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It appears to be a late 18th-century or very early 19th-century coastal vessel. What I
mean is a ship that might have been a brig or brigantine, a two-masted ship going along
the coast from New York. Maybe it was going to Boston or going down to the West Indies,
Virginia or Maryland. It was carrying everyday cargo: food, timber products, any kind of
goods that might be available. I can tell by the construction that it probably wasn’t
built for going across the Atlantic. The most interesting thing is that we don’t
know much about these. For the war ships and the government ships, there are all kinds
of drawings and models. But these everyday coasters in that time period — we’ve only
found three of them, “we” meaning the whole nautical archaeology scene —we don’t
have drawings in any detail. You just see these little images going by in a painting.
So to be able to study this is very important, because it tells us about everyday life at
that time. It tells us about the 99.5 percent of the people who weren’t recorded and tells
us the level of technology at the time — what were they using? — because these ships
or any ships at that time were really about as technologically advanced as anything that
a civilization made. Each one of these timbers is a naturally curved
crook they’ve gotten from an oak tree. So they’ve taken the bow of a tree where the
roots come out, and they’ve cut out that piece so they have a natural grain. It’s
very expensive. In between the timbers of the ship, we normally
find a few artifacts from the shipbuilders. One that I like is a very well-used clay pipe
bowl. It’s all badly burned and obviously used quite a bit, so this is probably one
of the shipwright’s favorite pipes that got lost down in between all the timbers.
We found birdshot, a couple of musket balls and a small cannonball, so chances are that
this vessel was slightly armed. There were pirates and privateers around at that time
period. In fact, there were pirates right across the river in New Jersey at the time.
They called them the “marsh pirates”; they’re more like gangsters.
The other thing is that it’s at the World Trade Center, 200 yards from the south tower.
So yes, we get focused on our work, but every once in a while, you realize where you are.
When we came in and out of the site, we were looking right at the fire station where all
those men were lost, and the memorial and all the tourists are there. And it hits you,
the whole combination of things.