© AP Photo/Mark LennihanPlanks stick out of the mud of a 32-foot-long (9.75 meters) 18th century boat at the World Trade Center site, Thursday, July 15, 2010 in New York.
The remains of the 30ft length of a wood-hulled vessel were found when workers excavating the site, where a new World Trade Centre is being built, hit a row of wood timbers, The New York Times reported.
"They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship," said archaeologist A. Michael Pappalardo.
The archaeologists have been working on the site - scene of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 - to document historical material uncovered during construction.
They estimated that the vessel could date from the mid to late 1700s.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries wooden cribbing was used to extend lower Manhattan further into the Hudson River.
© AP Photo/Mark LennihanAn archeologist holds a leather sole found buried alongside an 18th century boat at the World Trade Center site, Thursday, July 15, 2010 in New York. Workers at the World Trade Center site are excavating a 32-foot-long ship hull that apparently was used in the 18th century as part of the fill that extended lower Manhattan into the Hudson River.
The area under excavation had not been dug out when the original Twin Towers were built in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mr Pappalardo said the whole vessel may have been two or three times longer than the portion found.
He and his team believe the the hull had been deliberately truncated and had probably been used as landfill material.
Workers also found a 100lb anchor in the same area on Wednesday, but they are not sure if it belongs to the ship.
Update: Thu Jul 15, 3:10 pm ET
The Associated Press
New York - Workers at the World Trade Center site are excavating a 32-foot-long ship hull that apparently was used in the 18th century as part of the fill that extended lower Manhattan into the Hudson River.
It was hoped that the artifact could be retrieved by the end of Thursday, said archaeologist Molly McDonald. A boat specialist planned to look at it.
© AP Photo/Mark LennihanArcheologists, center, take measurements of the wood hull of a 32-foot-long (9.75 meters) 18th century boat at the World Trade Center site, Thursday, July 15, 2010 in New York.
"We're mostly clearing it by hand because it's kind of fragile," she said, but construction equipment could be used later in the process.
McDonald and archaeologist A. Michael Pappalardo were at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when the discovery was made Tuesday morning.
"We noticed curved timbers that a back hoe brought up," McDonald said Wednesday. "We quickly found the rib of a vessel and continued to clear it away and expose the hull over the last two days."
The two archeologists work for AKRF, a firm hired to document artifacts discovered at the site. They called the find significant but said more study was needed to determine the age of the ship.
© AP Photo/Mark LennihanArcheologists Elizabeth Meade, top, and Molly McDonald take measurements of the wood hull of a 32-foot-long (9.75 meters) 18th century boat at the World Trade Center site, Thursday, July 15, 2010 in New York.
An old, broken ship in a weird place. High explosives in evidence. Center of high strangeness. An island of cut throat insanity nearby.
Just sayin'.