Paddler found under USA corn field

[DamienG]

http://www.abandonedspaces.com/uncategorized/steamboat-missing-132-years-found-45-feet-field.html

[TailUK]

I was lucky enough to visit the Steamship "Arabia" Museum in Kansas City and it really is very good!  I'd say that, at least, 70% of the content of the ship is on display and some pretty big bits of the ship herself.
I had to laugh though.  In the conservation section there was a guy preserving a wooden block plane. He was treating it with the care and respect you'd expect for an antiquity. Only problem was it was identical to my own block plane that I'd used on a job just before leaving for the holiday.

[Bierjunge]

Interesting topic!
There ar presumably hundreds of steamboat wrecks, once grounded in dead channels of the Mississippi watershed and now being buried in the soil, kilometers far from the modern riverbed.

Adam I. Kane's excellent thesis The Western River Steamboat: Structure and Machinery, 1811 to 1860 deals with various of these archeological sites, the Arabia and the Betrand among the most prominent ones.

Moritz

[DamienG]