To the editor:

I have followed the saga of the four colonial era merchant ships intentionally buried carefully in damp earth on the Potomac River shore, ever since the first one was discovered underneath what is now the Hotel Indigo.

I fervently hope the plan to save three of the ships by submerging them in the manmade pond at Ben Brenman Park works just as city employees describe it. My concern is that their description included the word “innovative.” That is an optimistic word which could mean just “never tried before.”

So whether this plan works for as long as 25 years is questionable.We live in the time of global warming and our warming world is sure to present us with problems we have yet to contemplate.

Meanwhile the fourth ship, the one pictured in the newspaper, is still being chemically treated at a research facility in Texas. The treatment will allow that ship to be displayed above ground indoors. Putting that ship in a museum setting would make it the only such exhibit anywhere in the Americas.

The Danes, some years ago, found and rescued several Viking-era ships scuttled in the Copenhagen harbor, wooden hulks preserved for many centuries in the cold North Atlantic water. Since the other colonial ships are in Ben Brenman Pond, the museum building might be located nearby.

-Katy Cannady, Alexandria