Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: The Nathan Cobb Cottage is a rare historic home built using local traditions and cultural practices in the frame vernacular style, and is one of the last standing structures erected from salvaged ship lumber and wood freight in Florida. It was built in 1897 by William Fagen using railroad ties for its walls from the wreck of the schooner Nathan F. Cobb. The ship capsized during a nor’easter storm off the coast of North Carolina which drowned two of her crewmen. It then drifted for 375 miles until it ran aground off the coast of Ormond (now Ormond Beach) on December 5, 1896. During a rescue attempt to save the surviving six crewmen, Freeman Waterhouse, a bookkeeper for the Ormond Hotel, drowned, his body never recovered. It originally included a dog-trot, detached kitchen structure, wood plank front porch with ship balustrade railing, exposed railroad ties on its exterior walls and a wood shake shingle roof with two dormer windows. An indoor kitchen, bathroom and electricity were added which modernized the cottage. It is unlikely that such a building will be constructed again since wood schooners have not been built since the 1920s, and almost all have been decommissioned and salvaged decades ago.