Archaeologists Stunned By Discovery Of An Ancient Ship Beneath The World Trade Center’s Remains
For those old enough to remember it, September 11, 2001, is a day that will always live in infamy. With the loss of 3,000 American lives and one of the nation's most iconic landmarks, the events of 9/11 left a permanent scar on American culture.
However, that scar isn't just metaphorical. The damage was catastrophic and rebuilding at the site of Ground Zero has taken years. However, it also presented an opportunity for a discovery nobody would have ever expected. After all, even the most populated and transformed places in the world have secrets lurking under their soil.
The immediate aftermath
Although construction crews worked feverishly soon after the events of 9/11, most of their work involved clearing rubble from Ground Zero. Once life in Lower Manhattan had stabilized and plans were drawn up, however, a more ambitious construction project went underway.
While construction on One World Trade Center was in progress, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was in the midst of a massive construction project where the original Twin Towers once stood. However, the project would hit an unexpected delay.
A sudden discovery
As CBS News reported, crews were in the process of excavating land for what would become the World Trade Center's Vehicular Security Center in July on 2010. This was an underground parking and security complex that required a deeper dig than even the World Trade Center itself.
After all, there's no other reason why the discovery construction crews suddenly uncovered on one fateful summer day wasn't revealed decades earlier. Nonetheless, the backhoes and other construction equipment suddenly stopped when something was found about 22 feet below street level.
They were ready for this
According to CNN, it's common practice for large construction projects like these to have archaeologists on site to monitor the excavated grounds for any potential finds. As CBS News reported, some animal bones, ceramic dishes, bottles and dozens of shoes had been recovered by the time July rolled around.
As archaeologist Molly McDonald told CNN, however, it didn't take crews much longer to find out what those items likely came from. in her words, "Early one morning, we were monitoring and suddenly saw this curved timber come up. It was clear to me that it was part of a ship, so we stopped the backhoes and starting hand digging."
It had to be immediately protected
Although the work of removing the 32-foot long partial hull of the ship was delicate, it also had to be undertaken quickly. As CBS News reported, every moment the ship was no longer encased in foul-smelling mud and exposed to the air was another moment where it risked damage.
As McDonald told CNN, "It's such an intense site already based on its recent history, so to be in the midst of this urban, modern, very fraught location, and then to be sitting on what was a river bottom, with clams and fish, and the smell of low tide, was really an amazing juxtaposition."
A safe place while everything else was figured out
Naturally, the hull had to be brought somewhere safe before before the painstaking work of identifying it could begin. As CBS News reported, that place turned out to be the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.
The mysterious ship's parts were excavated piece by piece, and those pieces were then soaked in water once they arrived at the lab. This was done to prevent the wood from cracking and warping. Once the ship was safely stored, it soon became clear that solving its mysteries would need some specialized expertise.
The main objectives of the work to come
Once the ship was put in a position where it wouldn't deteriorate further, work began to determine three major questions. They're all fairly standard area of study when uncovering a long-dormant shipwreck. Naturally, the first two matters to address concern where it came from and when it was made.
Once those matters are clarified, it's then natural to ask how it came to rest in Lower Manhattan, of all places. Ideally, researchers would make an educated proposal as to the ship's general life span before it was embedded in what would become Ground Zero.
The only place to unlock answers about wood
According to CBS News, a few pieces of the ship were sent off to the Tree Ring Laboratory at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. There, they were dried slowly in a cold room and researchers cut thick slices of the wood off.
This would allow them to read the wood's tree rings, which can be surprisingly eloquent about where and when a tree was cut down. However, a scientist needs to study more than just the rings themselves to get a fix on the location.
They were able to find out almost everything
As researchers examined the size and model of the ship, they realized that it was most likely a sloop, a smaller ship that's often used to escort convoys in times of war. Although this painting shows sloops of Dutch origin, the design is similar enough to illustrate what it looked like.
According to to National Geographic, the white oak used to make the majority of the ship was sourced from an old growth forest in southeastern Pennsylvania in 1773. While it's certainly incredible to find a ship that predates the Revolutionary War, that only raised further questions about how it got there.
How did they know such specific information?
As CNN reported, the process that the Tree Ring Laboratory used is called "dendroprovenancing," and it involves comparing the ship's tree rings to those in the extensive database the lab had for trees throughout the eastern United States.
As research scientist Neil Pederson explained, "Trees respond to climate each year and that pattern of rings created within the tree produces a signature for that species in a forest or region." Tree rings are wide during healthy growth periods and small during rougher periods, so seeing how this ebb and flow played out through the ship's rings gives researchers something to compare it to.
A simple first step to narrow things down
At first glance, the task ahead of researchers should have been daunting. As CBS News reported, the main building material used in the ship's construction was white oak, which can be found growing practically everywhere in the world.
However, the ship was also made from pine, spruce, and hickory. That last tree is perhaps the most important one, regardless of how much or how little it factored into the ship's construction. That's because hickory only grows in eastern North America and eastern Asia.
Their tree ring records are extensive enough to work
With that narrowing step taken, the next step was to compare the white oak's tree rings from the ship and find out which area's trees showed a similar pattern of weathering the same good and bad growth periods. Since these patterns are so dependent on climate they can differ wildly from place to place.
Since National Geographic described the Tree Ring Laboratory as having information on a wide variety of tree ring sequences spanning from Massachusetts to North Carolina, determining the location was just a matter of lining them up. Naturally, this would still be a time-consuming process.
A promising lead that is all but confirmed
According to National Geographic, researchers found that the oldest rings where from the time of Christopher Colombus's famous voyage, while the newest one ended right at 1773. Not only did trees in southeastern Pennsylvania have similar ring sequences, but many had been cut down at around the same time.
As CBS News quoted one of the researchers, Martin-Benito, as saying, "We could see that at that time in Philadelphia, there were still a lot of old-growth forests being logged for shipbuilding." Interestingly, that period of industry also gave The Keystone State one of its most important landmarks.
Not everything went the way of the buried ship
According to CNN, it's highly plausible that similar wood to the sloop's building materials was used to build Philadelphia's famous Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed three years after the ship was completed.
However, that wasn't the extent of the researchers' efforts to pinpoint the circumstances of the ship's construction. Due to their astute interpretation of the sloop's wood, they were even able to determine the size of the shipyard that once housed it before it set off to sea.
The small ship was built in a small shipyard
In addition to pinpointing the sloop's original location to Philadelphia in 1773, researchers were even more specific in saying it was built in a small shipyard. According to National Geographic, they also believe the ship was built in the same year the tree was cut down because wood is easiest to work with within the first two years after the fact.
They also noted that even at the time, larger shipyards would have used wood sourced from a variety of locations. Since the wood in this sloop was clearly from the same region, that suggests its owner didn't have the means for more complicated projects.
What happened after that?
Although the nature of the sloop's voyages were unclear, researchers also found a great deal of evidence to suggest that it wasn't active for very long. At most, it was only sailing for about 20 years before it was scrapped in Lower Manhattan.
Indeed, that meant the crews discovered it at its seemingly final resting place after it was decommissioned. Yet, while Edward Cook from the Tree Ring Laboratory told National Geographic that it at least sailed down the Delaware River, there's strong evidence that it made it as far as the Caribbean.
What was it doing?
Along with its potential destinations, there are no shortage of unsolved mysteries about the kind of work its builders expected this sloop to do. For his own part, Cook said that it was "used for various purposes" after traveling down the Delaware River, which doesn't exactly clear things up.
However, as the New York Times reported, the environmental planning firm AKRF described the sloop as having "very beamy hulls that placed an emphasis on carrying a large cargo or a great amount of passengers rather than speed." That definitely suggests it ran supplies along America's East Coast, at the minimum.
So, what happened to the ship?
If a maximum of two decades sounds like an oddly short lifespan for even a small ship, that wasn't lost on the researchers either. However, it's unclear whether that short timeline would have come as much of a surprise to the ship's builders.
As Cook told National Geographic, "If ships were easy to make or build because of the abundance of timber, then perhaps there wasn't a lot of time put into building a strong vessel. So the life span may have been not that great."
There's another factor at play
However, National Geographic also reported that even if the ship's hasty construction left it doomed from the start, it likely wasn't the only reason it only lasted about 20 years. Indeed, researchers found evidence of a shipworm infestation in the sloop's timber.
As this photo shows, these are large, thick worms that tunnel through a ship's wood. As far as the Tree Ring Laboratory is concerned, it's entirely possible that the shipworms could do enough damage to significantly shorten the ship's lifespan.
It's easy to find out when the ship stopped
As CBS News reported, it's also unclear as to whether the ship accidentally sank by the time it reached Lower Manhattan or whether it was purposely scuttled. Either way, the presence of oysters at the ship's hull suggested it had been left to fester in the water for a long time before it was put to use.
However, if there's one thing that researchers can be sure about, it's that it was packed in with a bunch of litter in a Lower Manhattan landfill by the 1790s. That's because that's the latest it could have possibly stayed there before the area was filled in.
It wasn't just considered trash
Although it's true that the ship was part of a hodge-podge of debris that was packed into Manhattan's shores, it wouldn't be accurate only to call it a landfill. That's because the ship was an important part of expanding the island's coastline.
In a report from the Tree Ring Laboratory obtained by CNN, researchers stated, "Abundant fill materials such as rocks, earth, and refuse were placed behind wooden barriers or within wood structures to create new land. Earlier wharfs and abandoned merchant ships were often a component of the fill in newly constructed land."
The easiest place to lose a ship
Naturally, since Manhattan turned out to be a place of aggressive development even by New York City's standards, that coastline filler was buried by layers of dirt and concrete a long time ago. Since it was possible to build the entire World Trade Center without unearthing the ship, it clearly filled its final role well.
It's staggering to think about, but the ship could have very well laid dormant underground forever if it weren't for a world-changing catastrophe that necessitated new construction in the area.
What to do with the ship?
After researchers made such significant progress in solving the mysteries behind the ship — or at least providing plausible explanations for them — the question of what to do with the sloop's remains arose.
Since the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation owns the land that the ship was found in, its fate became their responsibility. By 2014, a representative from the firm's parent company (Empire State Development) named Jason Conwall told CNN that plans had yet to be ironed out, but would likely include preservation.
A temporary change in venue
While the Tree Ring Laboratory never had anywhere near the majority of the ship's parts, that doesn't mean their samples were the only ones moved out of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory. In fact, four years after the discovery, most of the ship's remains weren't there at all.
Instead, they had been brought to Texas A&M University's laboratory in College Station by 2011. Although they kept the sloop safe until the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation made their decision, the company eventually chose a venue they considered more appropriate for its permanent home.
An auspicious return to New York
On April 1, 2015, The New York Times reported that the sloop recovered from under the World Trade Center would be permanently relocated to the New York State Museum in the state's capital of Albany.
As David Emil — president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation — told the newspaper, "It is totally appropriate to have the ship in a museum in Albany." That's not because of where the ship was found but because of where it likely went while it was active.
Albany was an important place for ships in the 1700s
As Emil said to The New York Times, "Albany was a central part of the entire maritime culture of colonial and post-colonial America." That's not hyperbole, either, as Albany all but connected New York City to the rest of the fledgling United States.
This is because it was the biggest way in and out of the Hudson River, which was one of America's key commercial arteries. That only became more true after construction of the Erie Canal completed in 1825.
An educated guess
Although it's true that it's not entirely clear where the sloop went in its short-lived travels, the central nature of Albany to American shipping — even during the 1700s — makes it pretty unlikely that the ship never used Albany as a port of call.
That's why the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation chose the State Museum, and they're willing to support the museum's efforts to preserve the ship in a big way. Indeed, The New York Times reported that the company spent at least $2.1 million to conserve and exhibit the sloop.
An unpleasant but revealing discovery
Although a pewter button indicated that a member of the British 52nd Regiment of Foot was aboard the ship at some point, the presence 251 pieces of birdshot was far more revealing about the ship's likely purpose.
While it's true that the bones of a passenger pigeon were found among the sloop's artifacts, it's unlikely that this ammunition was primarily used to shoot birds. That implication makes the ship's purpose in its 20 years of operation seem much more sordid.
An 18th Century mariner's uses for birdshot
While the obvious reason to carry birdshot on a ship is to hunt birds, an AKRF report obtained by The New York Times suggests that this was not necessarily the primary reason to have it.
Instead, birdshot was used as a relatively non-lethal anti-boarding weapon when dealing with pirates, as well as a means to quell mutinies. However, researchers now suspect that the birdshot was used for a third reason: To suppress revolts among the enslaved people the sloop were likely transporting.
The biggest clue of the sloop's involvement in slavery
If the implication that the sloop was used to transport enslaved people seems farfetched, it's worth considering the evidence for the ship's possible Caribbean itineraries. Even more damning than the birdshot is the fact that the sloop experienced a shipworm infestation before it was added to the Manhattan coastline.
Since the sloop was neither big enough nor seaworthy enough to cross any oceans, that infestation suggests that the sloop spent a significant period of time in the Caribbean. Since both the British Crown and Colonial Americans were still deeply engaged in using that region as a slavery hub by the 1790s, there are few other reasons why it would have been there.
Confronting a dark chapter in history
Although slavery was a far more divisive issue within American politics during the 1800s to the point of largely sparking the American Civil War, it was far more commonplace and socially accepted throughout the United States by the time the sloop stopped sailing.
Indeed, New York didn't abolish slavery until 1799. As Emil told The New York Times, "This ship will force us to look at New York's place in slavery and the economics of slavery, particularly in the New York-Caribbean relationship."
