[okie01]

What stymies me are two things--how would vaccuuming do any sort of discernible damage to such a thing, and why would a wooden boat be more likely to rot on dry land, than in the water (as one poster suggested)?

The vacuuming aspersion was probably archaeological. Who knows what may have been vacuumed up with the dust: nails, buttons, coins, etc.

So far as the boat degrading faster on land vs in the water, it's the relative availability of oxygen. The ship will oxidize in open air faster than underwater.

[franksolich]

Well, I never claimed to be the brightest bulb in the room, but I recall from high-school science classes that water is the ultimate acid, or dissolvent; that nothing can survive being eroded by water, if given enough time.

And so from that, I just assumed a boat submerged in water would deteriorate more quickly than a boat on dry land, but of course, there a multitude of other factors which I did not take into consideration.

One of the fringe benefits of being on the Norway ping list; one learns all sorts of unexpectedly different things, and in a "fun" way.