A Revolutionary War-Era Ship Found Under the World Trade Center Finally Has a Home

A Revolutionary War-era gunboat found during the excavation of Ground Zero 15 years ago has finally arrived at its new home.

A team of students and researchers from Texas A&M University’s Center for Maritime Archeology and Conservation has temporarily relocated to the New York State Museum in Albany, where they’ll spend the coming weeks cleaning and reassembling the centuries-old vessel that’s become known as the World Trade Center ship.

Once completed, the remnants of the ship — which researchers believe was American-built — will be the centerpiece of an exhibit on America’s 250th anniversary at the Albany museum, a short walk from the state Capitol.

“It’s a very exciting time here at the museum,” said Michael Lucas, the museum’s curator of historical archaeology.

The work is being done in full view of museumgoers. Visitors are encouraged to ask questions of the team as they reassemble the historic vessel that was last in the water around 1790.

”It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said. “You’re not going to have an opportunity to see an 18th century ship being constructed probably again in your life.”

The ship’s journey to Albany was more than 250 years in the making.

Using tree rings found in the ship’s wood grain, scientists were able to trace the wood to a forest in the Philadelphia area in the 1770s. The same type of wood, they determined, was used in the construction of Independence Hall.

Over time, researchers concluded the boat was likely built at a small Philadelphia boatyard. At first, they thought the vessel was a ship used to transport cargo or people. They’ve since come to believe it was a gunboat built for naval battles.

But much of the boat’s time in the water remains a mystery.

Researchers believe the British may have captured the boat at some point, though they’re not sure when or how. Key to that conclusion is a pewter button inscribed with the number 52 that was found in the wreckage. Researchers believe the button once belonged to a member of the British Army’s 52nd Regiment of Foot.

Worms found in the wood, meanwhile, indicate that at some point the ship traveled to the Caribbean.

By 1790, the boat was out of commission, researchers believe. At some point before 1818, the ship was buried during the landfill process to expand the Manhattan shoreline into the Hudson River. When and why the ship made its way to New York City remains an unanswered question.

The boat remained in the dirt until 2010, when workers discovered it some 22 feet below the surface as they were laying the groundwork for the new World Trade Center’s Vehicular Security Center. It was buried in layers of oxygen-poor muck, which acted as a preservative. Workers were able to excavate and recover 30 feet of the estimated 50-foot boat — about 600 planks of wood in all, along with more than 1,000 artifacts.

For much of the next 15 years, the planks of wood were preserved in liquid at Texas A&M before they were run through the university research center’s freeze drier — the largest in the western hemisphere, according to Dr. Peter Fix, a Texas A&M research scientist who is leading the reassembly effort.

All told, the drying process removed 5,000 pounds of liquid from the planks, cutting the wood’s weight in half and preserving its shape so the timbers could be exposed to air.

”Now, we are in the process of doing the last bits of repair to the timbers that were heavily degraded and cleaning them in preparation for reassembly into the shape of the ship,” said Fix, who has been in Albany for the last month.

The New York State Museum was selected to house the boat in 2015, after officials reportedly struggled to find a lower Manhattan museum with sufficient space for it.

During a recent visit to the Albany museum, Gothamist saw workers spraying timbers with steam and cleaning every nook and cranny with cotton swabs. On the other side of the large exhibit space, Fix and Texas A&M grad student Angela Paola used a handheld tool to grind away at a piece of foam that will help form a base for the boat’s keel — or backbone, which was broken into three pieces when it was recovered from Ground Zero.

“Our plan is to finish by the end of June — the whole thing reassembled and constructed,” said Alyssa Carpenter, a recent Texas A&M grad. “So that’s our timeline. That’s our goal.”

The museum’s exhibit on the 250th anniversary of America’s founding is expected to open in full next year.

Story by Jon Campbell/WNYC/New York Public News Network

Image: Marissa Agerton, a graduate student at Texas A&M University’s nautical archeology program, works on a piece of wood at the New York State Museum in Albany. The wood is part of a Revolutionary War-era ship discovered at the World Trade Center site in 2010. (Credit: Jon Campbell/New York Public News Network)