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Seventeenth-Century Shipboard Food: The Ship Biscuit & Salted Beef Research Project

Wednesday, 25 January 2023, 12 pm CST

Join the Institute of Nautical Archaeology on Zoom for a Webinar with recent Texas A&M graduate Dr. Grace Tsai. Dr Tsai will discuss replicating shipboard food – salted beef and pork, ship biscuit, beer and wine, and other provisions – using archaeological and historical data. Grace’s team simulated an oceanic voyage by storing food in casks on Elissa, the 1877 tall ship docked in Galveston, Texas. By analyzing the food in a laboratory for their nutritional and microbiological data, the team got a glimpse into the unique food situation and health of past sailors during the Age of Sail.

View the webinar here.

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Connecting Ancestral Memory through the History and Archaeology of Slave Shipwrecks

Thursday, 2 February 2023, 7 pm EST

Join Kamau Sadiki from Diving With a Purpose (DWP) as he shares the stories of two shipwrecks, São José Paquete de Africa and Clotilda, involved in the Transatlantic Era of African enslavement through underwater archaeological documentation.

In this immersive lecture, Kamau will highlight the work of DWP, a non-profit organization of SCUBA divers whose primary mission is to bring back into memory the stories of shipwrecks involved in the commodification and enslavement of Black bodies.

View the webinar here.

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Twenty-year Evolution of Royal Navy Ironclads

Friday, 20 January 2023, 12 pm EST

New technologies enabled the development of armored warships. The naval race between France and Great Britain prompted the rapid evolution of ship designs to counter new uses of propulsion, gun platform layout, and hull design, including the ironclads HMS Warrior, Captain, and Devastation. These advances set the stage for the development of dreadnoughts in the 20th century.

View the webinar here.

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Raising the USS Monitor Turret

Tuesday, 31 January 2023, 1 pm EST

Join NOAA for a webinar on the story of the USS Monitor, including the role that the U.S. Navy played in the salvage and recovery operations during MONITOR Expedition 2002. As told by CAPT Bobbie Scholley, the Navy’s On Scene Commander for the operation, you will hear how the Navy partnered with NOAA and The Mariners’ Museum to plan and execute a historic diving operation off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, 240 feet below the surface, to recover the unique revolving gun turret and two Dahlgren guns from the wreckage of USS Monitor.

View the webinar here.

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IMH Reinvigorated

The New Year brings new change. The Institute conducted no fieldwork during the Covid-19 pandemic, but in 2022 we were re-energized by a new President, Vice President, and Board of Directors. We plan to get back to work in 2023, scouring the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries and the ocean worldwide searching for long lost wrecks and telling their story, monitoring previously identified wrecks, and conducting refresher training in archaeological work.

Looking to the future, we will resume efforts to recruit new volunteers, train our members in archaeological standards and procedures, and stand by to assist the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), the U.S. Navy, Maryland Historical Trust, Virginia Department of Historic Resources, and other agencies and archaeological societies. Keep an eye on the Blog for future archaeological opportunities!