(Newswire.net — September 23, 2013) St Marys, Maryland —
An archeology team working with Maryland’s Historic St Mary’s City museum and a crew of volunteer divers, lead by archaeologist Scott Tucker, recently discovered the remains of a ship at the bottom of St Mary’s River in Maryland. Scott Tucker’s announcement of the team’s findings was first carried by the Associated Press. Gadgets Made Simple picked up the story and provided additional information about the nautical technology that the archaeologists unearthed. The recently published article explains the difference between traditional ballasts, like the one found below the surface of the St. Mary’s River, and modern ship ballasts.
The team lead by Scott Tucker did not discover any timbers or structural elements of the ship, what they found instead was a large oval field of cobblestones resting on the river bottom.
“It’s really fascinating how archaeologists reconstruct so much of history with just a few clues,” said Melvin Stevens, an editor of GadgetsMadeSimple.com, “When we saw this news come out from the Associated Press, we thought it would be great to give our readers a sense of how gadgets become archaeological clues.”
The GadgetsMadeSimple.com article provides information about two pieces of nautical technology, ship ballasts and bilge pumps. The article also provides details about the geological clues that allowed Scott Tucker to place the ship remains in a historical context. According to the article on GadgetsMadeSimple.com, Scott Tucker identified the remains as belonging to an English ship from the colonial period, possibly one involved in the tobacco trade.
Melvin Stevens commented that bilge pumps will be covered in more detail in coming articles. “The main thing that Scott Tucker’s team found was the ballast,” said Dan Lewis, “But the piece that really captured our interest was the bilge pump fragment that they discovered. Bilge pumps are truly ancient gadgets and we still use them today. All of the history and technology behind bilge pumps was too much to add into the article about discovering the ship in the St. Mary’s River, so we’re working on a series of articles that takes a look at ancient gadgets and how they’ve changed through the centuries”.