In Argentina, tree-ring data from discovered timbers of a ship indicate that the ship was a whaler out of Rhode Island and was last seen swimming 160 years ago. Discovered about 700 miles south of Buenos Aires, the wreck resembles the remains of a hitherto unknown ship called the Dolphin, according to research newly published in the journal Dendrochronologia.
“I can’t say with 100 percent certainty, but analysis of tree rings shows that it’s very likely that it’s that ship,” said Ignacio Mundo, lead author of the study and a dendrochronologist at IANIGLA-CONICET.
The ship was first discovered off the coast of Puerto Madryn in 2004, and a few years later its remains (the keel and part of the hull) were first unearthed. Speculation that the ship was the Dolphin has been circulating for a decade, but the latest team thinks the tree-ring data confirm this.
Tree rings are an incredibly useful tool for getting acquainted with events from volcanic eruptions to colonialism in North America. They code for climatic trends like drought and of course tell time, because a tree grows a ring for every year it lives.
Several tree samples were taken from the wreckage and cross-referenced with the North American Drought Atlas. The atlas contains tree ring specimens from nearly 30,000 trees that are more than 2,000 years old.
Comparison confirmed that the wreck’s spine was made of white oak, while its trunk and wood nails were made of scotch pine and black acacia, respectively. All three tree species grow in the eastern United States. The dating of the wood indicates that some trees first started growing in 1679 and the last oak trees were cut down in 1849, a year before the Dolphin’s construction began.
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