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Go to:
Schooner in the Sand Home Page
A Shape in
the Sand
An Earlier
Discovery
Excavation:
Digging into the Wreck
What Did the
Ship Look Like?
Learning
from Artifacts and Documents
The
Artifacts
Ports of
Call
Unanswered
Questions
Time
Line
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World
Market
The
Millecoquins schooner linked people in isolated Great Lakes settlements to a
global economy.
 Between
1836 and 1840, James M. Allen was the salt inspector at Salina, New York,
near Syracuse in Onondaga County. He, or someone in his office, verified
each barrel's weight, and stenciled his name on the lid of the barrel.
During Allen's term as salt inspector, the Onondaga Salt Springs processed
between 1.9 million and 2.8 million bushels of salt each year.
After
inspection, barrels of salt were shipped by horse-drawn barge on the Erie
Canal to Buffalo, New York. Schooners and steamers carried them to Great Lakes ports. 
Mining of Michigan's vast salt deposits was still decades away. The barrel
marked with Allen's name is a strong indication that the Millecoquins ship
probably wrecked during or very shortly after his term as salt inspector.
This display in the Schooner in the Sand exhibit
shows barrel staves that were found in the wreck.
 From the
tea box that the archaeologists found, researchers determined
the name of the ship that transported this box of tea, the Philip 1st.
The Philip 1st arrived in New York on its last voyage from China on
January 22, 1839. This helped place the date of the wreck in the early
1840s, closer to the arrival of the box in the United States but several
years before William Ives's estimated date for the wreck he saw.
 This
is a privately issued bank note from Hyson Tea, Brooklyn, New York, 1862
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