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Roper status

Roper has finished her spring haul-out.  Major work included plumbing the fuel, water, and exhaust lines for the diesel generator, and adding an anchor windlass and roller, a new Furuno 500 autopilot, and one more antenna for an AirMar flux-gate compass and GPS for the autopilot.  Profound thanks to the energetic and capable Brendan Burke of the St Augustine Lighthouse & Museum; to IMH stalwarts Cynthia Loden Dowdle, Isabel Mack, Dawn Cheshaek, Kebret Andarge, John Dowdle, Kirk Pierce, and David Wright; and to Rick Meatyard and his gallant crew at Tall Timbers Marina.

Sea trials on 4 May were combined with a trip to the U-1105.  Tom Edwards, Craig Goheen, and Tim Manville dived to inspect the buoy chain and rig a floating ball on the conning tower for divers.  The site is officially open for the season.

On 11 May, Dawn, Dan, and I will get Roper underway for her usual summer field school and fieldwork at St Augustine, stopping in Georgia for a week to scan for sites for Chris McCabe of the state Department of Natural Resources.  After she comes home in August we plan to spend all September, all October, and half of November mapping approximarely 90 sites in the Potomac for the Maryland Historical Trust and US Marine Corps Base Quantico.

For information about the field school please visit http://www.staugustinelighthouse.org/LAMP/On_the_Job_Training/Field_School.  For information about the Potomac project use the “contact” button above, or email david.howe@maritimehistory.org.

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IMH fieldwork schedule, 2013

2013 fieldwork schedule:
February & March —
  sidescan sonar training on weekends
  boat maintenance on weekdays
April —
  dive & map sites in Potomac River or
    Chesapeake Bay on first 2 weekends
  boat hull and engine work after 11 April
May —
  boat hull and engine work until 9 May
  underway 11 May for Georgia and Florida
  scan sites in Georgia
  arrive St Augustine FL on 25 May
June —
  LAMP field school in FL
  17th century site in MD
July & half August —
  field reconnaissance, Florida
half August —
  scan sites in Georgia
  arrive Tall Timbers MD on 25 August
September through mid November —
  map sites at Quantico, Mount Vernon,
    and Aquia, Virginia

For more information email david.howe@maritimehistory.org

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Chesapeake and Delaware reconnaisance, autumn 2012

During September and October 2012, IMH plans to continue an underwater reconnaissance in the Delaware River for several American warships and one British warship that were sunk in 1777.  Our work will support the efforts of Andrew Doria – The First Salute, Inc., to build a replica of the brigantine Andrew Doria, one of the vessels lost.  She was one of the first four vessels purchased by Congress for the Continental Navy in 1775.  The project will be coordinated with the State of New Jersey and the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.

On our way to the Delaware and back we will also reconnoiter 88 possible shipwrecks in the Chesapeake Bay for the Maryland Historical Trust (MHT).  Five of the sites are in the Potomac, and 83 are in the Bay.  We have scanned many of them in prior transits, but have only dived a few.  Many of them may never have been dived.  The sites lie along 147 miles of transit from Tall Timbers MD to the C&D Canal.  Site data will be reported to MHT and nobody else.

Scanning will employ IMH’s hard-mounted sidescan sonar.  When conditions and manpower allow, we will also use a Marine Sonic Technologies “Splash Proof PC” sonar on loan from the National Park Service.  The Marine Magnetics “Explorer” magnetometer that was used in the first part of the project in April and May 2012 is not currently operational, but we will use it if it is repaired in time.  Participants can gain as much “scope time” as they want.

Targets selected by MHT will be dived by IMH volunteers, manually mapped, and scanned with metal detectors.  To maximize volunteer participation, those dives would be conducted on weekends and clustered geographically to meet divers.  The transit schedule would be adjusted to suit.  The project depends on IMH receiving funds to work in the Delaware River.  The Chesapeake work could then be performed along the way at minimal cost to participants.

Participation requires the usual diving waivers plus your agreement not to disturb sites, not to move or remove anything, and not to tell anyone outside the project where we went or what we found.  “No take, no talk.“

The tentative schedule is to depart Tall Timbers on 17 September, scan the Chesapeake sites 17-21 September, work the Revolutionary War sites 22-30 September, scan some Delaware Bay sites 1-6 October, show the IMH flag at Coast Day at Lewes on 7 October, work with the University of. Delaware for a few days to map a large shipwreck at Cape Henlopen, and dive the Chesapeake sites from (say) 10 October until Hallowe’en.

 

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St. Mary’s River project update

Scott Tucker is investigating this site as part of his doctoral work at the University of Southampton, England.  Scott has summarized the project and posted photographs on his blog at www.smrarchaeology.wordpress.com.

The site is a possible 17th century wreck that was explored before by the Maryland Historical Trust but was not surveyed in detail.  This year’s work included a Phase I reconnaissance to confirm the location and map visible features.  IMH members Dawn Cheshaek, Bob Speir, and Bob Jimenez dived.  Life member Jim Sanborn loaned us a 10-foot Zodiac that served as the primary workboat.  We also used an 11-foot aluminum skiff to carry dive and survey gear.  Water temperature was in the low 70s, the jellyfish were not too bad, and visibility was excellent for the river.

The site is heavily encrusted with dead oyster.  We laid a baseline, staked out what appeared to be the perimeter of the site, mapped features with a Total Station loaned by Historic St. Mary’s City (HSMC), and recovered three pieces of small red brick that appear to be Dutch, and three pieces of rock that might be ballast.  They seem to be consistent with the estimated age of the site.  They will be conserved by HSMC.  On the last day of the project we removed all marker buoys and mushroom anchors but left the baseline staked in situ for next year’s field season.  If funding and permits are in hand, next year’s work may include test excavations to determine if any surviving structure lies under the oysters.

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another project for 2012, small to start

The Continental Navy brigantine Andrew Doria (sic) was a former merchant brig that was purchased by the Continental Congress late in 1775 and sas rerigged and converted to a warship at the Humphreys shipyard in Philadelphia.  She fought in the battles of Block Island and Nassau, received the first international salute to the American flag from the Dutch at St. Eustatius, and was burned to prevent capture near Philadelphia on 21 or 22 Nov 1777 after the Royal Navy forced the Delaware River..  Oh, those Brits….
A non-profit group called Andrew Doria – The First Salute, Inc. wants to build a replica, and wants to find and map the original to make the replica more accurate.  They think they know where the brigantine and a British prize named Racehorse were burned.
The site probably is heavily sedimented.  If the vessels were destroyed too quickly to strip them first, and if their guns were iron (probable) and are still there (doubtful), there is a good chance we can find them with a magnetometer.  However, ground-truthing any buried mag hits would require excavation, which is far beyond the scope on this initial reconnaissance.  All we could accomplish on this trip is to localize mag targets for later investigation, a necessary first step.
If First Salute is correct about where the wrecks lie, the search should only take a day or two.  I hope we can do it in April while we are in Delaware River for the Fort Elfsborg search and while we still have LAMP’s good mag on loan.  The project would be coordinated with the Naval History and Hertitage Command, and the New Jersey Bureau of Archaeology and Ethnography.  Stay tuned.  As always, contact IMH if you would like to participate.

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2012-2014 plans

IMH is initiating two big reconnaissance projects for the next two years.  Dates are tentative.

Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, October 2012 to March 2013.

We will seek collaboration with local governments, the National Park Service, LAMP (the archaeological division of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum), and universities.

The plan is to use sidescan sonar and magnetometer to scan selected areas along the northern coast of Puerto Rico, then the Virgin Islands, then the southern coast of Puerto Rico.  Most scanning would be done by a core crew, with volunteers coming down for a week or two to map the targets found.  One specific target is a War of 1812 schooner that foundered at St. Croix in 1928 at the age of 116 years or more.

The route from Florida to Puerto Rico goes right through the Bahamas.  We also hope to spend at least a month there to recon areas or sites selected by the Bahamian government.

Angkor, Cambodia, October 2013 to March 2014.

We will seek collaboration with 

            the Cambodian government agency APSARA,

            the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a branch of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),

            the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO),

            the École française d’Extrême-Orient,

            and others to be identified.

Angkor has two large artificial lakes (“barays”) and a smaller baray named Srah Srang..  The Eastern Baray is filled in, cultivated, populated, and crossed by roads.  The Western Baray and Srah Srang are wet.  Angkor Wat, the primary temple, has a large moat covering approximately 0.9 square miles.  Angkor Thom, the ancient palace immediately north of Angkor Wat, has an even larger moat, but half of it has filled in.  Other temples are nearby.  Some of them have their own barays and moats.  These sites are sacred to both the Hindu and Buddhist religions.

Tonle Sap, the largest lake in Southeast Asia, is located south of Angkor.  It covers approximately 1,040 square miles in the dry season, or 6,200 square miles in the rainy season (June through September).

As best we know, none of these waters has ever been archaeologically surveyed.

Fieldwork on the Caribbean project will be open to everyone on our usual no-take-no-talk basis — we do not disturb sites or tell anyone except the appropriate government officials where we went or what we found.  The Angkor project will be limited to those who have archaeological and black-water diving experience.

Both projects will require serious outside funding.  Setting up the projects will take much preparatory work for historical research, funding, logistics, permits, visas, and schedules.  If you would like to join in those preliminary efforts or in the fieldwork please contact david.howe@maritimehistory.org.

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Success at St.Augustine!!

IMH’s boat Roper assisted the St.Augustine Lighthouse & Museum in a month-long field school, which was climaxed on 28 June by successfully raising two guns off a late 18th or early 19th century wreck.  News article and video at http://m.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-06-28/story/shipwreck-yields-cannon-st-augustine-coast

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Maryland Archaeology Workshop and Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference

On Saturday, 12 March, the Maryland Historical Trust will hold its annual workshop at 100 Community Place, Crownsville MD 21032.  IMH will participate and present.  The program is attached.

A week later, 19 March, the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference will be held at Ocean City MD.  See http://www.maacmidatlanticarchaeology.org/2011conference.htm  We will present there too!