Metal pipe fragment (Smith's Cove, Blankenship 1969-70)

About This Artifact

A piece of metal pipe recovered by Dan Blankenship at Smith's Cove during the 1970 excavation, documented as Item #7 in his September inventory of finds. The pipe measured approximately three inches in diameter and fourteen inches in length. It was found roughly six feet below the original beach level, within the pre-searcher material layer that the excavation exposed inside the cofferdam area. Blankenship's report does not specify the metal composition or wall thickness, and no metallurgical analysis of the piece has been published. The fragment was one of a small group of metal objects sent by Blankenship for testing to the Steel Company of Canada during the same period, including iron nails, spikes, and tools that the Stelco analysis estimated to predate 1790. Whether the pipe was included in that analysis or reported separately is not recorded in the surviving documentation. The pipe's stratigraphic position at six feet of depth places it within the same layer as the inclined ramp and the U-shaped structure, both of which returned construction or material dates well before 1795. Metal pipes were used in pre-industrial European waterworks for distribution and drainage, and a short length of pipe at this location could have been part of a flow-control or conduit element associated with the cove's flood-tunnel infrastructure. The pipe has not been re-examined since the original excavation. Its current location is not specified in Blankenship's surviving reports, and the lack of compositional data prevents any narrower dating than the pre-1795 context implied by its burial depth.