Legacy, Vol. 1, No. 1, July 1996, pp.
18-19.
Shipwreck Work Continues on Banks of the Ashley River
By Lynn Harris
 |
 |
Three sites were selected for this season of initial
research. Selection was based on criteria such as how vulnerable the specific
area was to boat wake, the practical logistics involved in recording important
features without removing large quantities of overburden, and how these sites
could contribute towards filling in the gaps our historical knowledge of the
construction and utility of these boats in the larger context of South
Carolina's inland transportation and economic setting. Essentially, we were
trying to combine research and management goals.
The project also provided opportunity for SCIAA Part I Field Training
Course students to obtain field experience and accumulate credits
towards Part II certification. Many thanks to
Doug Boehme, Dee Boehme, and George Pledger
for all their hard work. Equipment donations such as a tall ladder for aerial
photographs and plastic for artifact tags helped to stretch the grant money ever
further. Additionally, we had enthusiastic assistance of College of Charleston
Anthropology major Rusty Clark and history major Eddie Weathersbee. April Cox
from the James Island High School mentorship program joined us on-site for a
day—the only day that it snowed in the Charleston area this winter!
These riverbank sites required careful planning since the work had to
be conducted within tidal windows. Usually we managed to work for
at least two or three hours around the low tide window while the sites
were exposed. Part of the crew uncovered the timbers using garden hoses
with water pumped from the river, others recorded measurements and
construction features. Wood samples were taken from each component (keel, keelson, frames, planking,
etc.) to determine what types of woods were being used to build these boats.
The wood expert, Lee Newsome of the Center for Archaeological Investigations at
Southern Illinois University, will be identifying and analyzing these samples
for us in the coming months.
On the motorized vessel site, a shaft log used to support
the propeller shaft and engine beams straddling the keel provide clues that this
vessel was motorized and dated
to the latter part of the 1800s or early 1900s. The hull of this vessel was
heavily planked, with three layers of outer hull planking in the aft section
near the shaft log and two layers in the forward areas. One of the technical
problems with early propeller-driven wooden vessels was that the vibration of
the shaft caused hull planking to loosen and leak. The weight of an engine on a
wooden hull also probably required additional reinforcement such as extra layers
of hull planking.
 |
 |
The three vessels documented
include a tugboat (with a length of 20.62 meters and beam of 6.45 meters), a
motorized wooden vessel (length 17 meters and beam 2.82 meters) which is
probably a sailing ship, although sections of the keelson are missing so there
is no evidence of maststeps and rigging arrangements. For particulars on the
tugboat, see Flotsam and Jetsam, May 1995 issue.
The
framing pattern on the sailing vessel consisted of sets comprised of a floor
timber and two first futtocks on either side fastened together laterally with
metal bolts. The very square 90 degree rise of first futtocks, almost
resembling standard "knees," is unusual compared to the earlier nineteenth
century vessels the Institute has recorded. This was evidently a very
boxy-shaped boat. The floor timbers and a disarticulated keelson both displayed
distinctive slots cut to fit snugly together, locking the floor timbers into
place.
 |
 |
Apart from dates provided from construction clues
and fastening types, both vessels yielded small chunks of what we believe to be
phosphate in the bilge's. This geological substrate was mined extensively along
the rivers in the postbellum years for agricultural fertilizer. Some of the
most notableproductive
mines were situated along the upper Ashley River. The first mines
were established in 1867, and by the 1880s, several operations
flourished, due largely to South Carolina's virtual monopoly of
phosphate production in its early years. In the 1890s, however,
natural disasters, financial woes, and competition from mines and mills
in other Southern state combined to send the Charleston area industry
into a slump. It is very likely that these vessels we are
studying were part of the phosphate mining business and used to
transport miners, equipment, and phosphate up and down the Ashley
River. It is interesting to note how far upriver vessels of this
size could maneuver.
Maritime Research Division, South Carolina Institute
of Archaeology and Anthropology, USC
