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Workers at Manhattan’s World Trade Center site made an extraordinary find in 2010 when they uncovered the waterlogged remains of a Revolutionary War-era gunboat buried 22 feet below street level. This 50-foot vessel, built around 1775 to defend Philadelphia, had spent more than two centuries preserved in oxygen-poor earth before being carefully excavated, shipped to Texas for conservation and ultimately reconstructed to be exhibited at the New York State Museum.
The painstaking restoration process has revealed fascinating clues about early American naval warfare while leaving many mysteries about the ship’s journey from the Delaware River to Manhattan’s shores still unsolved.
• The 50-foot vessel was discovered in 2010 by workers digging 22 feet below street level at the World Trade Center site in Manhattan.
• Analysis revealed the boat was built in 1775 near Philadelphia using trees cut down in the early 1770s from the Philadelphia area.
• The ship was likely one of 13 gunboats hastily constructed in summer 1775 to defend Philadelphia from British forces coming up the Delaware River.
• More than 600 pieces of the vessel have been recovered and are being reconstructed at the New York State Museum in Albany.
• The gunboats were designed to carry cannons pointing from their bows and could transport 30 or more men.
• Evidence suggests the British may have captured and used this vessel, including a pewter button inscribed with “52” from the British Army’s 52nd Regiment of Foot.
• The timbers show damage from shipworms, indicating the boat likely traveled to warmer Caribbean waters where these mollusks are native.
• By the 1790s, the ship was out of commission and buried as part of a landfill project to expand Manhattan into the Hudson River.
• Each timber piece underwent three-dimensional scanning and years of preservation treatment in Texas before being freeze-dried and shipped to Albany for reconstruction.
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