Construction workers excavating the site of a future Toronto condominium building unearthed the remnants of a nearly 200-year-old schooner, believed to be the oldest wreck found in the city’s downtown.
The ship was discovered at the condo development site on Queen's Wharf Road, near Bathurst Street and Fort York Boulevard, as an archaeologist completed a routine exploration of the site.
Archaeologists have been monitoring the excavation since March, when excavators found evidence of a construction site believed to date back to the 1830s. They also found shoes and coins in the area.
All that remains of the ship discovered this week is its approximately 15-metre-long keel.
Nearby, archaeologists found plates, cups and tools estimated to have been used in the early 19th century.
The site was once a major shipping hub, archaeologist David Robertson told CTV Toronto's Heather Wright.
Robertson said those investigating the buried wreck believe it was deliberately sunk during the 1830s as a makeshift scaffolding for workers building up Queen's Wharf to accommodate bigger ships.
He said that, 185 years ago, the location where the ship now rests was covered in two metres of water, and the shoreline of Lake Ontario stretched to Front Street.
The shoreline was extended approximately 200 metres to form what is now Toronto's harbour.
Robertson said he's not sure whether they'll be able to preserve the ship, but that researchers will examine it piece-by-piece.
"If nothing else, it will be preserved as a written, graphic and digital archive," he said.
The two-mast schooner is the third ship that has been uncovered during development in the city, but it's believed to be the oldest. The wreckage of a mid-to-late 19th-century ship was found during the excavation of the Rogers Centre, and an early-20th-century ship was found when the Air Canada Centre was built.
