NMHS PROJECTS:
Archaeologists report on the Ronson Ship
The Ship that Built a City by Warren Riess & Sheli 0. Smith For two and a quarter centuries she lay waiting underground, a few feet below the hurrying footsteps of New Yorkers bent on their business on Front Street, in New York's financial district a few blocks north of Wall Street. Built, probably, around 1700, she was one ofthe deepwatermen that traded to New York in the first half of the eighteenth century-she is literally, ''the ship that built a city." Here two archaeologists deeply involved in the project report on what has been done with this most significant ship find since her timbers came to light in January 1982. Eighteenth century Manhattan dock workers swung their sledges hard, driving spikes through the planking of the old merchantman and into new pilings . The screech of wagon wheels and the shouting of orders filled the air above the newly formed dock , while wagons and ships drew alongside the derelict ship to empty their refuse and ballast into her gaping hold. Within a short time laborers filled the tidal area behind the merchantman , forming a new block on the East River waterfront. The only remainder of the once proud sailing ship was her mizzen mast , turned into a crane and her weather deck turned lading platform . A few years later the sound of creaking wheels and mates' calls were heard anew as the piers extended out past the hulk into the East River. New buildings began to rise over the old ship using her deck beams as foundation footers. By the end of the eighteenth century only the old-timers knew the wooden lady sat below the bustling merchant houses.
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Over two hundred years later sunlight once again touched the timbers of the merchantman. In January 1982 archaeologists, investigating a pre-construction site at 175 Water Street, New York City, discovered the 250 year-old merchantman eight feet below street level. The complete bow, port side, and a third of the stern were under a parking lot. The remainder of the hull lay under adjacent Front Street. By March 4 our team of 46 archaeologists and support crew had excavated and recorded all of the ship within the block. In a final twenty-four hour marathon we removed twenty feet of the bow, piece by piece (see SEA HIS1DRY, Summer 1983, "The Ronson Ship"). As the construction crew destroyed the hull of the nowrecorded ship to make room for a 30-story office building, we packed the bow timbers into a wet construction "roll away" and trucked them a short distance to the National Park Services facilities at Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn , NY. There the wood awaited shipment to a conservation facility still under construction. Three months later the facility was ready and the wood was shipped to the new conservation laboratory of Soil Systems, Inc. in Groton, Massachusetts. There the timbers were immersed in tanks of water to begin a long conservation process, which will allow the timbers to survive eventual drying and exhibition . In June 1982 we gathered an interdisciplinary team of specialists from around the United States to help extract information from this important find . Archaeologists, conservators , an historian, a wood specialist, and a ship reconstructer began studying, treating, researching, and testing the ship. Conservators Heidi Miksch and Betty Seifert immediately went to work cleaning all surfaces of each timber. As they stripped away the excavation mud with brushes and water, details of the fastenings, burthen marks on the stem post, and even tool marks became visible. As the conservators finished each piece of wood Carrie Horne Lathe carefully recorded it, using a method developed by J. Richard Steffy, of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, to make one-to-one drawings of each surface on sheets of clear SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1985
Two ships much like the Ronson Ship, complete to three gunports aft on the lower deck , close to the Manhattan shore where the Ronson ship was laid ashore to make a pierhead about 25 years before the American Revolution. From the Burgis view of New York , 1717, courtesy the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
acetate. During the summer of 1982 she spent hundreds of hours hunched over the wood, black patch on one eye, tracing with colored Sharpies on plastic supported by a glass sheet. By autumn 1982 the bow timbers were cleaned, recorded, and ready for chemical conservation treatments. Betty then placed the wood in a bath of weak acid to remove iron salts without destroying the wood's cellular structure. the wood then went into a solution of water and polyethylene glycol (PEG) , a synthetic microcrystalline wax , where it has spent the last two years soaking. Today the PEG solution has traveled approximately one inch into the wood, the optimum distance for the wood's condition. When the timbers are eventually dried the PEG will remain in the wood cells, giving them strength to retain their shape. Betty plans to start the slow-drying process this year, before reconstruction of the bow. Once Carrie finished the wood drawings , she turned them over to ship reconstructor Jay Rosloff, a graduate student of Steffy 'sat Texas A&M University, to determine exactly how the bow pieces fit together. This step was needed, even though the timbers were together when the ship was uncovered , and each piece was numbered and recorded in place. The disassembly was done quickly, however, and much of it at night under floodlights, so the resulting photographs and sketches left some questions unanswered. Using reductions of the timbers' tracings , Jay carved one-to-five scale models of each piece of wood and slowly constructed a research model of the bow. This model and Jay's final report will also help determine how the timbers might be supported in a future exhibit. Emerging from the damp muck that held her encased for centuries, the ship impressed all who saw her with her businesslike air. The National Society believes her most important voyage is still to be made-a voyage into history to help New Yorkers understand how their seaport city came into being , how they got where they are today. Photos, Warren Riess.