{"id":1646,"date":"2022-03-11T14:08:11","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T14:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worabia.com\/news\/2022\/03\/11\/new-analysis-links-timbers-to-the-legendary-pilgrim-era-boat-sparrow-hawk-the-oldest-known-shipwreck-of-colonial-america\/"},"modified":"2022-03-11T14:08:11","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T14:08:11","slug":"new-analysis-links-timbers-to-the-legendary-pilgrim-era-boat-sparrow-hawk-the-oldest-known-shipwreck-of-colonial-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worabia.com\/news\/world-news\/united-states\/1646\/","title":{"rendered":"New analysis links timbers to the legendary Pilgrim-era boat Sparrow-Hawk \u2014 the oldest known shipwreck of Colonial America"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 1626, a ship sank in stormy seas and sank in Cape Cod, where passengers were assisted by locals and pilgrims in nearby Plymouth. <\/p>\n

Now, the most in-depth scientific analysis of timber found more than 150 years ago has given the best evidence so far that they belonged to the unfortunate boat known as the Sparrow-Hawk.<\/p>\n

The results of an international, multiannual study of shipwrecks were published Friday in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.<\/p>\n

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This 2007 photograph provided by the Pilgrim Hall Museum shows the collection of 109 surviving timbers from the Sparrow-hawk wreck in 1626 at the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Mass.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Stephen C. O’Neill \/ AP<\/p>\n

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“I’m a little over this news,” said Donna Curtin, executive director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, which has owned 109 timber from the Sparrow-Hawk since 1889.<\/p>\n

The timber has long been thought to come from about 40 feet of Sparrow-Hawk – the oldest known shipwreck in colonial America – largely based on where it was found, but there has always been some uncertainty.<\/p>\n

“Historical narratives are distorted over time,” Curtin said.<\/p>\n

Historians know that a small ship bound for Jamestown, Virginia, with a pair of English merchants and several Irish servants, was driven ashore by a storm in 1626 in present-day Orleans, based on written testimonies from the Plymouth Columbus Martyrs Plymouth .<\/p>\n

“There was a ship, with many passengers and various cargoes, bound for Virginia,” Bradford wrote, describing how the ship had been at sea for six weeks, how the captain had become ill with scurvy and had run out of water and beer.<\/p>\n

As for the passengers, “The chef among these people was Mr. Fells and Mr. Simpsy, who had many servants who belonged to them, many of whom were Irish,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

They are the first documented Irish settlers in New England, although they had few options as salaried servants and did not stay permanently, Curtin noted.<\/p>\n

The passengers were first assisted by English-speaking members of the Nauset tribe, who were then picked up by the pilgrims for almost a year before finally finding passage with other boats in Virginia to grow tobacco.<\/p>\n

The irreparable vessel, meanwhile, was buried in the moving sands and was lost until 1863, when a storm revealed the extremely well-preserved wreckage believed to be the same ship described by Bradford because of the location found.<\/p>\n

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This 1865 photograph provided by the Pilgrim Hall Museum shows Leander Cosby, from Orleans, Massachusetts, on the right, standing with the wreckage of the 1626 Sparrow-Hawk wreck in Boston Common, Boston. Cosby was an early visitor to the wreck when it was discovered in the 1860s and helped excavate and maintain the ship.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Josiah Johnson Hawes \/ AP<\/p>\n

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Although the ship’s original name remains unknown, it has been referred to as the Sparrow-Hawk since the 1860s.<\/p>\n

The wreck has long been one of the museum’s most interesting objects, Curtin said. It has been studied and researched by generations of shipping experts, but never before has it undergone such a detailed analysis.<\/p>\n

The study was led by Calvin Mires, a marine archaeologist and researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Aiofe Daly, Associate Professor at the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. and Fred Hawker, director of research at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.<\/p>\n

They used matching dating, a form of radiocarbon dating and arboreal chronology, to study the growth of tree rings, to roughly limit when the Sparrow-Hawk was built.<\/p>\n

Matching dates showed that the wood used to build the boat was harvested between 1556 and 1646, according to the study.<\/p>\n

The rings on a tree are like a “fingerprint based on the climate of the area where the tree grew,” Dali said. The Sparrow-Hawk wood ring designs matched tree ring dates from 17th-century southern England, according to the study.<\/p>\n

The same techniques were used to study Vasa, a Swedish warship that set sail on its maiden voyage in 1628, just two years after the Sparrow-Hawk wreck.<\/p>\n

“Showing that the ship is made of English wood and is unlikely to be later than the mid-17th century, it indirectly supports the identification,” the authors wrote. “How many other English ships of the early 17th century are likely to have been lost in the same place?”<\/p>\n

Another sign that the Sparrow-Hawk dates back to the early 17th century is the oak and elm from which it was built, said Hocker of the Vasa Museum, which specializes in the history of shipbuilding.<\/p>\n

“This combination of wood is a traditional combination of shipbuilding materials in England at the time,” he said. “Everything I looked at shouted at me in the 17th century.”<\/p>\n

Although publicly displayed in the past, Sparrow-Hawk remains are now housed in the Plymouth Museum.<\/p>\n

More scientific study is planned and Curtin would like to use digital modeling to construct a three-dimensional image of the ship, with the aim of bringing it back to public display in 2026, the 400th anniversary of the wreck.<\/p>\n

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