Hello:
New to the forum.
I have a question about ship construction. The enclosed pic is the beak and stempost of the shipwreck in 7,000 feet of water. The vessel is about 60 feet long. Does the design, or any features show what type of sailing vessel this may have been. Small fishing schooner or pilot schooner? Could you determine the approximate build date? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Rob
No, not kidding. I am more familiar with Civil War era steamships. 19th and 20th century sailing ships are not my area of expertise, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
The basic problem is the image shows very little, but more importantly is building methods and era driven practice, varied wildly from designer to designer and builder to builder. Once you introduce repair possibilities, then the type permutations rise exponentially.
You can some what date things with hardware identification. The image shows some iron work, spliced, likely galvanized mild steel wire and what appears to be a rigging screw or two. The wire dates her to the last half of the 19th century, the rigging screw refines this to the very later half of the 19th century, though this doesn't mean much as these techniques are still in use today (fairly rare though).
The only good ways to Id this old gal, is to yank a piece of hardware off her and see if the piece can be recognized. Most iron work is application specific, so each yard will have had patterns and trends incorporated into it's shapes. You may even get lucky and find some form of proof marks or builders logo cast in.
I don't think carbon dating is possible without leaching out the salt (read costly and time consuming), so an ID on the hardware is your best bet. The stem construction is typical of countless turn of the century vessels. I can't see it close enough but there might also be a "Bull Dog" clip there, which would make it after WW II. This could just mean someone repaired the rigging and used a bull dog clamp instead of weaving a splice, before she sank.
Greetings all,
Isn't that the wreck of the Saralee?Â
Cheers,
Tom
Thanks for your advise.
The wreck is unidentified. It actually lies in 7,450 feet of water and is to date the deepest historic shipwreck ever discovered in the Gulf of Mexico.
We recovered a ship's compass, which is marked "D. Baker Co.- Boston" and has a patent date on the compass card of 1874-1875. So the vessel sank sometime after that date. How old was she when she sank? Could have been newly-built or already an old ship. Could have been an old compass put on a different ship too. A working compass is a compass after all.
I think a ballpark date of 1875-1925 is fairly accurate, but was hoping someone could identify something, some small construction clue and say "hey, they didn't do that before 1902" or something like that.
Much of the steering wheel is also intact.Â
I have enclosed a picture.
No Tom not the Saralee. Building technique is too good for her
