The Brown's Ferry Vessel, a sunken 18th-century merchant ship that archaeologists have spent nine years preserving, has completed its final voyage to Georgetown's Rice Museum.
It traveled from Columbia, South Carolina, on a flatbed truck. The 45-foot-long and 12-foot-wide wooden skeleton was lifted onto the truck from the University of South Carolina tank where it had soaked in preservatives for nine years.Ropes and a cradle kept the boat's wooden frame from shaking en route. It then was hoisted by a crane into the museum's third-floor exhibit area.
The boat's flat bottom and sides that curve like a V-shaped hull make the boat unique, conservation technician Harold Brown said. "It is probably the only one of its kind in North America," he said.
A diver found the boat at Brown's Ferry on the Black River in Georgetown County in 1974. Much of the deck and hull were gone, leaving only the support ribs. Most of the original planking will be restored, according to Harold Fortune, a conservation technician on the project.
It will take about two months to restore the boat, but the museum exhibit isn't expected to be ready until next year.