By Jay Cook

HIGHLANDS – That old saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” for the most part, rings true. Yet for three local scuba divers, that adage could instead read “one man’s wreck is another man’s treasure.”

Gary Filippone, Joe Anthony and Kenny Harber are turning their diving expedition between 2002 and 2007 into a book, in which they’ll talk about how they took hundreds of boat rides and retrieved thousands of artifacts from a Sandy Hook shipwreck.

A Highlands resident and veteran wreck diver with 43 years of scuba experience under his weight belt, Filippone claims he has never seen anything like what he first came upon on July 1, 2002: a shipwreck 1,200 feet off the shores of Sandy Hook, in only 19 feet of water during low tide.

What he encountered was Ship Aurora, a 106-foot shipping vessel, bound for New York City from Liverpool, England. The ship sank on Nov. 27, 1827, after a storm threw the three-mast ship off course. Of the roughly 40 voyagers on board that night, six crew members perished as they went down with the ship.

Immediately after passing through the tolls into Sandy Hook, Filippone used Area A, which has a fenced-in parking lot, on the barrier peninsula as a reference for finding the wreck each trip out.

What was left in the high-dynamic area, which has a high rate of ground swells and rough waters, were the remains of the ship sans a mast and sails, most likely cut loose during the storm.



Using Filippone’s 23-foot center console boat named “Sea Monkey,” he and Anthony, a resident of Atlantic Highlands, began to further investigate the ship only a week later. Filippone brought his spear gun down, and after missing a shot and it clanking off of Ship Aurora’s hull, they noticed something shining in the sand. “I believe this is one of the top 10 American wrecks in the country, talking historically,” Filippone said over an early morning cup of coffee at Water Witch Coffee in Highlands, where the trio met each morning before their dives.Using Filippone’s 23-foot center console boat named “Sea Monkey,” he and Anthony, a resident of Atlantic Highlands, began to further investigate the ship only a week later. Filippone brought his spear gun down, and after missing a shot and it clanking off of Ship Aurora’s hull, they noticed something shining in the sand. “Picture a sand mound in your head,” Anthony said. “And then you just take a big fan and blow the top of that off; and all you see is blue and green edges stacked for feet.”

Those edges turned out to be roughly 2,200 total pieces of Staffordshire and shell edge china, surrounded by mounds of roofing slate manufactured for New York City rooftops.

“You wouldn’t have thought that there was much of anything in there, except the ship was a deep hull,” said Harber, who also lives in Atlantic Highlands and is the coffee shop’s property owner.

He was surprised by how much was waiting to be found inside.