Origins of Mysterious World Trade Center Ship Revealed

Yahoo UK News ^ | 29th July 2014 | Megan Gannon

[the scotsman]

'In July 2010, amid the gargantuan rebuilding effort at the site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, construction workers halted the backhoes when they uncovered something unexpected just south of where the Twin Towers once stood.

At 22 feet (6.7 meters) below today's street level, in a pit that would become an underground security and parking complex, excavators found the mangled skeleton of a long-forgotten wooden ship.

Now, a new report finds that tree rings in those waterlogged ribs show the vessel was likely built in 1773, or soon after, in a small shipyard near Philadelphia. What's more, the ship was perhaps made from the same kind of white oak trees used to build parts of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were signed, according to the study published this month in the journal Tree-Ring Research.'

[Ramius]

He needs to learn more about shipbuilding and maritime commerce in the age of sail. A very few ships lasted as long as twenty years. Those that were built quickly, with green wood, had the shortest life spans. Merchant ships were much shorter lived than naval vessels because they used cheaper materials, spent less building a tight ship, and did less maintenance than did the navy. A merchant ship was expected to recoup the investment of purchase within three to five years. Many did not last that long.

That's interesting. Do you have a place I can go to read more about that? I would've thought that shipwrights generally would not have used green wood and would have known better. They spent so very much time and effort building a ship, with only hand tools... It would surprise me that they only expected the ship to last a few short years. Given the craftsmanship I've seen in the ones that -did- survive it would be surprising to think that they expected all that attention to detail to possibly be wasted.

[centurion316]

Brian Lavery is the expert. He’s written many books, but one of the best on the topic of the material of ship building is:

Building the Wooden Walls: The Design and Construction of the 74 Gun Ship Valiant, Conway Maritime Press (1991) ISBN 0-85177-579-9

Properly aged wood was expensive, even the Royal Navy cut corners from time for reasons of expense and the urgency of wars. Green wood was cheaper and a small merchant vessel could be constructed very quickly. Almost all of the vessels on both sides of the Great Lakes campaigns during the Revolution and the War of 1812 were built from green wood. The remains of the Steamship Arabia in Kansas City show that she was built cheaply and quickly with unaged wood. Only a few profitable journeys were required to pay the cost of construction.

Of course, there were long lived ships as well, both merchant and men of war. HMS Bellona, a 74 gun ship of the line was launched in 1761 and served almost to the end of the Napoleanic Wars

[Ramius]

Thanks!

I volunteer at a museum that is restoring a wood fishing boat, circa 1925, and I know that the Shipwright overseeing the reconstruction has been adamant about using period materials. They even have some period logs from which they are cutting some of the key timbers. Granted... Most of them weren’t built of timbers that aged for 100 years... But still.

[centurion316]

http://nautarch.tamu.edu/pdf-files/VanHorn-MA2004.pdf

Go to page 13

[Smokin' Joe]

Just an observation from working on my house after a fire: 100 year old timbers have higher grain density than most modern trees, especially those intended for structural elements ashore. There are twice as many tree rings in some of the old 2x4s as modern ones.

[4everontheRight]

Fantastic! Great story.

As a side note....once again leave it to a UK news outlet to tell us what is going on in our own country

[Ramius]

Thanks! Interesting stuff.

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure!