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Twenty-three duct-taped packages chilled in a refrigerator at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., for months before scientists finally got up the nerve last December to pull them out and peel them open.
Neil Pederson's team had initially chickened out. His tree-ring experts knew that the 200-year-old fragments inside were of interest to more than just their fellow dendrochronologists.
That's because the packages were the precious raw data derived from an unusual discovery last July made by workers at the World Trade Center construction site in New York City. Three stories below street level, buried among rotten piers and other landfill once used to extend Manhattan's shoreline, emerged a well-preserved skeleton of an old wooden ship.
The aged wooden planks were in a very delicate state, making any investigation into their age and origin especially daunting.
In the days that followed the find archaeologists overseeing the excavation at the massive construction site carefully documented and pulled from the pungent mud about nine meters of what remained of the USS Adrian—named after the construction site supervisor. The original vessel is estimated to have been at least twice that long.
But the rest of the ship's story remained buried. Where was it built, and when? Where did it sail, and why?
"This shipwreck gives us a glimpse of the past—the last chapter in a complex story. We can start rebuilding and rewriting those other chapters of a ship's life by doing things like dendrochronology," says tree-ring specialist Pearce Paul Creasman of the University of Arizona, in Tucson.
"The boat had a lifetime before it got to that point," adds Creasman, who was not involved in the project.
Over the next several months, a range of experts would start nailing down some important clues. Most recent are the newly released conclusions from the Columbia team's tree-ring analysis. In their report Pederson and his colleagues suggest that the ship was likely built in 1773 in a small shipyard on the outskirts of a major metropolitan center.
A maritime historian and a plant pathologist, among others, analyzed data ranging from horseshoe crabs to shipworms to help corroborate these findings and fill in other blanks.
"Various aspects of scientific research have contributed pieces to the puzzle," says Molly McDonald, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, Inc., the environmental and planning consultants monitoring the World Trade Center site for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. "All of them help us to understand a moment in history."
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9 Comments
Add CommentI understand that this is a fascinating discovery, however how is it that after building the twin towers does it take a major disaster to discover a great historical discovery such as this? Why was this not discovered prior to starting the construction of the twin towers?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Twin Towers were built by the gov rockefeller, and friends. When studying economics I found an interesting factoid not generally known, the steel company providing the last of the US produce steel took all of the inventory and did not produce more. Years later when in law school we had a contracts case about the barge companies on the Great Lakes and the case they had against the same steel company at the same time as the building of the Twin Towers. The customary contract not in writing but continual use for decades covered transportation of iron ore from the Canadian shield mines but around 1972 the production of Iron and Steel in the US by national corporations was ending. We did not realize it but the NY transportation group whose name I forget started buying foreign steel. It was the beginning of the end of US steel and the unions. Thank you Gov. (centrist? Republican) for helping destroy business in the USA. So do you think that these people would worry about the historic finding of an old ship that probably was part of the slave trade that went back to the Dutch ancestors of Rockefeller? Those people couldn't even find a relative who was lost in cannibal country, do you think they and their minions would care about historic finds?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd, the new bulk carriers being built for at least one Great Lakes fleet (Canadian, BTW) are being built in the US? No. Canada? No. China...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJJJetc, is that a steel corp in china? or is it one of the international firms that have partnered with the chinese military that will make the steel for the new twin towers? The Towers area should be left a park. NYC can always use more open space. and the bathtub should be filled in rather than left to be floodable by the next terrorist attack. The city gardening groups should demand the space for greening the city or something.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccording to info I have found about the towers, their were built on piers/piles set to bedrock at about 70 feet. I am guessing they drove piles through the ship and didn't notice. If they did intercept wood in the pre-construction geotechnical subsurface investigation for the design of the building, they probably assumed that it was natural, which for pile installation really is no concern.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The construction project involved excavating a large amount of material, which was used for landfill to make Battery Park City on the west side of Lower Manhattan."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center)
Interesting the ship wasn't completely destroyed by this part of the construction.
Also, the site was already covered by buildings that were demolished to make room for the twin towers.
(P.S. Hel...why didn't you cut it short and save us all the political junk and just say 'it's Bush's fault.)
Interesting that the comments regarding a significant scientific report about the 18th-century ship deals with the World Trade Center, where the ship's hull was discovered, and not with the incredible ship itself. My window has a view of the World Trade Center pit, and having lived in the area for many years, and having done extensive research, last summer when the discovery was made, I researched the 18th-century ship.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI found her name, her owner and her sea adventures. I wrote a book about the adventures of the colonials who built, owned and sailed this ship. My agent is reviewing the manuscript. As quoted in the article, this ship gives us an incredible glimpse into the past and the people of a vital era in New York's and America's history.
It will be fascinating to compare the ship I uncovered to the discoveries and theories of the the scientists who are testing the ship's materials and artifacts.
The importation of foreign steel into the US and eventual downfall of the industry can be traced back to the steel workers' strike in 1959. This strike almost bankrupted by father who owned a small sheet metal shop in North Texas. He was so upset by the strike that he never again bought US-made steel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor those of you who have an interest in the decline of the steel industry, I recommend the following book >> And the Wolf Finally Came by John P Hoerr - (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), a contemporary labor history, examines American steel’s gradual deterioration after WorldWar II. At the heart of the book, Hoerr interweaves archival research with interviews of dozens of workers, union leaders and managers to show how widespread discontent on the mill-floor over working conditions and managerial authority undermined efforts to built a constructive union-management relationship. This is supplemented by a dramatic narrative of negotiations, strikes and plant shutdowns based on the author’s on-scene reportage in the 1980s as the steel industry shrank by one-third and hemorrhaged more than 100,000 jobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegards,
George Bozovich