Maritime Interests

I am a former grad student at Stony Brook University. I was on a team of land archaeologists that found a fairly intact circa 1730s merchant ship in the deep testing of a landfill in lower Manhattan, NY. Underwater archaeologists supervised the winter excavation of the so-called "Ronson Ship" named after the parking lot developer for a consortium of British banks that became National Westminster here in the US. At the time, the South Street Seaport was very poor and had just invested $5000 in a "Black Ball Clipper" hulk used as a warehouse in the then peaceful Falkland Islands, so there was some effort to conserve more than the few parts I managed to photograph in a wet lab and wrap in burlap to be submerged in a watertight dumpster. An attempt was made to take the bow and perhaps freeze dry the centuries of water out of it's "apple cheeks". The ship had teredo worms from the North Atlantic and the Caribbean according to a biologist's analysis in the outer planking, which I think was sandwiched to the hull with horsehair or hemp and pitch or tar.

I've done some archaeology research on the infamous "Wanderer" referred to as "the last slaver". Built as a luxury yacht in Setauket, NY, it was outfitted with water tanks in Port Jefferson, NY for transatlantic voyages, after being bought by a Louisiana cotton merchant's broker from the Captain Brewster Hawkins' ship chandler and mechanics firm, who "revived" shipbuilding there in the 1840s."Wanderer" landed on Jekyll Island, Georgia in 1858, (Wikipedia) 400 of the 600 Africans surviving the "middle passage" ordeal to be sold into slavery. It was captured by the Union, a "chess piece" in the American Civil War, very fast, only an oil painting of it survives in the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, afterward in the early 1870s it sunk in a storm off Cape Maysi, the east point of Cuba, named by Christopher Columbus (old Spanish) near Guantanamo in the fruit trade.

That said totally off-topic, "Experiment" was the second ship (sloop) (after the first, the large "Empress of China") to sail from America to China and with a total crew of 10! The small sailing sloop was built near Albany, NY the state capital of New York, USA. At a National Maritime Historical Society meeting, in Peekskill, NY, (a former member who helped research and record the remains of two wooden 40' centerboard cargo sloops in Bear Mountain State Park's tide-line, abandoned there, published in their quarterly magazine "Sea History") it was stated that a replica was being built and that perhaps a voyage recreating the second American voyage to China, not long after the formation of the United States of America, in 1785, was also to be recreated. See: "Voyage of the Sloop Experiment"

I look forward to learning more about Asian Maritime History and Archaeology since most of what I know is some of Western Maritime history. Years ago I was intrigued by an archaeology report of the excavation of a Chinese ship in the silts of a river there and the report about the various spices it held and where they might have come from, I think from around 1480 CE (?) published around 1979 or so. About that time too, an archaeologist from China, a specialist in Chinese bronze tripod "cooking" vessels spoke to an assembly at Stony Brook University, translated on the spot by the Nobel prize winning physicist, C. N. Yang. I have enjoyed the archaeology that has since, it seems, been in the press more, from Asia.