Subway Ship Discovered On April 17, 1916, Dr. Edward Hagaman Hall, Secretary of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, at the request of the contractors who are building the new subway in Greenwich street, assisted them in the excavation of a ship which they found about 20 feet below the street level at the intersection of Dey and Greenwich streets. Owing to the necessity for retaining in place the timber work which supported the roof of the subway tunnel, it proved to be impracticable to excavate the whole of the vessel. Over half the breadth of the forward part of the port side was exposed, showing by its curves, proportions and construction the type of vessel and her probable size. As her widest half-breadth measurement was eight feet, her beam was evidently about sixteen feet, and, judging from plans of old ships of her type, her length over all must have been about three times her beam, or about 48 or 50 feet over all. She had a full, blunt bow, very much of the Dutch type, and a very flat bottom. Her ribs did not join the keel, but began at a considerable distance each side from the keel, the interval between the lower ends of opposite ribs being spanned by stout cleats or transverse timbers. As might be imagined from her size, she was a sailing vessel, the step for one mast being uncovered in the excavation. Whether she had two masts was not apparent. In the bottom of the vessel was found a mass of wood ashes, a cannon ball, some meat bones, a few pieces of broken china (apparently Dutch), and a few other objects, but no mark or object on or in the part uncovered gave any clue to her name or exact date. The timbers and woodwork were fastened together with wooden pegs, and were in an excellent state of preservation: any iron-work which may have been used in her construction had completely disintegrated. Popular imagination built up about the discovery all sorts of legends which found their way into the newspapers. One of the most picturesque was to the effect that she was Adriaen Block's "Tiger," which was burned somewhere in New Netherland in 1614 (See our Annual Report for 1914, pp. 478-180). Of course it is not known just where the Tiger was burned and there was no authority for such a statement. The facts of the case, as nearly as they can be learned, are as follows: Greenwich street was originally the water-front, the blocks west of the street being made land. By 1763, the block between Dey and Cortlandt streets had been filled in for a distance of about 150, feet west of Greenwich street and by 1767 the adjacent block on the north between Dey and Fulton streets, had been extended. The outer wharf from Cortlandt to Fulton streets was then, in 1767, called the King's Wharf, and through it, on the line of Dey street, was a slip leading in to Greenwich street. On the south side of this slip was an Arsenal of military stores, and on the north side, in the block now bounded by Greenwich, Dey, Fulton, and Washington streets, there was a considerable redoubt as shown by the British Headquarters Map. The Dey street slip was still open through the King's wharf during the Revolution, but at its inner end was gradually filling up with sand, and Hill's map, surveyed in 1782, shows the slip filled up for about half the distance from Greenwich to Washington streets. Immediately after the war, the Common Council took measures for filling up the slip farther. On July 21, 1784, "It being represented to the Board that a Breast Work across the Slip at Dey Street is necessary, & as those at the Old & Beekman's Slips are directed to be done at the Corporation Expence, it was agreed that the Board will also provide for defraying the expence of that at Dey's Slip." On August 26, 1784, the Board approved Jacob Garribrantse's account "for making a Bulkhead across Deys Slip," amounting to £16:11:1. At the next meeting of the Board Sept. 1, IIenry E. Lutterloh, Andrew Lott and Henry Sheaf petitioned for a grant of the waterlot fronting Dey street, extending 75 feet along the shore and 200 feet into the river, but it was refused, and the area was thus retained by the city for that part of Dey street. The grant asked for was a highly desirable one, as it was near the Bear Market.” From the foregoing it is apparent that the vessel was sunk at the place where she was found prior to the filling up of the inner end of Dey-slip as indicated on the map of 1782. But the date can be set considerably back of 1782 by another criterion. The vessel was filled and covered, not with artificial filling, but sand drifted in from the river. It is evident, therefore, that she sank when the water at Greenwich and Dey streets was naturally deep enough to float her; and that she was buried in natural drift-sand. We conclude, therefore, that the conditions which would have allowed a loaded vessel of that size to be moored at the site where she was found could not have existed after about the year 1767. How much earlier than that she was sunk, and how many years before she was sunk she was built are purely matters of conjecture. International Amenities Concerning Revolutionary Relics In 1916, Mr. Reginald Pelham Bolton, a member of our Board of Trustees, reprinted with extra illustrations and in handsomely bound form, his contribution to our Annual Report for 1915 which occupied pages 347-501 of that volume and was entitled "Military Camp Life on Upper Manhattan Island and Adjacent Mainland During the American Revolution." The extra-illustrated edition is a book of 214 pages entitled "Relics of the Revolution: The Story of the Discovery of the Buried Remains of Military Life in Forts and Camps on Manhattan Island." It is dedicated "To my fellow laborers William L. Calver, John Ward Dunsmore, Edward Hagaman Hall." The intensely interesting character of the researches described by Mr. Bolton will appear by reference to our Report for 1915. At the monthly meeting of the Trustees of this Society, held February 28, 1916, Dr. Henry M. Leipziger moved, in the terms quoted hereafter, that copies of this book be presented to the British regiments which were in America during the War of Independence and which have maintained their organization since then, and Mr. Herbert L. Bridgman offered personally to bear the expense of the gift. The resolution was unanimously adopted, and in pursuance thereof, and with the cooperation of His Excelleney the British Ambassador to the United States, we secured the following list of "British regiments which served in America during the War of Independence." with their addresses: East Kent Regiment.. Hounslow, Eng. Royal Fusiliers, City of London Regiment.. Hounslow, Eng. Hounslow, Eng. East Surrey Regiment, 70th Foot.. Hounslow, Eng. A copy of the book was sent to "The Officer in Charge of Records" of each regiment, reading after the following form: Officer in Charge of Records, 16th Queen's Lancers, Dear Sir: Canterbury, England. New York, July 15, 1916. With the approval of His Majesty's Government, received through the kind offices of His Excellency the British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society has the honor to transmit to you under another cover and to beg you to accept for your regimental library a copy of Mr. Reginald Pelham Bolton's recently published book entitled "Relics of the Revolution." This book embodies the results of excavations on military camp-sites in the City of New York conducted by Mr. Bolton (a Trustee of this Society) and his colleagues during the past 15 years, in the course of which many evidences of British occupation during the years 1776-1783 have been brought to light. While these excavations have been going on, occasional correspondence with representatives of some of the regiments which have preserved a continuous organization since those early days has disclosed a great interest on their part and has led us to believe that their interest might be shared by their comrades of other regiments. Consequently, on February 28 last, our Board of Trustees adopted the following resolution: Resolved, That as a token of international friendship, the Society present a copy of Mr. Bolton's book entitled 'Relics of the Revolution to each British regiment which was encamped on Manhattan Island during the War for Independence and which still maintains its existence, with an expression of the hope that the ties of amity between the two countries which have been unbroken for over a century may always remain so." We have been gratified to notice, in the correspondence which has led up to the sending of this book, fresh proof, if it were needed, that our English cousins entertain, as we do, warm sentiments of pride in our common heritage of relationship and history; and if, perchance, this book recalls a period of temporary estrangement, we trust that your memories, like ours, will dwell rather on the longer periods before and after the events alluded to in the book, during which, as children of the same blood, we have developed the glorious traditions of liberty which mean so much to the world to-day and as leaders in which our two peoples |