A centuries-old colonial ship was discovered at the construction site of a new hotel along the waterfront in Old Town Alexandria. The ship was seemingly scuttled along the 200 block of South Union Street somewhere between 1775 and 1798. Two months ago, archaeologists unearthed the foundation of what they think is the city's oldest public building, a Revolutionary-era warehouse from 1755, on the same block.
The warehouse was used to store goods offloaded from ships coming into the port, and most likely housed flour, hemp, and tobacco. The warehouse does appear on multiple historical maps into the 1780s, but the ship does not. Archaeologists have identified the 50-foot ship as either a cargo or military ship that was scuttled most likely "to provide the framework to fill in the cove and sand flats at Port Lumley, one of two spots where the deep-water channels of the Potomac approaches the shoreline," reports the Washington Post.
Archaeologists with Thunderbird Archaeology, who is managing the excavation, have been working to remove the vessel piece by piece from the site. One-third of the hull is intact, mainly preserved because it was submerged in water and not exposed to oxygen. Archaeologists are busy scanning, photographing, and documenting the ship this week, slowly removing its remains for storage in large tanks of freshwater until it can be studied by a preservation lab. The ship could provide key ideas as to how 18th century colonists built their boats.
The Hotel Indigo is currently being developed by Carr Hospitality, used 3-D scanning imagery to excavate the historical site and located the ship's bow in December 2015. They are paying for its removal. The warehouse was taken to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab in St. Leonard; when approached as to whether they could take in and preserve the ship, they said they have since run out of space for storage.
The scanning imagery also located a "large privy, six feet long and possibly three seats wide, the third such outhouse found as part of the hotel project," reports the Post.