Posted on 01/06/2016 5:01:29 PM PST by Tennessee Nana
A large, heavy ship, scuttled between 1775 and 1798, is being dug out of its damp grave at the site of a new hotel construction project in Old Town Alexandria.
Archaeologists found the partial hull of a ship at 220 S. Union Street, part of the city's major redevelopment of the Potomac River waterfront. It's on the same one-block site where workers two months ago discovered a 1755 foundation from a warehouse that is believed to have been the city's first public building.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
PING
Cool!
Sweet....
Wow! Bkmrk.
Why its the old USS Obama Shoobama mentioned in a footnote in Wet Dreams of My Father by president Obama.
The Shoobama was a slave ship that was taken over by slaves who had rebelled against their slave masters!
Federal funding is ON the way!
Wonders never cease! /SARC.
Pretty amazing
Old Town Alexandria and Georgetown are two great places for nightlife in the DC area. The C&O Canal tow path and the bike trail to Mount Vernon are great for daytime exercise.
She’ll need some work.
We likely have all sorts of wooden ship construction details from the millennia now.
Love to have the wood. Could build some pretty cool stuff...
It always struck me as odd they were scuttled at a dock. They make poor landfill because the timbers rot away. The hulk interferes with incoming and outgoing ships.
In San Francisco, during and after 1849 gold rush, hundreds of ships were abandoned by their crews who went to search for gold. East of Montgomery St. was a tidal flat filled with ship carcasses. Today, you can’t excavate for a new building there without finding an old ship.
Having worked at a low rent “shipyard” one summer, there were all sorts of hulks stored there by their owners. Daily pumping to keep then afloat there was. That a BIG one should end up on the bottom is not a big surprise.
Having worked at a low rent “shipyard” one summer, there were all sorts of hulks stored there by their owners. Daily pumping to keep them afloat there was. That a BIG one should end up on the bottom is not a big surprise.
I “rest” my case.
Good point. Those ships probably didn’t have steam powered bilge pumps and those wood hulls leaked like sieves. All the men who could sail the ship or man the pumps were gone, so they probably just sank into the mud on their own. Hadn’t thought of that before.
The real ‘leakers” had an electric sump pump that I was to activate daily....
Bet the landowner isn’t so ecstatic that his project will never be finished and he’s out $$$$$$$.
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