New York races to uncover Ground Zero ‘mystery ship’

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, July 16, 2010 16:16 EST
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NEW YORK — New Yorkers raced against time Friday to reveal the secrets of a mostly intact, 18th century sailing ship found in the muddy foundations of the World Trade Center reconstruction site.

The ghostly vessel emerged from the mud earlier this week, its hull and deck virtually complete and still equipped with an anchor. But with sudden exposure to air wreaking havoc on the wood, archaeologists are hurrying to examine their find.

“Once water logged, it preserves well, but once exposed to the air, as it dries out, it starts to disintegrate. It loses its structure,” New York State parks department archaeologist Doug Mackey told AFP.

There’s another reason for the rush: “It’s right in the middle of the construction site,” he said. “It can’t just sit there for weeks on end. We have to record what we can.”

Construction workers at Ground Zero are used to looking out for grimmer relics from the September 11, 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center towers, killing nearly 3,000 people.

The unexpected echo from Manhattan’s early years as a seafaring island — long before skyscrapers and the business district conquered the neighborhood around Ground Zero — was a welcome surprise.

Many mysteries remain. No one knows yet the name of the ship, where it might have sailed or with what crew or cargo.

What’s already established is that the vessel didn’t sink, but ended up deliberately at the modern Ground Zero as part of landfill debris that early builders used to extend Manhattan’s coastline into the Hudson River.

The section found is about 30 feet (nine meters) long and consists of wood planking over ribs and a deck. Any superstructure there would have been is missing.

At some point during construction work in the 20th century, the ship suffered the indignity of having one end smashed off by a foundations wall.

“We have one end of the ship, but we’re not sure 100 percent if it’s the bow or the stern,” Mackey said.

Experts on Friday used laser scanning equipment to help build a 3D model of the vessel based on what has survived.

“That’s always the goal in archaeology: to put it back together on paper,” Mackey said.

Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
AFP journalists cover wars, conflicts, politics, science, health, the environment, technology, fashion, entertainment, the offbeat, sports and a whole lot more in text, photographs, video, graphics and online.
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  • airjackie

    Wow first a burial ground for slaves was found and now a ship. Let's see how this story will be told by the Media. I expect it will be called a vacation ship that brought slaves to enjoy the new land and a hot spot for the rich and famous. At lease Ellis Island isn't far and we can rewrite History and say blacks came here and wanted to be slaves and work for nothing.

  • tcarlson

    Too bad they didn't do such an evidence-based investigation of the 9/11 events. Might have saved us a trillion dollars and a million or so Iraqi lives.

  • ericroded

    Fuck us for wanting to document this.

    Fuck us for 7 years waiting for this goddamn tower to get going, and now fuck us again for wanting to pause a moment to document this ship.

    Fuck us, fuck us again, and then, fuck us. Again.

  • dennycrane

    Is it on the same shelf as the “mystery meat?”

  • http://twitter.com/shivabeach Shiva

    it kind of ruins the mystery to find out that the ship was put there as landfill. But it's still kind of neat no matter what

  • Miracle Seeker

    Ship of fools …

  • UnkindByDesign

    Americans have discovered Noah's ark…..Rotf

  • quincunx

    If they find still-molten metal near the ship, will they notice? Will they lack the intellectual curiosity to investigate? Will they have the intellectual honesty to invite peer review?

    911 was a joke, folks.
    When will they show the surrvallience videos of the attack on the Pentagon,
    so I will know that The United States of American doesn't kill innocent Americans
    for political reasons!

  • ignatzfattis

    It is pretty ironic -the steel girders from the twin towers couldn't be covered and shipped off fast enough to melted down in China -while every nail in this little boat will be forensically recorded and saved in some museum somewhere.

  • Anonymous

    It never fails, there’s always one foul-mouthed jerk in the crowd….You should shove that foul mouth of yours where the sun ever shines…Your brain could use the company!

  • mindboggeling

    Cheney said to a reporter on the campaign trail that “we need another Pearl Harbor” and he got it.

  • dennycrane

    Remember the movie, “The Mouse That Roared?” This is it.

  • dennycrane

    Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Maybe, “McCain's Navy.”

  • Ishmael1

    The San Francisco Financial District has many ships buried like that. The area East of Montgomery St. to the Embarcadero and south of Telegraph Hill was originally a cove and under water. When they filled in that part of the bay, they buried a host of square-riggers abandoned during the Gold Rush. I know of one under the old Mevin Belli law offices on Montgomery between Clay and Pacific. Belli told me the whole story when I met him during a deposition my Dad gave in his office around 1965

  • http://kanomi.blogspot.com Kanomi

    Why we do need another useless office tower full of depressed people with meaningless jobs? Why not create a park, a memorial, some open space?

    Oh right, because some billionaire who profited obscenely off insurance money when the towers went down wants to build more garbage to fatten his gut.

    Can't stop for anything as trivial as a historical artifact when some plutocratic criminals have their bloated bellies to feed!

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/LEUDUVF5EGJZRZETF3KV53P7BQ Thomas

    Construction site? You mean the hole that has been there for the past 9 years???? An Islamic church will be built next to the hole in a couple of years. 20 years and 200 billion dollars from now, the city will decide to make the place into a park, for the Islamic church, which paid the city a few billion for the un-used property that had weeds growing in it.

  • quincunx

    I don't think you understand. I PAY these people for SERVICES RENDERED with my TAXES, and I think I have a RIGHT to see those videoes RELEASED for PUBLIC EXIBITION.
    WHY are they not released! I need to know what my PUBLIC SERVANTS have done,
    and correct them or REPLACE THEM. It starts with me seeing those videos that I PAYED to store somewhere.

  • ericroded

    We needed two new baseball parks to celebrate sports nihilism in, that's why.

  • ericroded

    It never fails, some grizzly mom shows up to protect her spawn from verboten language or some other puritanical nazi family rules.

  • ericroded

    I wonder, how could a ship become so “worn out” that you would “toss it into the landfill?”

    Maybe it was a Demon Ship.

    Maybe it was used by black people or some other detested group of the time.

  • aimlowjoe

    Someday 200 or more years from now people will discover our garbage. Only instead pausing to document it, they will be running like hell before it kills them.

    Aimlow Joe was here
    http://www.aimlow.com

  • dennycrane

    It's a pirate ship that flies cheney's flag: a boot stamping on a human face.

  • dennycrane

    They found it is loaded with termites that are eating the foundation of the country: the chairs that the neoprene court sits on.

  • mindboggeling

    I do understand and agree with you wholeheartedly. If they show what the officials say they do then it will put a lot of questions to rest. By not releasing them we all can only assume they are hiding things. It appears the politicians do not understand who they work for. Or maybe we are confused. The pols think they work for big business and lobbying firms and the voters think they work for us. Boy are we dumb!

  • billfromny

    Or maybe “Qatermass and the Pit!”

  • smiller1701

    Eric, your even a bigger moron than I initially took your for….

  • ericroded

    It's “you're” or “you are.”

    Not “your.”

    Sarah.

  • http://theentropyreport.com/?p=60 The Entropy Report ›

    [...] New York races to uncover Ground Zero ‘mystery ship’ [...]

  • Kimlovebrown

    OR MAYBE IT WAS USED BY YOUR PSYCHOPATHIC FOREFATHERS….OR SOME NATURALLY DETESTED BY THE EARTH AND ALL PEOPLE OF COLOR LIKE U.

  • wayne

    You are all boring, simple mined people. Do you really think that all of these comments are going to get you anywhere? Yes this country had gone to crap. Yes our forefathers are turning over in their graves at the Freedoms that the political heretics are shredding. But all you do is sit and grumble. If you think, believe or KNOW that something is wrong then DO something about it. Stand up for your rights and the rights of those who have given their all. 2000 plus people died throughout the country that day and still nothing. Did we do this to ourselves? Was this a staged way to get the people DEPENDANT on the government again (yes I say again because I believe that it happened to start the great depression)? I truly believe that Hitler has come to rein on our great nation in the form of a certain, undocumented, illegal, non-Christian, muslim thinking, PUPPET that was groomed and brought here to run us into the ground. What are you doing to make sure he does not succeed???????

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