Revolutionary-era gunboat buried for centuries beneath Ground Zero gets new life
The Brief
An incredible discovery dating back to the 1700s is now in the process of being restored before going on display at a museum.
Pieces of an 18th-century wooden gunboat buried deep beneath what was the World Trade Center were uncovered back in 2010.
"It was found in landfill that was used to expand New York City."
NEW YORK CITY - An incredible discovery dating back to the 1700s – all unearthed beneath Ground Zero – is now in the process of being restored before going on display at the New York State Museum.
Dig deeper
The discovery happened back in 2010, when pieces of an 18th-century wooden gunboat buried deep beneath what was the World Trade Center were uncovered by archaeologists excavating the site.
"We began looking at the ship itself and trying to piece ideas back together," said Dr. Peter Fix, associate research scientist with Texas A&M University. "One possibility that came up was a gunboat, built on probably the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, right across from Philadelphia, in the summer of 1775."
What they're saying
Fix and a team from the university studied and stabilized the water vessel. The original materials had to be worked with as the pieces of the ship were submerged in water for a long time.
"The thing that we had to do was to document the ship in a way that we could rebuild all the individual pieces into the ship on a computer," Fix said.
The ship, about 50 feet long, featured a raised deck. It's now being reconstructed at the New York State Museum. The process is open to the public as an exhibit called "The Gunboat at Ground Zero: A Revolutionary War Mystery." Once the ship, almost in its entirety, is back together, it will remain on display.
"It was found in landfill that was used to expand New York City." Michael Lucas
"Well, first of all, it's a very interesting artifact," Michael Lucas, curator of historical archeology at the museum in Albany, said.
Local perspective
How the ship ended up buried in New York City remains a mystery, but it's believed the war-era vessel was at some point abandoned along the Hudson River.
"It was found in landfill that was used to expand New York City," Lucas said. "So, there's a story about the expanse of New York City in the 1790s, and then in order to expand the city, they had to make land out into the river."
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum is now located where the Hudson River once was. Historians and archaeologists say evidence, including artifacts, suggests the vessel was likely captured by the British and traveled south, perhaps as far as the Caribbean before arriving in New York.
"There was a British military button with a 52 on it, which stands for an infantry unit called the 52nd of Foot, so it's a British regiment. You have three gun flints. We have a couple of buttons. We have some, a lot of lead shots," Lucas said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Yates snatches Giro title on stunning penultimate stage
Simon Yates' first Grand Tour win came seven years ago at the Vuelta a Espana [Getty Images] British rider Simon Yates produced a stunning performance on the penultimate stage of the Giro d'Italia to snatch the pink jersey from Isaac del Toro and effectively ensure his second Grand Tour title. Del Toro came into the 20th and final competitive stage of the race with a 43-second lead over Richard Carapaz, with Yates trailing by one minute and 21 seconds in third. Advertisement Mexico's Del Toro, 21, would have clinched victory in his maiden Giro by successfully negotiating the Colle delle Finestre, the highest point of this year's race and where Yates' hopes of winning evaporated in 2018. But Yates, 32, exorcised those ghosts as he attacked on the brutal ascent to leave Del Toro and Carapaz - the 2019 winner - in his wake. He not only wiped out Del Toro's advantage but was one minute 41 seconds clear of his general classification rivals when he crested. His Visma-Lease A Bike team had pulled off a masterstroke as team-mate Wout van Aert was in the breakaway group and allowed Yates to catch him on the descent, helping him build a comprehensive lead over the final 20km. Advertisement Jayco-Alula's Australian rider Chris Harper, who was the first over the Colle delle Finestre summit, claimed the second Grand Tour stage win of his career, with Yates crossing one minute 57 seconds later, third on the day. Yates was in tears as he hugged team staff at the finish, surrounded by media, with Del Toro of UAE Team Emirates crossing the line five minutes after him. It means the Briton leads Del Toro by three minutes 56 seconds, with Carapaz in third, heading in to Sunday's processional stage in Rome. "I'm not really an emotional person but I couldn't hold back the tears," said Yates. Advertisement "It's something I've worked towards year after year and I've had a lot of setbacks but I've finally managed to pull if off." Yates lost 30 seconds to Del Toro during Friday's stage but recovered to become just the third British rider to win the Giro, after Chris Froome (2018) and Tao Geoghegan Hart (2020). Yates 'always had' redemption in mind Froome memorably snatched the pink jersey on the penultimate mountain stage in 2018, as Yates cracked and ultimately lost more than 38 minutes. This year, the same climb was scheduled for late in the 205km stage from Verres to Sestriere and Yates, who bounced back from the 2018 Giro to win that year's Vuelta a Espana, said after today's stage he "always had it in the back of my mind" once the route was announced. Advertisement The 18.5km climb has an average gradient of 9.2% and started 43km from the finish. Within a kilometre of the climb, Carapaz's EF Education team attacked, but Del Toro was alert to the danger and soon closed the gap to Carapaz, with the rest of the peloton dropping back. Yet Yates then came from nowhere to join his general classification rivals and made a series of attacks before ultimately breaking clear. When Yates hit the gravel section, he extended his lead, while Del Toro and Carapaz continued to trade blows. But by the time they also reached the summit, some 2,178m above sea level - they knew the race was gone. Advertisement "It's incredible, said Van Aert. "It was such a brave effort from Simon to go all in from so far. I love it when people are not racing for a place of honour."
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Starmer's enslavement to woke ideology is a gift to the new axis of evil
When wokeness in Britain went from being a loony Left preoccupation to a way of life, hot on the heels of America's wokeward tack in 2020, only fools, villains and villainous fools insisted that nothing much was happening – apart from a bit of long overdue fairness. Of course, they said, the old Right-wing cis white straight men and women were squealing about the embrace by the virtuous of 'social justice' and 'equity,' but that didn't mean there was a real culture war afoot. It was obvious to me from the start of the woke era, however, that this was not 'just' a culture war but a real one, in a truly modern sense, with real consequences that would be felt far beyond a few workplaces or university seminar rooms. The vaulting from the seminar room into the world of the ideology linking 'white privilege' to empire to colonialism to the immovable fact of white British guilt has led to poisonous politics on the Left, a troubling reaction on the populist Right, and a ruling class who make decisions with our money, our personal safety and the security of the country based on it. If people have been injured or died already thanks to wokeness – for instance in the failure to confidently and properly police Islamist terror suspects or BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic knife crime), or in the body-destroying treatments handed out by LGBTQ+ allies to kids who said they were trans in the gender movement that followed Black Lives Matter – then much more is set to come. One of the most flagrant case studies in how the woke mindset can be physically dangerous is Starmer's Chagos islands agreement. The 'deal' is to hand the British territory to Mauritius, and lease back the land on the island of Diego Garcia, on which sits a strategically vital, Anglo-American military base. The lease costs £30 billion, and will be paid over 99 years. The Government's strange argument for the deal was that it would prevent the security risks that could come from instability due to international lawfare on this last 'colonial' outpost of Britain's. Starmer, somehow, did not think that it was more of a security concern that Chinese influence in Mauritius is malign and growing: China has now announced that Mauritius will be joining its power-grabbing Belt and Road initiative. Indeed, Starmer's comments about the handover in a press conference were very odd. He said with confidence that only Britain's enemies were against it. 'In favour are all of our allies: the US, Nato, Five Eyes, India. Against it: Russia, China, Iran.' Yet days after it went through, China was celebrating. Beijing's ambassador to Mauritius, Huang Shifang, told guests at the Chinese embassy in Mauritius's capital of Port Louis that China sent 'massive congratulations' to Mauritius on the deal, and that China 'fully supports' Mauritius's attempt to 'safeguard national sovereignty'. It's hard to think of a more cynical, almost joyously so, use of this terminology. China, after all, is a country obsessed with taking by force the democratic, independent Taiwan (Mauritius, China has made clear, supports its doctrine that Taiwan is already part of China); repressing free speech in Hong Kong, where it operates a subtle reign of terror, and subjecting its Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang to sadistic treatment in internment camps. And now it gets to set about enjoying all manner of devious proximity to our all-important Eastern base. So yes, Britain's Chagos deal makes delicious sense to China, but makes no sense for us. Unless, of course, you are Starmer and his inner circle, and you're enslaved to the twin ideologies of post-colonialism and 'international law' – which lands you in the awkward and unfortunate position, as we have seen, of ending up in agreement with China on core values like self-determination. It's a mess. All this Chinese gloating disguised as proper appreciation for nations' rights to freedom from colonial shackles serves as a useful reminder of just how suspicious such language has become. Yes, it is mass-peddled by august 'international' bodies, NGOs, courts and the UN. But these have all been corrupted by those with sinister anti-Western agendas. Indeed, the intranational bodies charged with pursuing a kinder world order with 'human rights' pursued through law always seem to favour those who care least about those obligations. It was telling when Lord Hermer, Starmer's attorney general, compared those in favour of withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to the Nazi philosopher and jurist Carl Schmitt, when what membership of the ECHR really means, in practice, is having to treat terrorists and foreign mass murderers with the utmost consideration. The greatest, longest-running example of the hijacking of a world organisation is the UN, which has been faking outrage at violations of 'international law' to endanger and ostracise Israel for decades. As Natasha Hausdorff, the international lawyer known for pointing out the legal flaws in the numerous evil smears levelled at Israel, notes : 'Armies of NGOs [have fed] the United Nations system and international bodies like the ICC and ICJ' so that 'pseudo-legal language permeates public discourse about Israel. This has now broken into public consciousness, but it has been building in the NGO world and UN world for a long time.' The once honourable ICJ – the International Court of Justice – was seized by South Africa to bring a case against Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal even as Israel sacrificed soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza, resulting in an arrest warrant for the Israeli PM which Britain refuses to reject. As the famous American lawyer and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz says of the ICJ: 'It's not international, it's not a court and it doesn't do justice.' The bloc that still determines the balance of power and the fate of countries – just – is the Western one. And we are now in great peril, due to being gullible and ill-informed, anti-Semitic, terror-appeasing and morally confused. Our cultures swallowed whole by Leftist cultural theories that were meant to never leave academia – those of post-structuralism and post-colonialism – and under their influence we turn our faces towards the lies pouring from the Eastern axis of 'resistance' – with lethal consequences. The international human rights community in all its respectable clout gives this evil nonsense the stamp of approval. Older people just about remember when international law meant something. Some saw first-hand the real genocide of the mid-20th century, others spectacular bloodshed under monsters and in the course of war. Some of us just remember hearing about those times and events, from parents and grandparents. To us, the souring of organisations like the ECHR, ICC, ICJ, UN – the whole concept of 'international law' itself – is bitter and clear. The rising generation, though, those who have taken up en masse the garbage of third-rate academic theories about coloniser and oppressor, who misuse terms including racism, apartheid, genocide, settler-colonialism, fascism and even capitalism, seem to genuinely think these corrupted organisations are the end of the moral and geopolitical rainbow. That reference to their motions and cases and objections and votes must end all arguments; that the old animating force behind international courts for human rights and justice was just a relic of a racist age, and now we know better. In some ways we do. But those who still chase after 'international' legitimacy are barking up the wrong tree – either accidentally or, like China, on purpose. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Moment tourist damages 2,000-year-old terracotta warrior statues at Chinese museum
Two Chinese terracotta warrior statues, thought to be around 2,000 years old, were damaged after a tourist climbed over a museum fence. Public security officials say the 30-year-old was visiting the museum housing the terracotta army in the city of Xi'an on Friday when he 'climbed over the guardrail and the protective net and jumped'. The man 'pushed and pulled' the clay warriors and two were 'damaged to varying degrees', the statement said. The man, who was said to 'suffer from mental illness', was detained by security and removed from the museum. The 8,000-strong terracotta army once guarded the tomb of the first emperor and is considered a symbol of ancient Chinese artistic and military sophistication.
