18th Century Ship Used as Landfill Under World Trade Center
The crew working on the World Trade Center site unearthed a great discovery on Tuesday. They found a 18th century ship that was evidently used with other rubbish to fill in the land to extend lower Manhattan into the Hudson River. "That area was filled in between the 1790's and 1830's so we know that the ship was sunk down there as part of the landfill around that time," explained archaeologist Elizabeth Meade.
According to a 1797 map, the dig site is close to where Lindsey's and Lake's Wharf once went out into the Hudson. Two archeologists who were hired to document any relics that were found at the World Trade Center site, were there when the 18th century ship was found. One of the archeologists, Molly McDonald said, "we noticed curved timbers that a backhoe brought up, we quickly found the rib of a vessel and continued to clear it away and expose the hull over the last two days."
"We're going to send timber samples to a laboratory to do dendrochronology that will help us to get a sense of when the boat was constructed," McDonald added. Dendrochronology can date the time at which tree rings were formed and in many types of wood to the exact calendar year. The hull of the 18th century ship is 32 feet long and a boat specialist went out to also take a look at the ship. Time is of the essence to document and evaluate the ship, since the wood has been exposed to the air, it will begin to deteriorate.
On Wednesday, Archeologists and the work crew found at the same World Trade Center site, a 100-pound anchor just a few yards from the 18th century ship's hull. The anchor is approximately 3-4 feet wide but they're not sure if it belongs to that ship. The crew will carefully try to excavate the extremely fragile hull, seeing if any large pieces can be lifted out of the ground unbroken. The other archeologist at the site, A. Michael Pappalardo said, "I kept thinking of how closely it came to being destroyed."
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