Original subtitles

Narrator: Dynamic.

In your face.

And always moving forward.

Watson: No city looks more to the future than new york city.

Narrator: The big apple grew out of water.

The secret story of its success lies hidden under its two rivers...

And its mighty harbor...

Delgado: This is one of the most notorious stretches of water on

The new york waterfront.

Narrator: Imagine if we could empty the oceans.

Letting the water drain away...

To reveal the secrets of the sea floor.

Now we can.

Using accurate data and astonishing technology

To bring light once again to a lost world.

How does the horror of 911 lead to an extraordinary discovery

From the birth of america?

Watson: The most grizzly and bloodiest event of the entire revolutionary war.

Narrator: What does this off-shore wreck

Reveal about the city's explosive growth?

Jaffe: People talked about a forest of masts.

Narrator: And what sank this huge us warship,

Just miles from new york?

(theme music plays).

The largest city in america...

300 square miles.

Eight and a half million people.

Tenacious.

Powerful.

Confident.

All of it built from scratch...

In just 400 years.

And the secret to its success:

Its rivers and harbor.

In the waters around new york,

Archaeologists have located thousands of wrecks.

Time capsules...

That can reveal this city's incredible story in a new light.

One in particular...

What is this strange wreck?

And why is it here?

(explosion)

(screams)

(siren and horn)

As new yorkers recover from the shock of 9/11.

The ruins of the twin towers reveal a secret...

From the very start of their city's story.

Riess: Little did we know that from this terrible tragedy,

There would be a major discovery.

A secret from the past.

Narrator: By 2010 1.8 million tons of debris have been removed.

The construction of a high-security parking garage is underway.

Riess: They decided to make that entrance underground,

So they dug down deeper than they had before.

Narrator: 22 feet beneath the tarmac.

In the shadow of the twin towers...

The remnants of an ancient ship.

Reporter (over tv): At the construction site at ground zero,

A rare find.

What we can see is believed to be half of a ship.

Narrator: Construction halts.

And a team of archaeologists rush to ground zero.

The principle investigator: Warren riess.

Riess: It was right there.

Right where the security area is for parking at the world trade center.

Narrator: When warren arrives only part of the ship is exposed.

Its secrets still hidden under the mud.

Riess: The history of this particular vessel might fill in tremendous gaps in our

Knowledge about the history of new york city itself.

Narrator: To find out more, warren's team scan the excavated site with

High-accuracy laser technology.

Combining the high-resolution 3-d data,

With cutting-edge computer-imaging...

We can turn back time and drain ground zero...

To reveal an astonishing subterranean secret.

Layers of earth crumble away.

22 feet underground, in the heart of manhattan...

The flattened wreck of a wooden ship.

It's 30-foot-long and its wooden structure is roughly-hewn.

Riess: We'd never seen a vessel just like this one.

It was not only rare it's one of a kind.

Narrator: What is this ship?

And what's it doing beneath the heart of manhattan?

More than 500 yards from the shoreline.

To find out, riess and his team need to learn its age.

Taking a closer look inside the wood they find well preserved tree rings.

They reveal that the timber was felled in 1773 or soon after.

Riess: It was like a time capsule, a secret time capsule.

Narrator: In america the 1770s mean only one thing...

Revolution.

Riess: What we have is a,

A vessel that's been hiding underneath new york city

That's from the revolutionary period.

Narrator: Back then, new york is home to just 25,000 people.

But the quality of its harbor has already made it one of america's

Most successful ports.

Its strategic importance puts new york firmly in the cross hairs of

Britain's king george...

When the american revolution begins in 1775.

Just a year later a huge british invasion force drives george washington's

Army out of the city.

(gunfire)

Could this ship have been part of the battle?

Going back to the drained wreckage, clues emerge...

Beneath the decking, 327 pieces of artillery.

Including a cannonball and 56 musket balls.

Soldiers from one side or another have clearly been on board this ship.

Then, in the center of the wreck,

Warren riess's team discover the smallest of clues.

Riess: This button was found,

In the midships area on the vessel,

Between some frames and some planks and

Because of that we know it was on the ship before it was buried.

Narrator: The pewter button is stamped with the number fifty-two.

It's fallen from the uniform of a soldier from the fifty second regiment

Of the british army.

Riess: They were grenadiers which means they were very aggressive assault troops.

Pretty exciting to find this because this ties the ship to a british soldier,

In new york during the revolution.

A common soldier who's lost their button.

Narrator: If this ship was used by some of the most fearsome troops in

The british army, what were they using it for?

Combining the scanning data with new research by texas a&m university,

We can resurrect the ship.

As her original form rises from the dirt, her full size becomes clear

And her striking features.

50-feet-long...

Her beam, eighteen feet.

With the hull of a river craft.

Just four feet deep and a small keel.

This is not an ocean-going vessel...

It's specifically designed for use in sheltered coastal waters.

Riess: It was able to get into shallow water,

Into little coves, up alongside ships.

Narrator: A ship that's perfect for operating within new york harbor,

And crewed by british grenadiers.

Evidence that she could be part of a little known but brutal story.

During the war british forces ferried many thousands of americans...

To a horrifying destination.

Just two miles away...

Off the shores of brooklyn.

Riess: During the american revolution.

This was known as wallabout bay and it was the most lethal place during

The whole revolution for the americans.

Watson: New york city still has its secrets, its dark past.

Including the most grisly and bloody,

Bloodiest event of the entire revolutionary war.

Narrator: As the british try to quell the uprising,

They capture thousands of prisoners and ferry them

Out onto the waters of wallabout bay to a place known as 'hell afloat'.

A flotilla of festering british ships.

Overcrowded, freezing cold, poorly supplied and run by brutal guards.

Watson: The diseases that swept through just terrorized the men on board.

Narrator: Most notorious of all, the hms jersey.

Watson: She would serve as potentially the worst prison ship, floating dungeon,

In human history.

Narrator: Warren riess believes that the world trade center ship may

Play a role in this dark chapter of new york's history.

Riess: They needed boats to go back and forth and to bring prisoners out and

This would have been a perfect vessel for that.

They would have just stuffed them in there even if they had to pack them in,

Sitting down.

It might carry 100 people on board.

Narrator: The casualty figures are staggering.

Far worse than 9/11.

Historians estimate that 11,000 men die on hms jersey alone...

Watson: Twice as many men died aboard the jersey as were lost in combat during

The entirety of the revolutionary war.

It's unimaginable.

Riess: It was a very dark chapter of american history.

Narrator: One last mystery remains about the british ferryboat.

Why was it found under the heart of manhattan?

Narrator: America finally wins independence.

And new york changes fast.

Jaffe: In the years after the american revolution,

New york very much uh is like a phoenix

Rising from the ashes politically and economically.

Narrator: At its heart, a thriving dock...

That looks very different to the city of today.

Riess: We're in the middle of a modern city here,

In the lower districts of manhattan and about

Halfway down that block was the original shoreline.

Narrator: Eager to improve their harbor new yorkers build new wharves.

Extending the island of manhattan out into the bay...

Abandoned in the docks,

Half sunk in the mud,

The old british ferry is simply built around and over.

Centuries later,

The world trade center rises on top of the old dockland and the ships

That had witnessed america's bloody birth.

Commerce drives the city's expansion and for commerce, location is everything.

Facing the roaring atlantic,

At the mouth of the hudson river,

New york's huge natural harbor

Is the perfect place for an international port.

Miles of shoreline in a protected bay.

From which an independent america can trade with the world.

In the 1800s,

More passengers and cargo flow through new york than all other

Us ports combined.

Jaffe: There were so many sailing vessels, coming and going and docking here,

That observers would describe it as a forest of masts.

Narrator: But the city's ambition soon outgrows the fabulous

Harbor provided by nature.

Just yards from bustling uptown manhattan...

Evidence of an earth-shattering event that reshaped this city.

Just how far would new yorkers go to make their port the greatest on earth?

New york harbor's main entrance is the verrazano narrows.

But there's a second gateway to the atlantic...

Long island sound.

Crucial to sustaining the frenzied flow of commerce.

But it's obstructed by a perilous stretch of the east river.

Hell gate.

In the 1850s, one in fifty ships are devoured here.

A terrifying statistic.

James delgado,

Maritime archaeologist from search incorporated, wants to learn more about the

Dangers of hell gate.

Delgado: This early map is particularly

Remarkable because it shows us hell gate...

With the positions of a number of rocks marked.

Narrator: Islands and hidden reefs choke the shipping lane.

Churning the water into a maelstrom.

Delgado: This is a challenging, if not dangerous,

Area to navigate...

A gauntlet to be run.

Narrator: Among the many perils of hell gate,

One monster looms large and deadly...

Flood rock.

Nine acres of stone lurking just beneath the surface.

Right at the heart of hell gate.

Today, the channel is still dangerous...

Delgado: The major obstacle was basically right

In the middle of the road, right off of here.

Narrator: But there's no sign of flood rock above the water.

Does the ship-devouring monster lie beneath the surface?

James takes to the water.

Man (over radio): Alright, sounds good.

Delgado: This is one of the most notorious stretches of water on

The new york waterfront.

What you would have been faced with is all this fast-moving water,

And it's not just

Moving in one direction it's going back and forth,

It's swirling around rocks.

You'd sail through, you lose the wind and suddenly that movement of

Water drags you right into the teeth.

Narrator: In search of flood rock, the team from noaa scans

Hell gate with multi-beam sonar...

Firing sound waves into the murky depths...

The return signal records the shape of the features beneath.

Man: This is a real time image of the bottom. You can see all the rubble.

Delgado: Wow.

Narrator: Using the 3-d multi-beam data and the latest

Computer visualization technology...

It's now possible to pull the plug on the entire harbor.

To reveal a jaw-dropping sight...

Icons of the city, as never seen before...

As the water recedes from the east river,

The remains of flood rock should come into view...

But there's not a trace of the beast that is shown in the old charts.

Nine acres of rock have vanished.

How?

Buried in the archives...

An incredible story of new york self-confidence and ambition.

Delgado: This 1848 chart by the us coast survey is actually a working

Document it was never published.

This is for an engineer to figure out how best to start dealing with this.

How do we pull these teeth to make this a smoother ride through?

Narrator: Backed by wealthy new york merchants,

The city fathers make a decision.

The future of the city is at stake.

Flood rock has got to go.

Delgado: It is the beginning of an age in which nothing was deemed impossible,

If enough ingenuity,

Engineering and perhaps money was put behind it as human beings worked to

Reshape the planet to their purposes.

Narrator: James discovers how the city's engineers planned to do it.

By attacking the problem....

From beneath.

First, they sink a 70-foot shaft into the heart of the island.

Over nine long years,

Miners dig four miles of tunnels...

And drill 15,000 bore-holes and in them they place a staggering

150 tons of explosives.

Delgado: The hell gate work is an epic moment in the history of civil engineering...

This is a moment in which technology will triumph over nature.

Flock to

New york's east river.

Delgado: Everybody is waiting for the big show.

Narrator: Flood rock is primed with explosives...

And the detonator is pushed.

(explosions)

Seven million cubic feet of pulverized rock flies up into the skies over new york city.

Delgado: The greatest explosion, not only that new york has seen,

But that the world has seen up to that time.

Narrator: And when the spray clears,

Flood rock is history.

Leaving the riverbed looking like a gravel pit.

Jaffe: If you really wanna think about how new yorkers have reconfigured and

Reshaped their entire environment both on land and

In water I think the word chutzpah is perfect for that.

Narrator: With its second entrance now secure,

New york's shipping business increases at an

Ever-faster rate.

Cargo ships move sugar,

Spices, cotton, machinery and construction materials...

All to feed america's booming economy.

Delgado: New york expands dramatically in the 19th century...

It's becoming the industrial and commercial heart of the united states.

Narrator: By the 1880s the city's population is more than a million.

And its waters are getting crowded...

Dangerously so.

In the wild atlantic, just a few miles beyond new york harbor...

What can one strange offshore wreck tell us of the pace of trade through

The waters of new york?

And the peril facing those pursuing the american dream.

Before daybreak, on March the 14th, 1886...

The ss oregon is nearing the end of a 3,000-mile voyage from England.

Transporting her cargo and over 600 passengers through the dark approach to

New york harbor.

It's a calm night.

Just 60 miles stand between her and her final destination.

But at first light,

A look-out from fire island signal station reports her masts

Drifting off course.

Moments later the oregon disappears.

And never arrives in new york.

What happens to her and all the people onboard,

Out in the darkness?

Delgado: As flat as this seems, this is a dangerous section of ocean.

There are many disasters that happen within the reach of this light's beams but every

Once in a while,

There comes a big disaster in which a large ship is lost.

Narrator: For over 130 years,

Oregon has lain shrouded by the atlantic.

Delgado: The waters off the new york coast are dark,

Cold and often murky.

Narrator: The ocean has concealed her secrets.

But now that's changing.

Off the southern shore of fire island,

The ferdinand r. Hassler goes in search of wreckage.

Kidd: You are clear to turn around and make another pass.

Narrator: For hundreds of years the national oceanic and atmospheric administration's

Coast survey has been charting and re-charting these waters.

Kidd: We're about 12 nautical miles south of fire island and we're

About to go right on top of her now.

Narrator: Multi-beam scanners in the ship's hull emit sonar pulses.

Kidd: We use this technology to very accurately and precisely

Map features on the ocean floor.

Oh, wow there it is!

Look at that, that's awesome!

Narrator: Based upon this detailed three-dimensional data,

We can bring the oregon,

And her story, back into the light....

First, a towering structure of tangled metal.

The water receding further...

The oregon as never seen before.

She's taken a beating from the ocean;

Her insides are exposed to the elements allowing us to

Examine what type of ship she is.

Though her masts were seen from ashore,

They must have been supplementary.

Oregon isn't a sail ship.

In fact, she represents a revolution in shipping.

She is a steamer.

Beneath her four-story high steam engine,

The remains of nine boilers...

Each 16-feet wide.

Delgado: This thing is a behemoth.

With so many fires going,

That it's consuming massive amounts of coal.

Narrator: And towards her stern,

A huge screw propeller, 24 feet wide.

This is the corpse of an athlete...

A ship built with one thing in mind...

Speed.

But why?

The answer is part of the dna of new york city itself...

Immigrants.

Watson: Folks from all around the world came for opportunity and for

This dream that new york city was.

Narrator: More than 70% of immigrants bound for america arrive

In new york.

Jaffe: New york is the gateway, as lincoln said, it was the front door.

Narrator: By the late 1800s 650,000 immigrants arrive,

Every year and up to 20,000 boats a year

Maneuver through the harbor,

And everyone is in a hurry.

Delgado: It's a time of rampant capitalism.

Great fortunes are being made.

Profit is everything!

Jaffe: The waters are just alive with vessels.

Narrator: Faster ships mean more trade and bigger profits.

Time is money.

The quest for profit leads to an extraordinary technological race to

Build ships that will cross the atlantic faster and faster.

Delgado: The early days of ocean steam are cut-throat.

You have entrepreneurs who are battling it out on the ocean.

By the 1870s and into the 1880s,

That's when you begin to see the birth of truly

Magnificent ocean steamers.

Greyhounds of the sea.

Leviathans.

Narrator: The british-operated 'guion line'

Builds the oregon in 1881 to boost its new york express service.

And she's cutting-edge.

Delgado: It has the largest steam engine yet put into one of these ships.

Narrator: Consuming over 200 tons of coal a day,

Her boilers generate upwards of 12,000 horsepower...

Driving the huge screw propeller that thrusts oregon forward at an

Astonishing eighteen knots.

In April 1884 she crosses the atlantic in under 6 and a half days.

Slashing 13 hours off the record.

Delgado: It's something that nobody had thought could be done.

Narrator: Oregon claims the prize and earns the nickname greyhound of the atlantic.

So, what took down such a powerful machine?

Returning to the drained wreck there's a clue.

Disguised by decades of decay.

On her port side a section of the hull is more crumpled than anywhere else.

Something must have ripped a hole right here.

But what?

The degradation means it's impossible to tell from the wreckage alone.

An article from the new york times holds the answer.

Oregon is a victim of new york's heaving waterways.

Jaffe: The risk of getting into a collision is actually shockingly high.

Narrator: Combining this research with the evidence from the drained wreck,

We can piece together the final moments.

At 4:30 in the morning oregon is bound for new york.

Under a full head of steam.

Delgado: It's a dark night,

They're lining up and heading towards the port.

They can see the lights along the long island shore,

The fire island light is brilliantly lit.

Narrator: A light appears on her port side.

Delgado: It's another ship,

Heading right for them and it strikes them dramatically on the side.

Then the other ship backs off and disappears.

The ocean is pouring into the heart of oregon.

Narrator: Over eight frantic hours nearby boats rescue every passenger

On board the oregon.

Their dreams of a new life in america still intact.

But the mighty oregon has suffered a fatal blow.

Delgado: This greyhound of the atlantic has been gored and sunk just off the

Entrance to the city.

Narrator: While oregon never makes it to port thousands more liners do.

Ellis island opens in 1892.

Twelve million new americans pour through its halls.

Ocean liners flood the harbor, beckoning a golden age...

In just a century new york's population grows from 60,000 to

Three and a half million.

By 1900 it's the largest city in the western hemisphere.

Drawing the eyes of the world.

Including those who would try and take her down.

40 miles from new york,

Off the shores of long island.

What sank this giant?

And how does her sinking reveal new york's vulnerability at the

Dawn of the 20th century?

America is at war.

Trans-atlantic convoys,

Carrying troops and supplies to europe,

Are key to the allies hopes of success.

Protected by warships...

Like the uss san diego.

500-feet-long, over 13,000 tons...

Armor-plated, with 40 guns of up to eight inches.

And multiple watertight bulkheads to make her unsinkable.

On July 19th, 1918, she's approaching new york to pick up a convoy.

At 11:05 am, just outside the harbor,

She is rocked by a huge explosion.

Catsambis: Within 20 minutes the ship had sunk.

San diego was the only major us navy warship lost in the great war...

It happens to lie just a few miles from the coast of new york.

Narrator: So, what happened?

A team from the us navy has reopened the case.

Led by archaeologist alexis catsambis.

Catsambis: The question has lingered for over a century...

What sank san diego?

Narrator: To find out,

Navy divers explore the wreckage of this sunken warrior.

But it's impossible to see the whole picture through the murky waters.

Working with the university of delaware,

Alexis deploys three-dimensional scanning

Equipment to map san diego's structure on the seafloor.

Catsambis: This project is the first time we're getting comprehensive

Remote sensing data.

Narrator: Combining this new data with the latest computer imaging technology

We can do something impossible before now...

Reveal, in perfect detail,

The wreck of a us casualty of the great war.

The san diego comes into the light for the first time in 100 years.

It's the beautiful sleek shape of her 500-foot hull that appears first.

The steel structure is in remarkable condition for her age.

Apart from this...

Towards her stern, a section of the hull that's damaged.

This is the blast site.... Eroded by decades of decay.

But it appears to be below the waterline.

If something hit the ship, it was beneath the surface.

The team studies the historical records.

There's no suggestion that engine malfunction or onboard ordnance caused the blast.

Reinforcing the view that it could been caused by something more sinister.

Advances in technology mean german u-boats can now cross the atlantic.

Catsambis: This is a, a new era where submarine warfare

Is taking over.

Jaffe: The war was brought to new york shores.

Narrator: By the 1900s new york is the planet's busiest port.

An irresistible target for the imperial german navy.

Watson: If you're an enemy of the united states,

What is a more symbolic target than new york city?

Narrator: The team wonders if a torpedo from a u-boat

Could have caused the explosion?

To answer the question,

They calculate the original size of the blast hole.

Catsambis: What damage is related to that original point of impact

And that original explosion?

Narrator: They find a report from a navy diver who visited the wreck in 1918.

Cheser: He says he was along the bottom on the port side around no 4 smoke stack.

Narrator: He estimates the cavity to be just 5 feet wide.

Nahshon: That corresponds to being right below the armor belt which make sense.

Narrator: Using this data,

We can reconstruct the original blast hole...

Could it have been caused by a torpedo?

The team models the damage that world war I

Torpedo payloads cause and get a surprise.

Catsambis: It became rather evident that the torpedoes were simply

Too large of a weapon.

They carried too large of a charge and would have resulted in a hole that was

Far larger than 5 or 6 feet.

Narrator: They wonder if it was a min

Incredibly, archives from the german government reveal u-boats were ordered

To lay mines outside new york harbor.

Cheser: They knew that it was an important area for shipping for the

United states and allies.

Narrator: But they discover standard german mines,

Known as type 4,

Also inflict a blast hole larger than five feet.

Then, a key insight.

By 1918, germany is running short of explosives.

Catsambis: The germans, by the end of the war,

Were using diminished charges.

Narrator: And allowing for the reduced charge in a 'type four' mine...

It produces a blast hole close to five feet wide.

It appears to be a match.

San diego was almost certainly hit by a small german mine.

But there's another question...

The hole is still tiny.

How could it sink a 500-foot long ship

In just 20 minutes and flip her upside down?

The drained wreck of the san diego reveals another

Piece of the puzzle.

Catsambis: Understanding the weapon is only one part of a larger picture.

We want to understand the whole sequence of events and how the ship sank.

Narrator: Watertight bulkheads and doors are

Specifically designed to stop the spread of water and keep this warship upright.

But somehow san diego turned upside down.

She sank through just 100 feet of water;

Not enough for her to roll on the descent.

She must have capsized at the surface.

How did a small hole in a watertight section of this ship leave her lying

Prone on the seafloor?

Alexis and his colleagues are sure that water must have penetrated

Further into her hull.

Catsambis: We needed to understand how this happened...

How did we get to the point where instead of simply sinking,

The ship turned in on herself.

Narrator: Analysis shows that even with substantial flooding san diego wouldn't capsize.

Baffled, the team studies san diego's structure,

Looking for signs of weakness.

Nahshon: So here we can see a plan of the of the gun deck of the uss san diego.

Narrator: But plans are no match for inspecting a real warship.

A contemporary of the san diego, although a few years older,

Is the cruiser:

Uss olympia.

The oldest steel warship still afloat.

Examining her internal structure, the team makes a breakthrough.

Catsambis: Then we realized that the fact that she was coal powered was critical and

Crucial to our determination of how she capsized.

Narrator: Coal, stored on deck, has to be delivered to the engine rooms below.

Catsambis: So, this chute would have been somewhat like the one we would

Find on san diego,

It would have allowed coal to be deposited all the way through the coal bunkers

And even though you can close it, it's still not watertight.

Narrator: This weakness hadn't been clear on the san diego's plans.

Catsambis: There were additional entry points we were not factoring in.

Narrator: The watertight bulkheads prevent seawater from flooding the entire hull,

But these chutes and a network of vents gave it another route.

Catsambis: And so, water coming in through the gun deck would have permeated through

These chutes into the coal bunkers and from there on to the engine rooms and

The boiler rooms and throughout the vessel.

Narrator: By examining san diego's wreckage,

And piecing together the clues,

We're able to tell her complete story for the very first time.

The uss san diego is headed for new york.

The horizon is clear.

But there's danger lurking beneath the water.

A german u-boat has laid a minefield.

San diego brushes against one.

Catsambis: Water spewed into the air and it started then flooding the

Engineering and boiler room spaces.

Narrator: As she lists,

Water pours onto the gundeck from the port side.

Rapidly penetrating the ship via the coal chutes and vents...

Tipping her further.

Catsambis: Within a few moments she had capsized and, and was on her

Way to the bottom.

Narrator: All but six of her 1,100 strong crew survived.

But san diego sinks to her watery grave...

Just miles from the heart of new york city.

A heavyweight victim of a calculated attack.

Draining new york city reveals stories of conflict,

Immigration and ruthless ambition.

Today the spirit and success of this remarkable city...

Still invites enemy attack.

To which new york gives a familiar reply.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.