Could this be wreckage from a 214-year-old maritime disaster?

In December 1811, a Royal Navy frigate sank off the coast of County Donegal, and the mystery surrounding the final resting place of part of the wreck may now finally have been solved.

Recent sand displacement caused by high winds at Ballymastocker Bay in Lough Swilly has revealed what some believe to be the remains of HMS Saldanha.

Last seen sailing off Fanad Head in a storm, the ship was lost with all 253 crew members on board - leaving, according to some subsequent newspaper reports of the disaster, only the captain's parrot as the sole survivor.

Now, a wooden structure has been spotted on the beach close to Portsalon, and work to formally identify the discovery and determine whether it is indeed the remains of the ill-fated ship has begun.

As first reported in the Tirconaill Tribune, photographic evidence of the wooden structure has emerged in recent weeks.

Local archaeologist John O'Raw has been fascinated by the story ever since he and others came across fragments of the ship while diving in the coastal waters off County Donegal in 2000.

He later went on to study for an MSc in Maritime Archaeology at Ulster University, where he researched shipwrecks such as the Saldanha.

"Much of what was originally written about the Saldanha may not have been entirely accurate due to misinterpretations in newspapers from the time, but now we know a lot more and it's possible to unearth the truth," he told BBC News NI.

"We now understand the Saldanha entered the lough in hurricane-like conditions, impacted onto the cliffs south of Portsalon, and drifted up onto the beach in two separate main pieces.

"Much of the ship was recovered by locals and Crown forces over the following days, but some of the wreckage - that is to say, the sections that were below sea level - was not recoverable."

O'Raw said the wreckage photographed recently could be part of the Saldanha's front right section, known as the starboard bow.

"We believe the structures you can see protruding from the sand are what are known as futtocks, which are individual, curved timber pieces that make up the ribs or frames of a wooden ship's hull."

O'Raw said he and other researchers are working to formally identify the section of the ship with the responsible agency, The National Monuments Service.

The HMS Saldanha was a British 36-gun frigate that patrolled the Irish coast during the Napoleonic Wars.

The ship, along with HMS Talbot, was sailing from Buncrana to enforce a naval blockade against France in the north Atlantic when tragedy struck.

The 253 servicemen, including the ship's captain, William Pakenham, died after their vessel hit storm conditions and entered Lough Swilly for shelter on 4 December 1811.

The wreck of HMS Saldanha prompted the building of Fanad Lighthouse, which was first lit on Saint Patrick's Day 1817 and has illuminated the waters of Lough Swilly ever since.

Journalist Anne Cadwallader, who owns a cottage near Ballymastocker Bay, has helped organise memorial tributes for the men who died in the HMS Saldanha disaster.

"Very little of the Saldanha was ever found," she told BBC Radio Foyle's North West Today programme.

"The anchor is in Fort Dunree across in Inishowen, but very little other than that. She was smashed to bits on the rocks," Cadwallader said.

"Then recently, very bad storms and gales have exposed these timbers on the beach, and it has caused a huge amount of interest locally... that these timbers on the beach could be part of the Saldanha.

"We're all waiting to hear, to get confirmation of that."

In 2011, locals on the Fanad peninsula raised €1,500 (£1,200) to erect a monument near the site.

A year later, a commemorative plaque bearing the names of the crew was unveiled using information from the National Archives in London.

"Apart from the captain, William Pakenham - apart from him - the rest of the men were just buried without ceremony, we think, where the Portsalon Golf Club now is," Cadwallader said.

They were placed into mass graves, unremarked, she added.

"This happened in 1811, and all this time later people are still drawn to the story and the mystery," Cadwallader continued.

"The men entered the freezing cold water and blustering gales. One can only imagine the horrors they went through, and not a single one of them survived.

"It's hardly surprising, with a tragedy like that, that all the stories and myths and legends grew up around the wreck of the Saldanha."

The National Monuments Service said it carried out an inspection of the wreck site on 7 February and undertook a "rapid recording" and "acquired positive locational details for it".

"We are now adding this information to our own database (the Wreck Inventory of Ireland Database) and will review our records for wrecks in the area," a spokesperson said.

"As it stands, we cannot say what wreck it is or provide a positive identification, and further assessment and dating analysis of the wreck timbers would be needed."

They organisation will return in March to do more extensive recording "when tides and weather permit optimum time on site".