Archaeologists Are Finally Unraveling the Secrets of the Shipwreck Discovered 20 Feet Below the Streets of Manhattan

The timbers on display in 1954 Museum of the City of New York

Researchers are opening a new investigation into the timbers, which may have once belonged to the “Tyger,” a Dutch trading vessel that sank in 1613

In 1613, a Dutch ship known as the Tyger crossed the Atlantic and anchored in what is now New York Harbor. Captained by explorer Adriaen Block, the vessel was an early arrival to what would soon become the Dutch colonial settlement of New Amsterdam—later renamed New York City. Months after the Tyger’s arrival, it was destroyed in a fire.

Three centuries later, in 1916, construction workers building a subway in Manhattan found the charred remains of a wooden ship’s keelson—which secures the keel’s framework—and three rib frames about 20 feet underground. James A. Kelly, the foreman of the subway construction crew, fought to save the artifacts, “working against a tight construction schedule and timbers that were tough to budge,” according to Artnet’s Min Chen. Experts concluded that the wreckage was likely the Tyger.

A piece of the wreck found during 1916 subway construction David Lurvey / Museum of the City of New York

Since the 1940s, the timbers have belonged to the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY). In recent decades, “there has been renewed interest in [their] attribution,” per a statement from the museum. Now, researchers are launching a new investigation to learn more about the wood’s type, age and geographic origin.

The research will be conducted by archaeologist Martijn Manders, program leader of the International Program for Maritime Heritage at the Netherlands’ Cultural Heritage Agency, and dendrochronologist Marta Domínguez-Delmás, a senior researcher at the Dutch Naturalis Biodiversity Center and the Cultural Heritage Agency. “Tree rings in the shipwreck timbers can reveal the date and provenance of the wood, and while they cannot tell us explicitly whether this is the Tyger, they can certainly reveal if it is not,” Domínguez-Delmás says in the statement. She adds that if the timbers date to after the vessel’s construction, or if they’re a type of wood not used in early 17th-century Dutch shipbuilding, researchers will be able to rule out the Tyger. But if the dates and tree species line up, “we will be able to reach an informed conclusion.”

Block sailed the Tyger from Amsterdam for a trading mission: A company had hired him to acquire beaver and otter furs through trade with the Lenape. But after a fire destroyed the ship, Block spent the winter ashore, and the Lenape helped him build a new vessel, the Onrust. In 1614, Block used the Onrust to explore and map the East River, Connecticut River and Long Island Sound.

“His cartographic work corrected key geographic misconceptions and laid the groundwork for future Dutch colonization in the region,” Margaret Connors McQuade, MCNY’s director of collections, told National Geographic’s Ronan O’Connell in July 2025.

The Dutch—and later British—settlers of Manhattan soon found they wanted more land to build on. They expanded the island by piling dirt and garbage past the shoreline, creating more land, according to National Geographic. This expanded shore eventually buried the location of the sunken Tyger, which explains why construction workers found it underground centuries later.

The new research will focus on eight feet of ship keel and ribs, McQuade told National Geographic. But ship structures weren’t the only artifacts the construction crew unearthed at the shipwreck site. “Along with the timbers, they uncovered a Dutch broad-headed ax, trade beads, clay pipes, a length of chain, a small cannon and shards of blue and white pottery,” McQuade said.

Domínguez-Delmás says in the statement that the artifacts and the dendrochronological research on the timbers will help contextualize the ship’s discovery. The researchers will also “study the timbers as shipbuilding elements, examining how they were made, their function within the vessel, and what they reveal about construction techniques,” per the statement.

Block arrived in what’s now New York on the Tyger just a few years after Henry Hudson, the English navigator hired by the Dutch East India Company. In the years that followed, the Dutch founded the colony of New Netherland and its capital, New Amsterdam. In 1664, the British conquered New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.

“The quest to confirm the Tyger’s identity is not just a scientific endeavor; it is a journey into the city’s earliest days,” MCNY president Stephanie Hill Wilchfort told National Geographic

Source: smithsonianmag.com.     Sonja Anderson