Photo source : NYTimes14 July,2010Finding a ship hidden for 200 years may remind you the plot of the movie “National Tresure” and “Sahara”. But that’s what has happened at the World trade center site. Workers carrying out the excavation for the future world trade center site were surprised to find the remnants of a 200 year old ship buried deep under the site.
David W. Dunlap writes in the NYTimes “On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street. “They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction. The vessel, presumably dating from the mid- to late 1700s, was evidently undisturbed more than 200 years.”
This area which is located between Liberty and Cedar Street was somehow not touched at the time of previous world trade center construction. Quick search of maps makes us wonder how this ship came to this site. In olden days the docks and wooden cribbing seems to extend along the stretch of that side of shoreline. The bird’s eye view of NY in 1874 is shown below:
Photo source : http://www.learn.columbia.edu/newyork/html/nyseminar_resource.html
The NYTimes article also say that the hull was deliberately truncated and could be used as land fill. Not only that, it notes further that “A 1797 map shows that the excavation site is close to where Lindsey’s Wharf and Lake’s Wharf once projected into the Hudson.”
For the NYTimes article check here .
key words: archealogy, new archealogical finding in new york, discovery of ancient ship in new york world trade center site, archealogiologists excited
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