Ship Underground

[rangerrebew]

Ship Underground

 http://www.archaeology.org/issues/208-1603/trenches/4159-trenches-virginia-underground-ship

By DANIEL WEISS

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Trenches Virginia Ship Timbers
(Courtesy Thunderbird Archeology, a division of Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc.)
Ship timbers, Alexandria, VirginiaA large portion of an eighteenth-century ship that measured around 80 feet long was recently discovered on the site of a planned hotel near the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia. The vessel appears to have been scuttled between 1775 and 1798 in what were then mud flats, where it served “as sort of a pre-built framework to hold soil that was being deposited to make new land,” says Boyd Sipe, manager of Thunderbird Archeology, the firm that conducted the survey. Based on its size and evidence that its hull timbers had contact with salt water, Sipe says the ship was most likely a two-masted oceangoing heavy cargo or military craft.

 

The timbers were particularly well preserved because, once buried, they were sealed off from oxygen and were not disturbed despite extensive construction in the area in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the site, archaeologists have also discovered the remains of Alexandria’s first public warehouse, dating to the 1750s, and three privies containing extensive artifacts including a complete kaolin pipe, jewelry, ceramics, glass bottles, and parts of leather shoes.

[Bill Cipher]

[GourmetDan]

 
So they're saying that sea-levels were higher in the past?  Globull warming back then?

Or did the land somehow rise up?

[rangerrebew]

So they're saying that sea-levels were higher in the past?  Globull warming back then?

Or did the land somehow rise up?

  I guess the land rose up about the same time global warming started "heating up", huh?

[Bill Cipher]

So they're saying that sea-levels were higher in the past?  Globull warming back then?

Or did the land somehow rise up?

The ships were scuttled - sunk, in vernacular terms - and used to hold in-fill to build up the land from marsh to useful.  It was a common use for many older wooden ships.

[GourmetDan]

The ships were scuttled - sunk, in vernacular terms - and used to hold in-fill to build up the land from marsh to useful.  It was a common use for many older wooden ships.

That doesn't make any sense.  How is one scuttled ship going to hold enough in-fill to transform a mud flat into something useful?

[Bill Cipher]

That doesn't make any sense.  How is one scuttled ship going to hold enough in-fill to transform a mud flat into something useful?

Other ships involved and you don't need to fill the entire area with ships, just use them in strategic areas.

[GourmetDan]

Other ships involved and you don't need to fill the entire area with ships, just use them in strategic areas.

Just what are the 'strategic areas' in a mud flat...

[EC]

That doesn't make any sense.  How is one scuttled ship going to hold enough in-fill to transform a mud flat into something useful?

Same way one fallen tree is enough to completely change the course of a river.

[GourmetDan]

Same way one fallen tree is enough to completely change the course of a river.

Rivers are constrained to their flood-plains... mud-flats are tidal structures... completely different things...

[katzenjammer]

Rivers are constrained to their flood-plains... mud-flats are tidal structures... completely different things...

[EC]

Not really. Anything that stops the sediment from being dragged away will eventually build up land high enough for plants to take hold. Once plants take hold, the roots act as millions of tiny barriers, further preventing erosion.

Think of it like the water version of snow drifts.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Thought it was lack of oxygen that preserved stuff in mud flats and such.

[GourmetDan]

Not really. Anything that stops the sediment from being dragged away will eventually build up land high enough for plants to take hold. Once plants take hold, the roots act as millions of tiny barriers, further preventing erosion.

Think of it like the water version of snow drifts.

A barrier in a tidal mud flat is going to increase the velocity of the water flowing around it, thereby increasing the sediment being carried away.

[Bill Cipher]

A barrier in a tidal mud flat is going to increase the velocity of the water flowing around it, thereby increasing the sediment being carried away.

Well gee, then, I guess all those folks all these centuries who have been burying ships to build up land have been doing it wrong all along, haven't they?  Too had we don't have a time machine so we could go back and tell them not to waste their time, that it'll never work.

[GourmetDan]

Well gee, then, I guess all those folks all these centuries who have been burying ships to build up land have been doing it wrong all along, haven't they?  Too had we don't have a time machine so we could go back and tell them not to waste their time, that it'll never work.

How do you know that?

[EC]

We know that this technique was used to form the harbor at Ostia - there are contemporaneous reports.

Alexander the Great used it in conquering an island city too (name escapes me), but the temporary peninsular his army formed to attack the city is still here 2000 years later.

We know they did it because they wrote about it.

[GourmetDan]

We know that this technique was used to form the harbor at Ostia - there are contemporaneous reports.

Alexander the Great used it in conquering an island city too (name escapes me), but the temporary peninsular his army formed to attack the city is still here 2000 years later.

We know they did it because they wrote about it.

So you're saying there are contemporaneous reports for this incident?

The Ostia harbor doesn't seem to fit this case at all... they were building large stone moles as breakwaters... the grain ships that sank were the result of a storm that sank these ships in spite of the moles...