Experts Work To Free Buried Ship Hull At WTC Site

[Robin Landseadel]

	Workers at the World Trade Center site are excavating a 32-
	foot-long ship hull that apparently was used in the 18th century
	as part of the fill that extended lower Manhattan into the Hudson
	River.
	
	It's hoped the artifact can be retrieved by the end of the day on
	Thursday, said archaeologist Molly McDonald. A boat specialist
	was going to the site to take a look at it.

	McDonald said she wanted to at least salvage some timbers; it 	
	was unclear if any large portions could be lifted intact.

	"We're mostly clearing it by hand because it's kind of fragile,"
	she said, but construction equipment could be used later in the 	
	process.

	McDonald and archaeologist A. Michael Pappalardo were at
	the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when the discovery was 	
	made Tuesday morning.

	"We noticed curved timbers that a back hoe brought up,"
	McDonald said Wednesday. "We quickly found the rib of a
	vessel and continued to clear it away and expose the hull over
	the last two days."

	The two archeologists work for AKRF, a firm hired to document 	
	artifacts discovered at the site. They called the find significant
	but said more study was needed to determine the age of the
	ship.

	"We're going to send timber samples to a laboratory to do
	dendrochronology that will help us to get a sense of when the
	boat was constructed," said McDonald. Dendrochronology is
	the science that uses tree rings to determine dates and
	chronological order.

	A 100-pound anchor was found a few yards from the ship hull
	on Wednesday, but they're not sure if it belongs to the ship. It's 3
	to 4 feet across, McDonald said.


	The archaeologists are racing to record and analyze the vessel 	
	before the delicate wood, now exposed to air, begins to
	deteriorate.

	"I kept thinking of how closely it came to being destroyed,"
	Pappalardo said.

	http://www.ktvu.com/news/24264076/detail.html


	Now, knowing perfectly the instant of arrival, having willed itself
	up to the necessary temperature, it began, methodical and 	
	unrelenting, to burn its way out of its enclosure. Those who had 	
	chosen to stay aboard ship for as long as possible, one by one,
	as in a kind of moral exhaustion, let go, tumbled into flight, up
	the ladders, out the hatches, away over the brow and down into
	the thoroughfares of the city. But with only dwindling moments
	of normal history remaining, where could any of them have
	found refuge in time? No escort of Tenderloin toughs, no
	chamber of privilege however deep within the anchors of any of 	
	the great bridges, no train- or water-tunnel could have
	preserved even one of these impure refugees from what was
	to come.

	Fire and blood were about to roll like fate upon the complacent
	multitudes. Just at the peak of the evening rush-hour, electric
	power failed everywhere throughout the city, and as the gas
	mains began to ignite and the thousand local winds, distinct at
	every street-corner, to confound prediction, cobblestones
	erupted skyward, to descend blocks away in seldom observed
	yet beautiful patterns. All attempts to counter-attack or even to
	avoid the Figure would be defeated. Later, fire alarms would go
	unanswered and the firemen on the front lines find themselves
	too soon without reinforcement, or the hope of any. The noise
	would be horrific and unrelenting, as it grew clear even to the
	willfully careless that there was no refuge.

	Against the Day, page 152