water depths from 15 to 35 feet in Hart's Cove off Salamander Point, a small peninsula in the Piscataqua River on the island of New Castle, New Hampshire. The river carried substantial traffic in the colonial period, and today it remains an important site. The Portsmouth Naval Base just upriver from Salamander Point services attack submarines. During one field season the archaeology team watched the 560-foot long submarine USS Maine (SSBN 741) travel past Salamander Point en route to the base for the ceremony that brought her into the fleet. The Maine is an Ohio-class Trident submarine.

The wreck consists of keel, floors, partial first futtocks, garboard strakes, hull strakes, ceiling planking, keelson with partial mortise, and disarticulated framing and planking members. The keel is a large piece of center-cut oak with a molded dimension of 22 inches and a sided dimension of 18 inches. The wreck's most obvious feature is a stone ballast pile measuring approximately 25 x 8 feet. Overall the wreck site is approximately 70 feet long and 12 feet wide, though it seems that there is a fair amount of structure lying undisturbed under sediments to the northwest side.

The site was discovered in the early 1970s by recreational divers, who removed artifacts including two iron guns, several iron shot, lead musket balls, "onion bottles", and ceramic material. Archaeological investigations over the past four years have turned up iron concretions, a lead patch, and additional glass and ceramic material, including portions of a Rhennish stoneware chamber pot and sherds from a Rhennish Bellarmine bottle. The 1994 investigation revealed a barrel stave under the keel. All evidence points to a terminus ante quem of about 1750, though the dynamic currents and sediment transport regime of the cove might have introduced some cultural material.

The sediments are stratified, with small-grained black (probably organic) sediment between the floors in the bilge, followed by larger grained sand, gravel, and flint nodules. The ballast stones are river cobbles and larger boulders, many of which are granite.

Historical significance:

Merchant craft similar to the Salamander Point vessel were critical to the survival and growth of the American colonies. They carried vital manufactured goods from Europe to the New World, and transported American exports around the world. The final cargo of the Salamander Point vessel is unknown, but the historical record indicates possible materials.  The Piscataqua region was a source of lumber for ship building, and provided pine mast sticks for the Royal Navy. Extremely fertile fishing grounds were just offshore: cod, haddock, and other groundfish were caught, dried, and salted for export to southern Europe and the Caribbean colonies. Since most arable land in the Caribbean colonies was dedicated to cash crops, almost all food necessary to sustain landowners and slaves had to be imported. Even today the national dish of Jamaica is salt cod. New England fish, meat, and ice were traded for molasses and other tropical products. This intracolonial shipping was voluminous; however, there are few extant records to illuminate those trades. Maritime archaeological investigations of vessels like this may provide insights into colonial society and economics that can be gained no other way.

Relatively few examples of colonial-period vessels have been investigated archaeologically in American waters. The Hart's Cove shallop, a small late-17th century workboat, was excavated in the 1980s. That vessel's remains lie within 100 meters of the Salamander Point wreck. The Salamander Point wreck may provide comparative structural data for that vessel as well as the Ronship Ship. The Ronson Ship was the subject of a rescue archaeology project in 1982 after it was unearthed by a construction crew in New York City during the construction of an office building. That vessel had apparently been incorporated as fill material along the river in the mid-eighteenth century (see Warren Riess, "The Ronson Ship: The Study of an Eighteenth Century Merchantman Excavated in Manhattan, New York in 1982" Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire PhD dissertation, 1987). Some other wrecks of seagoing colonial vessels  include the Revolutionary War privateer, Defence, in Penobscot Bay, Maine;  the 1609 Sea Venture in Bermuda; and the Anse aux Bouleaux wreck, a 1690 New-England built ship which was part of part of Phips' fleet against Quebec. For information on that wreck, see http://www.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/phips/wreck01.htm

Another contemporary vessel is the so-called "Sparrow Hawk", which turned up in the sands of Cape Cod, Massachusetts in the middle of the nineteenth century. The wreck is now preserved in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth (Massachusetts). The historical "Sparrow Hawk" was lost in 1626 and the wreck, if not the same vessel, apparently is from the same period. A description of the vessel has been published in American Neptune.