Ship

Ship	Trumpet Club Special Edition
Written by David Macaulay	1995
Historical fiction	96 pages
Reading Level ages 9-12

Summary

This tells the story of an archeologist group that finds a five hundred year old Spanish caravel. They found the remains at the bottom of the sea near the Bahamas Islands. They find the mast and ballast stones first and mark the different pieces to carefully chart where they were in relation to other artifacts. They return for more gear and help, finding assistance and a place to work at a local university. They set out for the site only to realize that robbers had taken all that was valuable and damaged or moved things that were in the way. They need to rely on their first drawings for an accurate account of what was catalogued and taken. They work in a grid pattern to uncover parts of the ship that have been buried with the currents of the ocean depositing new sand and coral growing on the artifacts. They carefully map their progress each day and send the smaller pieces to the university for cleaning. The cleaning process takes months and even years. The coral needs to be chipped away and then through different processes to preserve it from the new environment. One of the team researched through many piles of accounts and journals, histories and documents trying to find a match to their ship that would have been around the same time. She found a journal of a ship company’s brother kept. The two brothers commissioned a caravel exactly as the remains found, a Spanish ship named the Magdalena. They had found a match to the remains found on the ocean floor.

Reaction

I enjoyed reading the book and that the two plots were connected in the ship. It told the demise and the different pieces discovered underneath the coral and sand then it looks back to the creation and building of the ship with all the time and money that went into it. The paintings supported the storyline and gave more details that were not included in the text.

Potential Problems

It well written and I found there weren’t any problems with the book.

Recommendations

I would recommend this book to students who love learning about ship making and archeological finds and the process or recovering lost treasures.