Editing Shipworm (section)

== Cultural impact ==

Shipworms greatly damage wooden hulls and marine [[piling]], and have been the subject of much study to find methods to avoid their attacks.<ref name=Smithsonian2016>{{cite news|last1=Gilman|first1=Sarah|title=How a Ship-Sinking Clam Conquered the Ocean|url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tunneling-clam-bedeviled-humans-sank-ships-conquered-oceans-180961288/|work=Smithsonian|date=December 5, 2016|language=en}}</ref> [[Copper sheathing]] was used on wooden ships in the latter 18th century and afterwards, as a method of preventing damage by teredo worms. The first historically documented use of copper sheathing was experiments held by the British Royal Navy with {{HMS|Alarm|1758|6}}, which was coppered in 1761 and thoroughly inspected after a two-year cruise. In a letter from the Navy Board to the Admiralty dated 31 August 1763 it was written "that so long as copper plates can be kept upon the bottom, the planks will be thereby entirely secured from the effects of the worm."

In the [[Netherlands]] the shipworm caused a crisis in the 18th century by attacking the timber that faced the [[sea dike]].{{Citation needed|date=August 2024}} After that the dikes had to be faced with stones. In 2009, ''Teredo'' caused several minor collapses along the [[Hudson River]] waterfront in [[Hoboken, New Jersey]], due to damage to underwater pilings.<ref>{{cite news | title = Pier-eating monsters: Termites of the sea causing piers to collapse | newspaper = Hudson Reporter | url = https://archive.hudsonreporter.com/2009/09/27/pier-eating-monsters/ | access-date = 2009-09-29}}</ref>

[[Image:Teredolites.jpg|thumb|''[[Teredolites]]'' [[bioerosion|boring]]s in a modern wharf piling. The US one cent coin in the lower left of this image is 19 mm across.]]

In the early 19th century, [[engineer]] [[Marc Isambard Brunel|Marc Brunel]] observed that the shipworm's valves simultaneously enabled it to tunnel through wood and protected it from being crushed by the swelling timber. With that idea, he designed the first [[tunnelling shield]], a modular iron tunnelling framework which enabled workers to tunnel through the unstable riverbed beneath the Thames. The [[Thames Tunnel]] was the first successful large tunnel built under a navigable river.<ref name=Smithsonian2016/><ref>{{cite web | title = Thames Tunnel Construction | publisher = Brunel Museum | url = http://www.brunel-museum.org.uk/tunnel_construction.aspx | access-date = 2008-08-31 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080614215843/http://www.brunel-museum.org.uk/tunnel_construction.aspx <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archive-date = 2008-06-14}}</ref>

[[Henry David Thoreau]]'s poem "Though All the Fates" pays homage to "New England's worm" which, in the poem, infests the hull of "[t]he vessel, though her masts be firm". In time, no matter what the ship carries or where she sails, the shipworm "her hulk shall bore, / [a]nd sink her in the Indian seas".<ref>{{cite web|author=Thoreau, Henry D.|url=http://www.poetry-archive.com/t/though_all_the_fates.html |title=Though All the Fates|website=poetry-archive.com}}</ref> The hull of the ship wrecked by a whale, inspiring ''[[Moby Dick]],'' had been weakened by shipworms.<ref name=Smithsonian2016/> In the Norse [[Saga of Erik the Red]], [[Bjarni Herjólfsson]], said to be the first European to discover the Americas,<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en|title=The Saga of Erik the Red |work=Icelandic Saga Database|access-date=2017-07-04|language=en}}</ref> had his ship drift into the Irish Sea where it was eaten up by shipworms. He allowed half the crew to escape in a smaller boat covered in seal tar, while he stayed behind to drown with his men.