The World Trade Center Ship, From Stern to Stem

The New York Times: The World Trade Center Ship, From Stern to Stem
After finding the stern of an 18th-century sailing vessel in landfill where the new World Trade Center is being constructed, what could be better? Finding the bow — or at least enough to gain a clearer picture of the length of the vessel and how it was constructed; all of which might help solve the mystery of what it was doing anchored off Lower Manhattan in the first place.

The most intriguing theory now in circulation is that the vessel may have been used around the time of the Revolutionary War as a troop carrier of some sort. “That ties in really neatly with the British military button found between the frames,” said Warren Riess of the Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine.

Archaeologists unearthed the boat in July 2010, west of and perpendicular to Washington Street, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, where the waters of the Hudson once reached. It was immediately evident that the sunken hull had long ago been sundered by underground excavation. The remaining wood was so deteriorated that archaeologists couldn’t even tell at first whether they were looking at the fore portion or the aft.

[Fred R. Conrad of The Times created a panoramic view of the vessel in place.]

Once that was settled, they hoped to find what they surmised must exist under the east side of Washington Street: the bow. That had to wait a year, until the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began excavating that area for the subterranean vehicle security center.
That brings us to July 27, when archaeologists from the firm AKRF, working for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority, left the scene of the excavation — just where they thought the bow ought to be — utterly dejected. They’d found nothing but a few slivers.

“We walked to O’Hara’s, ordered a pint and said, ‘Well, we gave it our best shot,’ ” said A. Michael Pappalardo, one of the archaeologists.

His colleague Elizabeth Meade said, “We called ourselves ‘The Boy Who Cried Ship.’ ”

Argh, but maritime stories always have a twist. Two days later, as an excavator bucket pulled away at a small shelf of soil, the archaeologists were thrilled to see whole pieces of wood falling out. They asked that workers slow the excavation. Under the mud and muck was a small but cohesive bit of the lower bow. Its discovery was reported Thursday by the Manhattan news site DNAInfo.

There was no bowsprit to be found, or figure head, or quarterboard to give the vessel’s name. This was the submerged portion of the bow, where structural timbers known as the apron, the stem post and the gripe are found. Still, it was an exciting discovery.

It can now be said that the vessel was about 50 feet long. Thirty-two feet of the stern were exposed last year, 10 to 15 feet amidships were lost long ago and three to six feet of the stem were exposed on July 29. The remnants were left in place last weekend so that Dr. Riess could inspect them. They were then taken to the AKRF office at 440 Park Avenue South to be readied for shipment to the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University.

A dendrochronological examination of wood samples by Columbia University has already disclosed that the trees almost certainly grew in the Philadelphia area and were cut down no later than the 1770s.

A button found aboard the ship, from the coat of a private in the British Army 52nd Regiment of Foot, which battled the American rebels.The button to which Dr. Riess referred is a pewter disc with an ornamental border and the number “52″ in the center. Diane Dallal of AKRF said it corresponded with the 52nd Regiment of Foot, a light infantry regiment of the British Army that tried to suppress the colonial uprising in these parts. The fact that it is pewter — not silver — means that it adorned a private’s uniform, she said.

Archaeologists are careful not to associate many of the interesting things found around the boat with the boat itself. But this button was discovered last summer between two wooden frames of the ship. So though they do not yet know the boat’s name or its mission, they may have their first inkling of who the passengers were. And they know they have found the whole thing.