MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Archaeologists at the New York State Museum are piecing together a boat found deep in the muck at the site of the former World Trade Center. The boat dates back to the Revolutionary War. It was found 15 years ago and is now getting a permanent home, even though part of its journey to New York remains a mystery. Jon Campbell of member station WNYC has this report.
JON CAMPBELL, BYLINE: A handful of workers are standing at a table in the New York State Museum in Albany. They're in the corner of a big, empty exhibit space, and they're surrounded by planks of old brown wood. One grabs a steamer and sprays some of the timber down. Another uses a Q-tip to carefully clean the muck out of every nook and cranny. On the other side of the room, archaeology student Angela Paola (ph) uses a handheld tool to grind away at a piece of foam.
ANGELA PAOLA: We're currently just trying to get the platform for the keel leveled out. So once the keel is all level, we can actually start building the boat out from there.
CAMPBELL: She's talking about what's become known as the World Trade Center ship, a wooden boat found 22 feet below the surface at ground zero. The ship has been the talk of archaeologists since its discovery made national news in 2010. Since then, researchers have worked tirelessly to piece together its story. They analyzed rings in the wood grain to figure out it was likely built in Philadelphia in the 1770s, right around the Revolutionary War. And they know it was long buried by 1818, since landfill had turned water into shore by then. But there's still a lot they don't know.
What's the biggest unanswered question that you still have about this?
PETER FIX: That button. How did it get into the boat?
CAMPBELL: That's Dr. Peter Fix, a research scientist at Texas A&M, who's reconstructing the ship. He's talking about a small pewter button found in the boat, inscribed with the number 52. He remembers chatting about it years ago with the museum curator.
FIX: And he said, well, we have this button. The button is for a British regiment, 52nd of foot. How did that get in there? Then that piqued my brain.
CAMPBELL: That's about when researchers realized the boat was probably a gunship made for war, not a sloop or a cargo ship, like they first thought. That button suggests the British captured it, but we don't know how or when it got to New York City.
How much time do you spend thinking about that button?
FIX: Probably too much.
CAMPBELL: For the next several weeks, Dr. Fix and a team of grad students will continue reconstructing the remnants of the boat for a permanent exhibit in the New York State Museum. Michael Lucas is the museum's historical archaeology curator. He says the public's invited to watch it all happen and ask questions of the people doing the work.
MICHAEL LUCAS: It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You're not going to have an opportunity to see a 18th century ship being constructed probably again in your life.
CAMPBELL: Once the boat is reassembled, the museum plans to make it the center of an exhibit on America's founding. The goal is to have it all ready for the 250th anniversary in 2026.
For NPR News, I'm Jon Campbell in Albany.
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