The Ronson Ship Made Into a Pier 240 Years Ago, Before South Street Existed
by Warren Riess and Sheli 0. Smith
"The ship has spent the last couple of hundred years here in New York," said Kent Barwick, Chairman of New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission. "Here is the natural resting place for the ship, in the pre-eminent port city of the United States." So the battle to retain for the city one of the hulls it had literally been built on was opened, after builders uncovered an 18th century ship on a site about to be developed for a 30-story office building. Mariners Museum, in Norfolk, Virginia, generously offered to take on the priceless relic-we have no other 18th century merchantman in the world today. But then the developer, Howard Ronson, provided funds to study the whole ship, and to preserve the bow for New York. Your editor is quoted as saying: "It's an organic part of our history, and it will mean most here....When this ship sailed, New York was just three-story buildings, and this ship was the biggest thing in town, she towered over those little buildings. She was our tie to civilization!' The archaeologists' report rightly stresses the study value of the recovered bow structure. But the value in the thing itself was demonstrated when some 12,000 people stood in line for hours in the bitter February rain to catch a glimpse of the vessel in her muddy pit, where she had lain so long under the feet of so many generations of passerby, before the bow was carted away for conservation. "We have been excavating a filled area on the East Side of Manhattan and may have found an old ship." It was Jim Ahlberg of Soil Systems on the telephone, late one night in mid-January 1982. "Can you come down and take a look tomorrow?" We'd been alerted earlier by a call from Mike Roberts, who had suggested us to Soil Systems, a company that conducts contract archaeological excavations across the country. Warren was already packed for what we thought would be a quick two-day look at a few old ship timbers.
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A merchantman like the Ronson Ship-including her three lower-deck gunports aft-lies with her stern toward us, under sail in the broad, quiet waters of the East River about 1717. The River is considerably narrowed through landfill on both banks, today, and the speeded-up current makes it more turbulent. The Ronson Ship was probably extant when this view was drawn by William Burg is. She was laid ashore 30 years later a few blocks north of Wall Street, where her look-alike hangs in the wind. She became the endpiece ofa quay built out between Fletcher and John Streets, later covered over in landfill and lying a block and a half inland when discovered last spring in digging foundations for Mr. Ronson '.s new office tower on the site. Photo by Carl Forster, courtesy Landmarks Preservation Commission, NY City.
What did he expect to see? The partial remains of a nineteenth or twentieth century derelict like the many visible in New York Harbor's ship graveyard , a British colonial wreck , or maybe even a seventeenth century Dutch fluyt? As Warren flew into New York his excitement grew. Jim's directions led him to an area about a block and a half from the East River-part of the three blocks filled by New Yorkers in the eighteenth century to cover the intertidal mud flats and shallow water of the river front. Development of the quays allowed the colonists to bring deepwater ships alongside rather than load and unload them lying off in the stream. This also created valuable new waterfront property. Eighteenth century New York was just developing as an important port for the American colonies. Smaller than Boston and Philadelphia, it quickly grew as the British preferred it as the American terminus for general government shipping. Most of colonial New York's trade was coastal . Its overseas trade was mainly with the British Isles and the British West Indies, though some ships made trips to the Iberian countries for salt and their islands for wine. Most of the ships made shuttle voyages, back-and-forth to particular ports in England or the West Indies, but some of their cargoes were probably transshipped to make the familiar triangle trade. New York grew to be America's largest port in the nineteenth century as its merchants developed its hinterland trade, made good use of the new canal system, and developed an efficient waterfront. The site was a small block surrounded by a 12ft painted plywood fence with large
block letters declaring, "175 Water Street." Construction of a 30-story office building was about to begin. A team of 50 archaeologists under the direction of Dr. Joan Geismar had almost finished excavation of the eighteenth century merchant houses and private homes on the block. Dr. Geismar's team dug four "deep test" holes, 3 by IO by 12ft deep, around the perimeter of the site. In the last deep test the mud wall had fallen away to reveal the side of a ship.
Below, the Ronson Ship comes to light in a world inconceivably changed from that she sailed in. Immediately north ofher is the South Streez Seaport district , and beyond that the Brooklyn Bridge, a product of the genius and industry of the city the little ship helped to build. Photo, Robert Adams.
SEA HISTDRY, SUMMER 1983