WORKERS excavating the World Trade Centre site have made a remarkable discovery: the 10m-long hull of a ship believed to date back to the 18th century.
The remains of the wooden ship were unearthed about 6m below sea level amid grey muck, including oyster shells, at the site of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Workers first unearthed a row of upright timber beams on Tuesday, local time, then, upon more digging the next day, discovered a whole row forming the hull of the vessel among other artefacts, including a ship’s anchor.
Archeologists said the ship, which appears to have remained undisturbed for more than 200 years, was probably used along with other debris to fill in land to extend lower Manhattan into the Hudson River. Archaeologists Molly McDonald and A. Michael Pappalardo were at the site yesterday morning when workers unearthed the artefacts, which they estimate to date back to the mid-1700s.
Mr Pappalardo, who works for AKRF, a firm hired to document artefacts discovered at the site, told The New York Times it was the first such archeological find along the waterfront in Manhattan since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship was discovered.
“(The wooden beams) were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” Mr Pappalardo told the newspaper.
“We noticed curved timbers that a backhoe brought up,” Ms McDonald said. “We quickly found the rib of a vessel and continued to clear it away and expose the hull over the last two days.”
The archeologists are now racing to record and analyse the vessel before the delicate wood, now exposed to air, begins to deteriorate. “I kept thinking of how closely it came to being destroyed,” Mr Pappalardo said.
The archeologists said that while the find was significant, more study was needed to determine the age of the ship.
“We’re going to send timber samples to a laboratory to do endocrinology that will help us to get a sense of when the boat was constructed,” said Ms McDonald.
The workers and archeologists also found an anchor weighing 45kg in the same area yesterday, but it is unknown if it belongs to the ship.
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