
DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997           TAG: 9702270441

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   72 lines

RELICS FROM THE MUD THE WRECK HAS BEEN ASSESSED AS A LATE 1700S TO EARLY 1800S SHIP, PROBABLY ABOUT 100 FEET IN LENGTH.

Bottles, pottery shards, even a pair of shoes have turned up in an 18th-century shipwreck on the waterfront, intriguing archaeologists but not yet leading to any firm conclusions.

This is the less-than-glamorous side of archaeology: standing in gray clay and mud, shoveling and flinging the muck away, getting it under your fingernails.

Amid the massive timbers, about half a dozen archaeologists are also looking for small relics to help date the wreck. By Friday they want to disassemble it and remove it from the site.

``We've got the wreck almost completely uncovered, we think,'' Roderick Mather said Wednesday. ``It looks like the early assessments are holding up.''

Mather is an Oxford-trained archaeologist with Tidewater Atlantic Research, a private company in North Carolina. Its founder, Gordon Watts, made the first examination of the ship last week.

He and others have assessed the wreck as a late 1700s to early 1800s ship of substantial size, probably about 100 feet in length, made of pine. They think it's probably a warship because of the density of the timbers, made to withstand cannon fire.

``Wreck'' makes it sound larger than it is. Archaeologists have identified the keel and a section of one side of the ship. There are apparently no masts, sails, decking or internal compartments to be found.

Yet there are other bits and pieces among the timbers: a bottle that looks pharmaceutical, a wine bottle of a late 18th-century design, pottery shards from the period and the remains of a pair of shoes.

The shoes illustrate both the benefits and the dangers of relics. If they are established to be from the same period when the ship was built, that would be good.

But there is no guarantee they will be. The wreck's location has been the site of extensive construction over the centuries, and modern items can get churned into very old layers.

One archaeologist remembered finding a 20th-century cigarette pack deep within a wreck off of Yorktown.

The archaeologists have been photographing and videotaping their work this week. Today they hope to set up a grid over the site to precisely locate each timber and relic.

``One of the things we'll do is take samples of all this,'' Watts said. ``We might find some wood that's only indigenous to the Southeast.''

Archaeologists are moving as quickly as possible because the excavation is holding up construction of a ferry slip on the Portsmouth waterfront.

Scientists and historians involved with the project have said they are grateful to construction crews for pointing out the wreck, which could easily have been broken up, tossed aside and lost. Archaeologists want to maintain a reputation for working with city and state officials to assess and excavate sites as quickly as possible, and thus ensure future cooperation.

Mather said they believe the stern of the ship is embedded in the ground beneath one wall of the new ferry slip. They plan to leave it there, allow the slip to be flooded, and come back later to excavate it using marine archaeology techniques. ILLUSTRATION: Color by Photo by GARY C. KNAPP

Roderick Mather, left, Jeff Morris, center, and Robert Church, from

Tidewater Atlantic Research, work their way through the wreckage of

an ancient sailing vessel on the Portsmouth waterfront. It is

probably a warship.

Photo by GARY C. KNAPP

Ray Tubbny, left, Roderick Mather, center, and Jeff Morris, of

Tidewater Atlantic Research, work among the wreckage of the old

sailing ship uncovered on the Portsmouth waterfront.