Olivia Cavallaro Culture 08.26.2022 23:Aug PM EDT

Long Lost American Shipwreck from 1859 Found in Argentina

Researchers confirmed that remains of an old wooden ship was indeed the lost Dolphin whaling ship that sank in 1859.

Scientists who spent years researching the remains of a long lost American shipwreck found in southern Argentina have come to a conclusion that it was indeed the Dolphin whaling ship that was built in Warren, Rhode Island in 1850 and lost in 1859. Using dendro archaeological provenance methods and analyzing the tree rings on the wooden material of the ship, scientists came to the conclusion that it was the long lost American shipwreck from 1859.

According to Gizmodo, the remains of the American whaling ship from Rhode Island was last seen voyaging more than 150 years ago. Its remains were then exposed during low tide season on a beach near Puerto Madryn, a city that lies 700 miles south of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

While researchers said they cannot "with a hundred percent certainty" say for sure it was the Dolphin whaling ship, the "analysis of the tree rings indicates it is very likely that this is the ship," the study's lead author and a dendrochronologist Ignacio Mundo said. Mundo works at IANIGLA-CONICET, an Argentinian laboratory at the Columbia Climate School's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The study was published in the journal Dendrochronologia.

How the Long Lost American Shipwreck was Identified as the 'Dolphin'

The long lost American shipwreck's remains were first discovered in 2004 on the shores of Puerto Madryn. The excavation of the remains, composed of the ship's ribs and some of its hull, was undertaken some years later. For 10 years, scientists speculated that this was indeed the Dolphin whaling ship from Rhode Island and its identity was only confirmed this year.

Scientists used tree ring data to certify that the ship's remains were indeed from the Dolphin whaling ship that was shipwrecked in 1859. Researchers took samples from the wreck and then cross-referenced this data with the North American Drought Atlas. This atlas contains tree ring samples taken from around 30,000 trees dating back more than 2,000 years.

The analysis showed that the ship's ribs were made of white oak, its hull was made of yellow pine, and its nails were made from black locust. These types of trees all grow in the eastern parts of the US. Dating of the wood also showed that some of the trees began growing in 1679 and the latest oaks were cut in 1849, just a year before the Dolphin began construction.

'The Story is There in the Tree Rings'

The scientists' findings also line up with an unpublished manuscript written by a local Warren historian by the name of Walter Nebiker, who wrote that the Dolphin was built between August and October 1850 from oak and other types of wood, Phys.org reported. Around the mid-1770s until the 1850s, New England became a major player in the global whaling trade.

The wood from trees used to make the Dolphin were felled in cold weather about a year before the ship was built. The Dolphin measured 111 feet long and weighed 325 tons, and was launched on November 16, 1950. Nebiker described the ship as "probably the fastest square-rigger of all time."

Mukund Rao, a dendrochronologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Tree Ring Lab remarked that while "archaeologists are more conservative" and "prefer a slightly higher standard," he believes that "the story is there in the tree rings."