Colonial Ship Beneath Ground Zero

In 2010, while crews cleaned up and rebuilt at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan after the towers fell, workers uncovered a wooden shipwreck about 7 feet below an old foundation. Archaeologists exposed a 32-foot section of the hull and sent waterlogged oak timbers to Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory for tree ring analysis. The dendrochronology study indicated that the wood came from forests near Philadelphia and that the vessel was likely built around 1773, the same era and region that supplied timber for Independence Hall.

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