May/June 2016 |
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Archeologists from Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc., search through the soil on the ship's excavation site for more artifacts.
saying, "I bet we'll find a ship in that corner."
Ironically, Baicy found, in the remaining corner of the
excavation construction site, the second major discovery.
"I sent a team member to lunch, and while he was gone
I hit a bunch of wood," Baicy says. The wood was the
bulkhead to the 50-foot-long ship's hull.
The 1775 ship took a little more than a week to fully
excavate. The crew worked tirelessly, documenting as quickly
as they could, to finish the project on time for the client.
To preserve the ship during excavation, the crew sprayed
water on the hull's wood beams and covered the ship with
a tarp each night. Many community members visited the
excavation site to gaze over the fence and get a glimpse of
the 300-year-old ship.
"People love boats and the history of boats," says Baicy,
who believes the hull was either a part of a cargo ship or
military vessel. "Things are cool (the ship and warehouse),
but it's the data we get from them that is important to me."
The crew also found one large privy, an outhouse (possibly
three seats wide), and three other small privies. All the priv-
ies dated to the 1800s and housed many important artifacts,
from ceramics to bones.
Both the ship and the warehouse discovery drew an
overwhelming amount of national news attention from
The Washington Post, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN and other
media outlets.
"I was surprised how fast the media attention spread,"
Mullen says. "We even hit international news when I was
interviewed by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)."
The revolutionary ship lives on, sealed by propylene glycol,
in a giant holding tank in Alexandria. The city is organizing
fundraisers to properly preserve and display the ship.
During this busy time of discovery Boyd Sipe, archeology
manager for WSSI, managed the office while most of the
team was on-site.
"It was an exciting time," Sipe says. "We were very busy
at the office and received a huge spike in proposals." One
of those proposals happened to be the property across the
street from the ship and warehouse discovery.
Mullen and his archeology team are eager to see what new
discoveries they might unearth.
"I look forward to doing it all again at the adjacent property,"
Mullen says. "It's three times the size and a block and a half
away from the original site."
"We knew we could find a
warehouse and a ship, but we
didn't think we would actually
find them."
– Dan Baicy,
associate archeologist
at Thunderbird Archeology
