{"id":261741,"date":"2025-05-28T14:20:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T14:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/revolutionary-war-era-gunboat-found-underneath-world-trade-center-wreckage-finds-a-permanent-home-in-upstate-new-york\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T14:20:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T14:20:52","slug":"revolutionary-war-era-gunboat-found-underneath-world-trade-center-wreckage-finds-a-permanent-home-in-upstate-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=261741","title":{"rendered":"Revolutionary War-Era Gunboat Found Underneath World Trade Center Wreckage Finds a Permanent Home in Upstate New York"},"content":{"rendered":"


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America’s 250th Anniversary<\/a><\/p>\n

A Smithsonian<\/i> magazine special report<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Researchers are reassembling the ship, which was likely built in the 1770s near Philadelphia<\/h2>\n
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Sarah Kuta<\/a><\/p>\n

– Daily Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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Conservators have spent the last 14 years carefully cleaning and restoring the 18th-century ship.
\n New York State Museum<\/span>
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In 2010, construction crews working in Lower Manhattan found the remains<\/a> of a Revolutionary War-era gunboat buried deep underground. Now, after years of restoration work, the 18th-century vessel has found a new permanent home at the New York State Museum in Albany.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York stood at the epicenter of our fight for freedom, and this gunboat is a physical reminder of that courage and grit,\u201d says Devin Lander, New York\u2019s state historian, in a museum statement<\/a>. \u201cTo watch it rise again, plank by plank, is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness the intersection of archaeology, storytelling and national identity. \u201d<\/p>\n

The vessel was discovered at \u201cGround Zero,\u201d the site where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Workers were building the new World Trade Center when they discovered the vessel under roughly 22 feet of oxygen-poor landfill sediment, which had preserved it for centuries.<\/p>\n

Archaeologists had just two weeks to excavate as much of the ship\u2014nicknamed the Ground Zero Gunboat\u2014as they could. In the end, they were able to extract roughly 30 feet of the 50-foot vessel and more than 1,000 artifacts, per Gothamist<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Jon Campbell.<\/p>\n

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Construction crews found the ship while building the new World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan in 2010.<\/p>\n

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Ever since then, conservators at Texas A&M University\u2019s Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation have been carefully preserving the vessel. Some researchers soaked its roughly 600 wooden planks in water to help remove the salt that had been embedded centuries earlier, while others removed and cleaned all of its iron nails.<\/p>\n

They also scanned each piece of timber to create a detailed, 3D model of the vessel, reports the Times Union<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Katherine Kiessling. When it came time to ship the vessel back to New York, researchers freeze-dried each piece of wood to remove any remaining moisture. In the end, this process extracted roughly 5,000 pounds of liquid from the planks.<\/p>\n

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Freeze-drying the ship’s planks removed roughly 5,000 pounds of moisture.<\/p>\n

Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation, Texas A&M University<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Historians, meanwhile, have also been piecing together the history of the rare, American-built gunboat. A dendrochronological analysis<\/a> of the ship\u2019s timber suggests it was built from old-growth trees that were harvested in southeastern Pennsylvania in the 1770s. Wood that was harvested from the same area around the same time was also used to build Independence Hall and other Revolutionary-era buildings in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

The gunboat was built quickly using iron nails and fasteners, which later oxidized in the water. Archaeologists also found wood-eating shipworms called teredos, which suggests the vessel had sailed through the waters of the southern Atlantic Ocean\u2014and may even have traveled as far south as the Caribbean. The hull\u2019s shape, meanwhile, suggests it was made to patrol shallow waters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it is what we think it was, it was used in the American Revolution to defend the Delaware Bay and Delaware River from the British,\u201d says Peter Fix<\/a>, a watercraft conservator at Texas A&M University, to WRGB<\/a>\u2019s Emma Quinn. \u201cIf these [gunboats] weren’t here \u2026 things may have turned out differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

A pewter button found in the vessel suggests British forces may have captured it at some point, possibly during the fall of Philadelphia in 1777. The button was inscribed with the number 52, which researchers think indicates it once belonged to a member of the British Army\u2019s 52nd Regiment of Foot.<\/p>\n

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Once re-assembled, the ship will become the centerpiece of a new exhibition about the founding of America 250 years ago,<\/p>\n

New York State Museum<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what happened to the gunboat after that\u2014including how it made its way to Lower Manhattan\u2014remains somewhat of a mystery. One suggestion posits that the ship was buried as garbage, essentially, at some point between 1790 and 1818, as part of efforts to expand Lower Manhattan into the Hudson River.<\/p>\n

The vessel arrived at the New York State Museum in pieces. Now, researchers are in the process of re-assembling it for an upcoming exhibition on the 250th anniversary of America\u2019s founding. They hope to have the gunboat completely reconstructed by the end of June.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, museum-goers are invited to watch them work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a boat,\u201d Fix tells the Times Union<\/em>. \u201cBoats are huge magnets, and people just want to be part of them. I find they\u2019re great portals to be an opening spot to talk about so many different types of history and science and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

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