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WET & HOT NEWS ! > Washington
The S.S. World Trade Center Sets Sail
The 29 Jul. 2010 at 07:34Marine Sciences
By David W. Dunlap and Fred R. Conrad - The New York Times
Whatever the antique vessel was, and whenever in the 18th century it arrived on the Lower Manhattan waterfront, one thing can be said almost certainly: Its journey in was easier than its journey out.
The vessel was discovered by workers on July 13, about 20 to 30 feet below street level, during the excavation of a site bounded by West, Washington, Liberty and Cedar Streets.
This area — which had not been disturbed during the construction of the original World Trade Center — will one day house the vehicle ramps leading to the network of roadways, loading areas and parking spaces under the new World Trade Center.
The wood-hulled ship was an object of instant archaeological interest and popular speculation. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey worked around it as much as possible while keeping the excavation on track.
But the time for salvaging and removing the vessel finally arrived on Monday. Among those on site for the delicate operation were the archaeologists A. Michael Pappalardo, Diane Dallal and Molly McDonald of AKRF, the consulting firm working for the Port Authority; Warren Riess of the Darling Marine Center of the University of Maine, who worked on the last vessel unearthed in Lower Manhattan in 1982; and Nicole Doub, the head conservator of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Library in St. Leonard, to which the remnants of the ship are bound — piece by piece.The 1770 wreck of the Industry at Kennebunk Beach
The 27 May. 2010 at 10:13Parks & Protected Sites
From Seacostonline.com
The leonine month of March lived up to its reputation in 1960. Nearly a foot and a half of snow fell on coastal York County on March 4. The following week, gale winds blowing from a southeasterly direction scoured Kennebunk Beach in an unusual way, exposing the remains of a shipwreck that few remembered.
Bill Calder and Charles Robinson were the first to see crudely constructed ribs projecting 18 inches out of the sand on March 11, and they called George Stevens, photographer for the Kennebunk Star. Some of the ribs were 2 feet wide and a foot thick, giving the wreck an ancient appearance. A 6-inch trenail (a wood fastening peg) removed from the planking had an unusual, diamond-shaped wedge hammered into the end of it.
Sandy Brook, editor of the Star, contacted marine expert and author Edward Rowe Snow at his home in Marshfield, Mass., and invited him up to examine the unusual wreck. By the time Snow arrived with marine architect Bror Tamm, the timbers were almost entirely covered again by the shifting sand. Kennebunk Fire Chief Harrison Coleman was persuaded to dispatch a fire truck from the Washington Hose Company and volunteers removed enough sand with a high pressure fire hose to give the experts a good look at the 65-foot wreck, where she lay some 70 feet from the seawall on Mother's Beach.
Snow, who was perhaps best known as "The Flying Santa Claus" for his annual delivery of Christmas presents to the families of New England lighthouse keepers, returned to Massachusetts to write an article for the Patriot Ledger. In his column, Snow theorized that the Kennebunk Beach wreck was the remains of a coasting packet, called the Industry, built in 1770 by Irish shipbuilders in St. George, Maine. "A colony of ship builders from Northern Ireland settled in St. George. They were the only ones to use a diamond-shaped wedge at a convex angle in the end of their trenails," explained the maritime historian. Wreckage of the Industry superstructure had also been found in this area after she was lost on her maiden voyage.
Fascinated by the story, Dick Bedard, who now lives in Columbia Falls, Maine, and three of his friends, dug down 4 feet in an effort to reach the keel of the vessel.
"I have a trenail that I carefully removed from one of the rib stumps, and often show it to people," Bedard said recently. The young men also found some broken pottery, pieces of leather punched with small triangular holes, unidentifiable chunks of a heavy, hard, black substance and half a pulley carved from lignum vitae — a wood species only found in South America and the West Indies. Remains of an old leather boot, a bone and a china plate were also uncovered and turned over to the Kennebunkport Historical Society.Scholarly Squad Debunks Biblical "Discoveries"
The 03 May. 2010 at 16:42MiscellaneousFrom AOL News
When Robert Cargill got word this week that a group of Chinese evangelicals had uncovered Noah's Ark atop a Turkish mountain, the archaeologist's reaction was a familiar one.
"I thought, here we go again -- another fake 'ark-eologist,' " says Cargill, an adjunct assistant professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA.
His skepticism may prove well founded: A former member of the joint team from Noah's Ark Ministries International and Media Evangelism Ltd. that announced the find has circulated an e-mail suggesting that the discovery might have been staged. And if that's the case, it would be just the latest in a series of hoaxes surrounding the much-searched-for vessel.
Indeed, it was word of two previous ark expeditions that helped prompt the American Schools of Oriental Research, the leading professional organization of American Middle Eastern archaeologists, to take action.
Fed up with the exposure these types of stories were getting in the media, the group last year launched a committee tasked with taking aim at archaeological frauds.
"We really just decided that it was time to take back our field," says Eric Cline, a George Washington University archaeologist. He and Cargill co-chair the committee, whose membership also includes the Archaeological Institute of America and the Society of Biblical Literature.CSS Ala. cannon makes Mobile its home
The 11 Feb. 2010 at 04:02Museum news
By Fox10TV.com
One of the guns of the confederate raider, CSS Alabama has returned to the home of its captain, Admiral Raphael Semmes. The CSS Alabama sank in about 200 feet of water off Cherbourg, France, after an engagement with the Union's USS Kearsage on June 11, 1864.
The recovered artifacts, many of them already on display at The Museum of Mobile, provide information about the CSS Alabama’s construction, her technologies, armaments and the lives of those who served on her. Through archaeological projects such as the CSS Alabama excavation we share the story of our past.
“The City of Mobile carpenters are constructing a cannon carriage for its eventual display in the Museum of Mobile. The exhibit will open once the gallery renovation is complete. Summer is the projected opening date,” said Jacob Laurence, curator of exhibits. “You never know what may happen with a gun that size if you are not careful and plan accordingly.”
The cannon will be a welcome addition to those items the Museum of Mobile already has on loan from the US Navy. It will become the centerpiece in the 700 square foot exhibit funded by the Mobile Museum Board. The gun is one of eight guns that were originally on the deck of the CSS Alabama. Six were 32-pounder cannon, which means they shot a 32-pound round cannon ball and were stationed at the edges of the deck facing starboard or port.
The other two were larger pivot guns that were located in the middle of the deck and fired conical shot by contrast to the gun the Museum will display. The gun is black in color, approximately 10 feet long, and weighs 5000 pounds (2 1/2 tons). The cannon is one of only three recovered of the original six of that size.
One is at the Navy Yard in Washington, the other in Charleston, SC. This cannon will be on a long-term loan from the US Navy Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington D.C.In Md., a sunken jewel lurks
The 21 Sep. 2009 at 19:59Underwater Archeology
By Steve Vogel - Washington Post
Aboard a pontoon boat chugging past the marshland of Maryland’s upper Patuxent River on a recent Saturday, Ralph Eshelman pointed to the spot where the muddy brown water hides a shipwreck nearly two centuries old, part of the American flotilla that defended the Chesapeake Bay when the British burned Washington during the War of 1812.Nearly 30 years ago, Eshelman helped direct a team of marine researchers who discovered the wreck, one of the war’s most significant artifacts.
After a limited, month long excavation of the site east of Upper Marlboro in 1980, the wreck was reburied under 4 feet of mud and sediment to protect it from decay. The hope was that archaeologists with more funding could one day return to excavate the 75-foot vessel, tentatively identified as the Scorpion, flagship of Commodore Joshua Barney’s Chesapeake Flotilla. Now, supporters are hoping the time is ripe.
The Navy, which still owns the flotilla, is considering whether to excavate the site and possibly raise the vessel as part of its plans to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812.
“It’s on the agenda to be discussed,’’ said Captain Patrick Burns, director of Navy commemorations, who is leading the Navy’s plans for remembering the war with a three-year series of events beginning in 2012.