Solid ship ballast from the age of sail tells surprising stories about history | Hacker News Reader

Solid ship ballast from the age of sail tells surprising stories about history

hakaimagazine.com

86 pointscurtis14 comments

The building I currently work at in central Bristol was built in one of the areas that was largely destroyed in the war by bombing (Castle Park). There is a BBC article about the rubble being transported here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-bristol-41700547/how...

I’m struggling to find a source, but I’ve read in a few places that during the the gold rush in New Zealand, ships returning to San Francisco took timber - Kauri specifically - and it’s found in older houses there. Judging by the lack or sources I can find this may be a NZ urban legend.

Not an urban legend at all. Small amounts of Kauri made it to SF as prefabricated houses.

http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2010/08/12/san-francisco-kauri-and...

> around 1000 BCE there was a short-lived Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows at the northernmost tip of Newfoundland.

> around 1000 BCE

I'm certain they don't mean BCE here. That kind of bad editing makes me doubt every fact in the piece. Not that they aren't necessarily true, but it makes me suspect the whole endeavor.

Edit: They've fixed that, so my complaint no longer stands.

I've let them know.

They fixed it.

Coal from Fife to Holland, and they brought back tiles.

https://www.shepherdroofingandslating.co.uk/history-fifes-co...

I always wondered where all the material came from that they used to extend Manhattan into the harbor. Largely ballast!

And whole ships!

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/World-Trade-Center-Shi...

I am curious what critters hitched rides out of China. Being a collector of antique porcelain in addition to glass I was amazed at how much porcelain still sits on the floors of ocean areas including near some European ports. There was so much of the stuff being shipped that it was used as ballast on its journey to Europe.

I've heard it is conjectured that the Basques may have made it to North America before the explorers reported "discovery" of the continent. It will be really interesting if this sort of evidence ends up confirming (or, more disappointingly, debunking) this legend.

But I find it interesting to consider that not all enterprising seafarers would have considered it a good idea for knowledge of exploitable resources across the sea to be publicized.

There's other rumours (is that the right word?) that English fishermen were very familiar with the Grand Banks as well, and could have used North America as a staging group

I think that "speculation" is the word you are looking for.

The problem is often that those outpost were only for mercantile purposes and left not much behind. There has been some European metal artifacts found deep into NA and indicate prior contact / pillaging of those outposts. We have Vikings archives from Greenland that survived to this day, but not the other outposts. Evidences tend to show Vikings sailed far into Labrador, Baffin and the St-Lawrence river, but never did much and Inuits took everything they left behind. Basques were interested in fishes and whales, not settlements and again left nothing.

If we exclude prehistory, there is only a 130 years "gap" between known European activities in the "New World". Vikings/Normans came well into the 14th century and Basques (from ports close to Nor[se]-man-dy) came in the early 16th century.

If you include Cabot in the late 15th century. IMHO that looks like a rather small gap to "rediscover" things. At that point I wonder if it's harder to prove that the knowledge was fully lost or prove that it wasn't.

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