Section C

A third section of wreckage consists of more than 70 feet of starboard side, lying approximately fifty feet east of the stern section. This includes the starboard ceiling , frames , shelf, and fragments of lodging knees from the deckbeams.

The Meridian was framed with doubled timbers. Interestingly, the builders provided for a small amount of deadspace between the futtocks in each frame set. Spacers (or "chocks") were placed alongside the butts between the floors and futtocks and at the butts between the lower and upper futtocks, providing a one and three-fourths inch deadspace between adjacent futtocks (possibly for salting, or as an airway to curtail dryrot).

This use of spacer blocks in the framing has been variously called "open-joint" framing or "split framing."  This type of framing has only been observed on one other American-built Great Lakes vessel, the 1845 steamer Niagara located off Port Washington, Wis.

The Meridian and Niagara appear to refute a stated rule for open joint framing, which specifies that chocks were never to be put between the floors and first futtocks: these lowest timbers should be fastened hard together. The Meridian's departure from this rule is most visible in the stern section, where her builder placed chocks clear down to the floor timbers, providing a dead space from the keel to the sheer.