We may finally solve the mystery of the shipwreck that lies beneath Ground Zero

National Geographic

20 hours ago

The Museum of the City of New York is launching a new investigation into the remains of a vessel found beneath lower Manhattan during subway construction in 1916. Museum of the City of New York curator William M. Williamson and historian James A. Kelly examine timbers, possibly from the Tyger, on view in a 1954 exhibition Shipyards of New York. Photograph Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
A shipwreck mystery buried under Ground Zero could soon be solved, with scientists set to investigate whether a doomed 17th-century vessel—captained by a Dutch explorer who settled Manhattan—lies deep beneath the former Twin Towers.
Visitors flock to the World Trade Center site to see its 9/11 memorial and museum, and honor victims of the 2001 terrorist attack. But few would know Ground Zero was once nothing but ocean, before land reclamation expanded Manhattan, and that it hides clues to one of New York's oldest enigmas, which is linked to this year's 400th anniversary of the city's founding.
Generations of U.S. and European researchers have attempted to locate a long-lost Dutch ship called the Tyger. It helped the Netherlands map America's northeast coast, and paved the way for New York's colonization by the Dutch, before it sank in 1613 roughly where the Twin Towers later stood. In the century after the Tyger disappeared, first the Dutch and then the British needed greater space to expand their Manhattan settlements. So they dumped dirt and garbage into the surrounding rivers, which created new land, and expanded lower Manhattan until buildings covered the location where the Tyger sank.
Now the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is launching its first-ever major investigation to try to find out whether a shipwreck beneath Ground Zero, unearthed in 1916 during construction of a subway line, is indeed the Tyger. Its tests will focus on eight feet of ship keel and ribs unearthed in that dig, says Margaret Connors McQuade, MCNY Director of Collections. The earliest known map of New Amsterdam, circa 1639, showing Manhattan, Staten Island, Fort Amsterdam, Brooklyn, the Bronx, plantations, windmills, and Native American villages. Photograph by Everett Collection/Bridgeman Images
To determine the age and origin of these timber artifacts, the museum's researchers may use tree species identification, analysis of chemical signatures in the wood, and examination of tree ring patterns. 'The quest to confirm the Tyger's identity is not just a scientific endeavor, it is a journey into the city's earliest days,' explains MCNY President Stephanie Hill Wilchfort.
MCNY curatorial and collections staff will collaborate with outside experts in the fields of marine archeology and dendrochronology, including Martijn Manders, Founding Head of the Maritime Programme, Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, and Marta Domínguez Delmás, Senior Researcher at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. How the Dutch came to control Manhattan
New York as we know it may never have existed if not for the Tyger and its captain Adriaen Block, historians say. He mapped the area for the Dutch, and then in 1614 became the first European to settle what is now Manhattan, which at the time was inhabited by the Lenape tribe (whose language gave the island its present-day name). Yet Block is a curiously anonymous figure in New York. The city has no statue of him, only a bronze plaque at 45 Broadway, which details how Block built Manhattan's first European settlement on behalf of the Dutch.
In the 1600s, at the time of Block's arrival, the Netherlands was a maritime superpower, competing with Spain, Portugal and Britain to 'discover' and colonize lands the world over. Spearheading its global expansion were captains like Block. Between 1611 and 1614, he led four voyages to the Hudson River region, which now encompasses New York City, says McQuade. Several of these expeditions were on board the Tyger. In the process, Block charted many waterways from New Jersey north to Cape Cod, including near Rhode Island's Block Island, which is named after him and has become a popular summer getaway.
'His cartographic work corrected key geographic misconceptions and laid the groundwork for future Dutch colonization in the region,' McQuade says.
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Block also cataloged geography and natural resources, and this information convinced the Dutch that Manhattan was ripe for settlements. So, in 1614, Block came ashore at southern Manhattan and built four houses. This outpost grew over the course of several decades into New Amsterdam, part of a Dutch colony called New Netherland, which soon covered parts of what are now New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Delaware. It wasn't until 1664, when the English seized Manhattan, that New York became its name. Timbers thought to be from the Tyger, on display at the Marine Gallery. Photograph Courtesy Museum of the City of New York After losing the Tyger to fire, Captain Adriaen Block constructed the "Onrust" with the help of the Lenape, depicted up in an illustration for Old Times in the Colonies by Charles Carleton Coffin. Photograph by Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images
By then the Dutch had already built Fort Amsterdam, next to what is now The Battery, under the leadership of colonial governor Peter Minuit. New York may not have been founded by the Dutch in the 1620s if not for Block, says Jaap Jacobs, Dutch historian and expert on Dutch exploration of North America. Thanks to Block's detailed charting of the waters surrounding New York, the Dutch were able to create maps which let them gain a monopoly on shipping in this area.
'Without this development, the subsequent colonization by the Dutch West India Company from 1623 onwards would have been much more difficult,' Jacobs says. 'It may not have yielded the same result: the founding of New Amsterdam, and New York, in the 1620s.'
(Colonial New York was rowdy, filthy, smelly) Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
But when Block settled Manhattan in 1614, he was not sailing the Tyger, because that ship had sunk a few months earlier, McQuade says. The Tyger vanished after it caught fire accidentally while anchored in seas roughly where Ground Zero now stands. Three centuries then passed without any sign of the vessel.
Then, in 1916, charred shipwreck timber was unearthed during subway construction at the corner of Greenwich and Dey streets, which now adjoins Ground Zero. 'Along with the timbers, they uncovered a Dutch broad-headed axe, trade beads, clay pipes, a length of chain, a small canon, and shards of blue and white pottery,' McQuade says.
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At the time, amateur historian James A. Kelly swiftly reported these findings to several museums. It is possible that more remnants from that shipwreck are still buried beneath Ground Zero. Because the damaged vessel was never properly excavated, only a section of its keel and ribs were saved, McQuade says. Those timber artifacts spent decades gathering dust, first at the New York Aquarium and then at MCNY.
But in 1955, fresh research supported the theory those materials came from the Tyger, McQuade says. Radiocarbon dating by Columbia University traced the timber to between 1595 and 1635, while an iron bolt from the same shipwreck was found to have been made about 1600 using a European smelting process. All of which hinted that the remains unearthed at Ground Zero may be from the Tyger. Yet it did not amount to proof. This 1651 engraving by Kryn Fredericks, shows 'The Hartgers View', the earliest known depiction of New Amsterdam, as it appeared in the 1620s. Photograph by Lebrecht History/Bridgeman Images
So during the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. university researchers made new attempts to identify this shipwreck. Rather than clarifying the matter, those investigations only deepened the Tyger's enigma. One analysis concluded the Tyger might not have burned fully, and its materials may have been salvaged to build Block's replacement ship. Other studies suggested those remains could have been stolen by looters during the 1900s. Or that they are sitting in a museum storage facility somewhere in the U.S. just waiting to be rediscovered.
Now, however, the MCNY hopes it can solve this puzzle by testing the shipwreck remains uncovered in 1916, says McQuade. Although the museum has held these artifacts for eight decades, this will be its most comprehensive investigation into their origins.
Previous studies of the timber did not utilize tree ring pattern analysis. Also called dendrochronology, this is one of several scientific tools which may be used during the MCNY study, says McQuade. Dendrochronology lets researchers determine when and where a piece of timber was cut. Species identification, meanwhile, can reveal the type of tree a piece of timber came from. And isotopic analysis, which is also being considered by MCNY, studies chemical signatures in the wood to pinpoint its geographic origin.
This shipwreck investigation is the museum's landmark project to mark New York's 400th anniversary, explains Wilchfort. 'Depending on the findings, they could be used in multiple future installations, including our permanent exhibition, New York at Its Core, the city's largest interactive timeline,' she says. For now, however, the mystery persists of which ship—the Tyger? Or another unknown vessel?—lurked for centuries beneath what would become one of the busiest places on earth, just waiting to be discovered and deciphered.