Historians do know that a small ship bound for Jamestown, Virginia, with a pair of English merchants and several Irish servants on board was driven ashore by a storm in 1626 in what today is the town of Orleans, based on the written accounts of Plymouth Colony Gov.
The wreck has long been one of the museum’s most intriguing artifacts, Curtin said.
The rings on a tree are like the “fingerprint based on the climate of the region in which the tree grew,” Daly said.