It's truly amazing what science can do these days. Ramapo College students worked with the New Jersey State Police to identify bones from a tragic ship wreck in 1844. A human skull washed ashore in 1995 and bone fragments in 2013 in Cape May County. The Ramapo College Investigative Genealogy Center started researching the mystery in 2023. They determined the age of the bones and looked back at ship wrecks that took place around that time. Somehow they determined the bones belonged to 29 year old Henry Goodsell the captain of a ship that sank about a mile off shore. The Oriental was carrying 60 tons of marble from Connecticut to Philadelphia. Goodsell and his five crew members did not survive. The New Jersey State Police were able to locate a great grand child of Goodsell. DNA confirmed the bones belonged to him. It's remarkable the bones survived over 150 years in the ocean. Ramapo College is in Mahwah.
Source: NJ.COM
Photo: Velvetfish / iStock / Getty Images