Steve Gann18th Century Ship Found Under Ground Zero WTC
July 15th 2010 23:33
Historians say the ship, believed to date to the 1700s, was defunct by the time it was used around 1810 to extend the shores of lower Manhattan.
"A ship is the summit of what you might find under the World Trade Center — it's exciting!" said Molly McDonald, an archaeologist who first spotted two pieces of hewn, curved timber — part of the frame of the ship — peeking out of the muddy soil at dawn on Tuesday.
By Thursday, she and three colleagues had dug up the hull from a muddy pit where parts of the new trade center are being built.
A steep, hanging ladder trembled with each step down into chaotic mounds of dirt, dwarfed all around by Manhattan skyscrapers rising into the July sun. People sank in the mud as they walked and grasped pieces of the historic wood for support — touching the centuries-old ship that may once have sailed the Caribbean, according to marine historian Norman Brower, who examined it Thursday.
McDonald and archaeologist A. Michael Pappalardo made the discovery on Tuesday at about 6:15 a.m., just as they started their shift observing construction in a pit at the southern edge of ground zero. The two work for AKRF, a New York environmental consulting firm hired to document artifacts discovered at the trade center site.
"We noticed two curved timbers that a backhoe had dislocated," McDonald said. Joined by two more archaeologists, they started digging with shovels, "and we quickly found the rib of a vessel and continued to clear it away and expose the hull over the last two days."
Brower, the historian, works in Mystic, Conn. — renowned for its historic vessels. He told the archaeologists that it was an oceangoing vessel that might have sailed the Caribbean, as evidenced by 18th-century marine organisms that had bored tiny tunnels in the timber.
The vessel's age will be estimated after the two pieces that first popped up are tested in a laboratory through dendrochronology — the science of using tree rings to determine dates and chronological order. Also unknown is what kind of wood was used to build the ship.
A 100-pound iron anchor was found a few yards from the hull, possibly from the old vessel.
There were also traces of human life nearby — "pieces of shoes all over," said McDonald, who had no idea how they got there.
The ship likely got there because of the effort to extend lower Manhattan into the Hudson River in the 1700s and 1800s using landfill. Cribbing usually consisted of logs joined together — much like a log cabin — but a derelict ship was occasionally used.
The ship discovered Tuesday was weighted down and sunk to the bottom of the river, as support for new city piers in a part of Manhattan tied to global commerce and trade.
A similar find emerged a walk away in 1982, when archaeologists found an 18th-century cargo ship on Water Street.
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