Underwater (Worldwide)

Underwater News – Summer 2007

Reported by Toni Carrell <tlcarrell@shipsofdiscovery.org>

Maryland

Maryland Maritime Archaeology Program (MMAP):

MMAP continued its federal
partnerships in 2006 with the completion of
a remote sensing survey of waters adjacent
to Assateague Island National Seashore,
initiated in 2000. More than 31,400 submerged
acres were surveyed and a handful
of wrecks examined and assessed at the
request of the National Park Service which
funded the endeavor, covering waters in
both Virginia and Maryland. In addition,
the state surveyed 7,040 acres of state waters
seaward of the park boundary.

A Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) was promulgated with the MD
Volume 40: Number 2 Summer 2007 Page 29
Department of Natural Resources to use
Coastal Zone Management (NOAA) monies
to continue the coastal remote sensing
survey northward to the Delaware line, an
additional 6,400 acres. This project will be
initiated in spring 2007.

Continuing partnerships include managing
the U-1105 Historic Shipwreck Preserve,
which is carried out through MOUs
with the Naval Historical Center and St.
Mary’s County, and with monitoring and
buoy deployment/retrieval being handled
by the Institute for Maritime History. Another
continuing activity is serving as the
SHPO representative to Homeland Security/USCG with all the other state and
federal members as per the Programmatic
Agreement signed by the NCSHPO in 1999
for emergency response to pollution and
hazmat spills in Region III of the Eastern
Seaboard. This group is working on updating
the Area Emergency Contingency Plan
and also creating a major maritime training
exercise called Nautical Shield 07 for next
September.

Finally, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—
Georgia was seeking a home with
another federal agency for a side scan sonar
it was retiring and the National Park Service
staff at Ft. McHenry National Monument
and Historic Shrine agreed to accept
it and then deposited it with the Maryland
Maritime Archaeology Program to serve
as backup equipment but also in order to
make it available to students or nonprofit
organizations undertaking research in this
area.

The Maryland SHPO underwent some
reorganization during 2006, adjusting to
a transfer to the Department of Planning
from the Department of Housing and Community
Development and, more recently,
the Office of Archaeology was dissolved
and its members integrated into other areas
of the SHPO. One member of the maritime
program staff was reassigned and another
left the SHPO and moved to another state.
Fortunately, this happened after the completion
of fieldwork and although it has
made compliance assessment more onerous,
it has not been as difficult as if the timing
had been different. One position has
just received approval for filling at a higher
salary. The other position will have to be
recouped in the future.

The program is currently providing
oversight to two noncapital grants. One
is to a doctoral student at FSU through
the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum to
locate and study the distribution of shipyards
over two counties. This builds on a
previous master’s thesis from the College
of William and Mary which examined comparable
data for two counties adjacent to
those being studied at present. The State
Underwater Archaeologist sits, or sat, on
these committees. The second grant is to
the Institute for Maritime History which is
undertaking a survey of the lower Potomac
River and assisting in the development of
a searchable GIS shipwreck database. The
latter was constructed as part of a senior
thesis largely by a student now pursuing
a master’s degreee at Texas A&M University.
These projects were presented at the
Mid-Atlantic Archaeological Conference
(MAAC) in March. Another student is
continuing work on digitizing files for the
database. NOAA also contributed a large
amount of survey data from its hydrographic
survey of Chesapeake Bay.

Budgetary constraints limited conference
participation and attendance to two,
the SHA meetings in Sacramento and the
MAAC in Virginia Beach. Publications
this year were limited to gray literature reports.

Massachusetts

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary:

The National Marine Sanctuary Program
released its first-ever status report
evaluating the health of the Stellwagen
Bank National Marine Sanctuary, home to
one of the richest and most productive marine
ecosystems in the nation. This report
presents an initial summary of the pressures
and trends affecting sanctuary resources.
The completion of the condition report is
the first step in the sanctuary program’s efforts
to compile similar evaluations of every
site in the National Marine Sanctuary
System with several more reports slated for
completion in 2007.

The condition report identified the
principal threat to maritime archaeological
resources in the sanctuary as contact by
bottom-fishing gear. An additional concern
regarding these historical sites is the fact
that once damaged, there is no potential
for recovery, as there is for water, habitat,
and living resources. The new management
plan for Stellwagen Bank National
Marine Sanctuary is scheduled for release
in the summer of 2007 and will recommend
a number of management actions that will
address these concerns.

Summary of the condition report’s status
and trends pertaining to the current
state of the sanctuary’s maritime archaeological
resources is as follows: (excerpt from
http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/science/condition/state.html): (1) The integrity
of the sanctuary’s maritime archaeological
resources is fair, though there is evidence
of prior and continuing damage caused
primarily by commercial fishing gear on
both shallow and deep wrecks; (2) Few
shipwrecks have the potential to leak substantial
amounts of toxic materials and no
evidence of new risks (e.g., hull deterioration)
is apparent; and (3) Both commercial
and recreational fishing activities are degrading
maritime archaeological resources.
The most destructive activities are trawling
and dredging, which permanently impact
the integrity and archaeological value of
the resource.

A copy of the entire report is available
at: http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/science/condition/ and the condition report press
release available at: http://stellwagen.noaa.gov/news/newsreleases/20070419_CR.html. For more information contact
Deborah Marx at Deborah.Marx@noaa.gov.

South Carolina

South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA) Maritime Research Division (MRD):

Dr. Thorne Compton,
Senior Associate Dean for the College
of Arts and Science at the University of
South Carolina, continues as SCIAA’s Interim
Director pending the hiring of a new
director. Plans continue for SCIAA’s move
to a new facility. Renovations to an existing
38,000 square ft. facility are slated to
commence in 2007, with the staff moving in
later in the year. The state’s archaeological
collections, which SCIAA curates, currently
occupy more than 5,000 square feet.
Moving them to the new facility will more
than triple the space available for them and
place them in compliance with 36 CFR 79
standards. Additionally, the division has
been working collegially with the university’s
Belle Baruch Marine Institute and the
Department of Geology to maintain two of
their Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers
(ADCP) deployed off our coast as part of
the South Carolina Nearshore Monitoring
System.

Sport Diver Archaeology Management Program:

In November 2006, Ms. Lora Holland
joined the Maritime Research Division
as the fourth manager of the Sport Diver
Archaeology Management Program in the
division’s Charleston office. Lora came to
SCIAA out of The University of West Florida’s
Maritime Archaeology Program via the
Warren Lasch Conservation Facility, where
she interned in 2006. Like her predecessor,
Lora plans to concentrate on the following
aspects of the program:

Revitalize the program by strongly
interacting with the sport diving community,
dive shops, and clubs in the state,
through presentations, practical education
in the form of workshops and field training
courses, and communication via the Maritime
Heritage Web site, monthly e-grams
and a listserv for the Hobby Divers;
Forge new relationships within
the dive and maritime communities; and
Fully integrate the data provided
by the Hobby Divers in their quarterly reports
into the division’s GIS.

Cooper River Underwater Heritage Dive Trail:

On a beautiful sunny day in
November 2006, MRD staff removed four
mooring buoys from the trail’s historic sites
for the season and assessed the condition of
the sites on the heritage trail. During the
installation of the buoys in May, we had decided
not to install the fifth buoy on the 1705
ferry landing/shipwreck site in deference
to a family of alligators who occupied the
bank adjacent to the site. The infrastructure
of buoys, mooring blocks, and trail lines
that were replaced in spring 2005 showed
definite signs of needing maintenance, and
some ships’ timbers on three sites need to
be reaffixed to the hulls. This work will be
completed before reopening the trail next
spring.

MRD Web Page Development:

The
MRD is busily transforming their Web
page, first posted in 1999, to better reflect
the division’s diverse management and research
interests. We intend to launch the
revised site early next year. Major themes
of the Web page include current and past research
projects, the sport diver archaeological
management program, special projects,
and state legislation affecting submerged
cultural resources. Rich in content, the Web
site will include links to MRD research reports,
newsletter articles, and slideshows.
We hope the information presented will
serve to inform Web site visitors about the
diverse maritime archaeological legacy in
South Carolina waters.

Port Royal Sound Survey:

Work continued
in 2006 in Port Royal Sound to ascertain
the identity of several magnetic and
acoustic anomalies there. Using a sub-bottom
profiler provided by the USC Marine
Geology Department, the MRD attempted
to locate the remains of the American Civil
War Army gunboat, USS George Washington,
sunk by Confederate artillery in 1863.
Earlier magnetic survey of the wreck site
area, determined by contemporary correspondence
and nautical charts, generated
a surprising number of likely magnetic
anomalies for George Washington. Deployment
of the sub-bottom profiler was intended
to determine those anomalies showing
potential as the remains of the gunboat.
Two large sub-bottom reflections, over
100 ft. (30.5 m) in length, along with corresponding
magnetic contours, indicated two
potential locations for the wreck. Side scan
sonar, along with visual reconnaissance of
the shoreline during low tide, of the project
area did not reveal any protruding structure
from the bottom. Future fieldwork, including hydroprobing and limited excavation
if warranted, will hopefully reveal one
of these deflections to be the final resting
place of George Washington.

Another aspect of the Port Royal Sound
Survey centers on investigating the archaeological
components related to the Station
Creek naval repair facility operating during
the American Civil War. Two ex-whalers
intended for the Stone Fleets off Charleston
Harbor were diverted for use as floating
machine shops to repair vessels associated
with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.
Naval correspondence from the time
period indicated that both of the vessels
were abandoned in the creek near the end
of the war. Repair facilities were then removed
to a small adjacent island. Remote
sensing operations of the area in the early
2000s detected a number of acoustic and
magnetic anomalies. Ground-truthing revealed
the presence of modern debris, along
with some items associated with the repair
facility, including remains of one of the exwhalers.
In response to a compliance issue
to permit a dock in the area in 2005, the
MRD reviewed the magnetic and acoustic
data, and noted a potential sonar anomaly
that bore a resemblance to ballast stones.
Believing we had found the elusive second
wreck, we ground-truthed the anomaly,
and found instead an uneven terraced bottom
with a number of oyster clumps. To try
and find the final resting spot of the second
vessel this past year, we widened and more
fully explored the area with sonar. Unfortunately,
sonar failed to reveal the presence
of the second shipwreck. Future fieldwork
in the area will include additional groundtruthing
of magnetic anomalies to ascertain
their association with the repair facility, as
well as hoping to locate the remains of the
other floating machine shop.

Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon’s Capitana Survey:

Working with funding from the
South Carolina Archaeological Research
Trust, in 2006 the MRD continued the remote
sensing survey to locate the lost Capitana.
The vessel, described contemporaneously
by the Spanish historian Gonzalo
Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes as a nao,
possibly named Chorruca, is believed to
have wrecked off Winyah Bay, SC in 1526
during a failed attempt by the Spanish to
establish the first European settlement in
North America. The MRD is working in
collaboration with Drs. Scott Harris and
Eric Wright, coastal geologists from the
Department of Marine Science at Coastal
Carolina University, who are reconstructing
the 1526 shoreline and entrance to the
bay to help guide the placement of survey
priority areas. The 2006 fieldwork focused
on a region of historic shoals guarding
the pre-19th-century channel into the bay.
During August, MRD staff surveyed approximately
27.25 square km (10.5 square
mi.) of the estimated 104 square km (40
square mi.) of priority areas encompassing
the approaches to the bay and within
Winyah Bay proper. Additionally, this year
the MRD ground-truthed and identified
the sources of six of the most promising
magnetic anomalies offshore and six sites
within the bay. Unfortunately, nothing of
a 16th-century vintage appeared in the test
excavation holes. Finds included two probable
19th- or early-20th-century steamships,
buried unidentified iron objects, mooring
blocks, an iron box-like object, a 6 ft. long
admiralty-type anchor with a broken shank
and ring missing (which probably explains
why it was buried in the seafloor rather that
still on a vessel), a length of tow cable, and a
towing bitt, which projected from the sandy
seafloor like a fire hydrant. The project was
supported in part by numerous volunteers
who provided services from diving and
logistics to dinners at a local seafood restaurant,
provided by the restaurant owner,
and no-cost use of a banner plane and pilot
to fly aerial photography of the survey area.
Additionally, Richard Lawrence and Caroline
Gillman-Bryan (Julep) from the North
Carolina Underwater Archaeology Unit
joined us for part of the survey. Funding
has just been secured for a 2007 field season
to continue our work in the high-probability
areas.

Australia

Department of Archaeology, Flinders University:

2006 was a great year for the Program
in Maritime Archaeology at Flinders
University. Eleven students have completed
and submitted Master of Maritime
Archaeology (MMA) theses during the
year and overall the program has grown
considerably. Jennifer McKinnon from
Florida started work in January 2006 as the
new lecturer in Maritime Archaeology and
in March Jason Raupp took up a part-time
position (three days a week) as the Maritime
Technical Officer. Dr. Susan Briggs
continued on a 0.5 contract until June when
she left to take up a position with the NSW
Heritage Office as a Graduate Heritage Officer.
Ph.D. student Claire Dappert started
on a 0.2 Lecturer A contract in July tutoring
and teaching both in the graduate program
in maritime archaeology and more generally
for the Department of Archaeology.

Associate Professor Mark Staniforth attended
the 2006 SHA Conference as well
as the ACUA and SHA board meetings in
Sacramento in January 2006 and he also
attended the SHA mid-year meeting in
Washington DC in June. At the SHA conference
he was the co-chair with Amanda
Volume 40: Number 2 Summer 2007 Page 31
Evans of a symposium titled “At the Edge
of the Known World: Vernacular Boats and
Ships as Technological Adaptations to New
Environments” where he presented a joint
paper (with Rick Bullers) titled “Nineteenth
Century Australian Wooden Shipbuilding.”

The 2006 Maritime Archaeology field
school was held at Mount Dutton Bay, near
Coffin Bay on the Eyre Peninsula of South
Australia between 1 and 14 February 2006.
Students examined the historic jetty at
Mount Dutton Bay which is unique in that
it is the only known jetty to have been constructed
on a private pastoral lease in South
Australia. The jetty was used to ship the
wool clip to Port Adelaide or direct to markets
in the United Kingdom. Participants
in the field school also surveyed the Caprice,
an oyster-cutter dredge that was used to
harvest native oysters from the surrounding
bays and sank at its moorings near the
end of the jetty.

Regular master classes were held on every
second Friday during the year and in
addition to SCUBA diving included visits
to the various archival repositories (Archive
Day) and a visit to the Swamp (aka the Garden
Island ships’ graveyard). The latest innovation
for 2007 will be student fieldwork
practicums (for credit) offered in association
with organizations and government
agencies including the Tasmanian Parks
and Wildlife Service, Heritage Victoria, and
the Lighthouse Archaeology Maritime Program
(LAMP) in St. Augustine, Florida.

Undergraduate teaching in maritime
archaeology continued in 2006 with 16
undergraduate students enrolling and
completing ARCH 3005 Underwater and
Coastal Archaeology in semester 2 of 2006.
In addition, Andrea Smith (supervised by
Associate Professor Mark Staniforth) completed
her Honors (4th year) thesis in July
2006 titled “The Maritime Cultural Landscape
of Kangaroo Island: a case study of
Kingscote and West Bay.”

Rick Bullers won the inaugural Maritime
Archaeology Staff Prize for 2005 ($250)
for his Master of Maritime Archaeology
thesis titled “Quality of Construction of
Australian-built, Colonial-Period Wooden
Sailing Vessels: Case Studies Of Vessels
Lost In South Australia And Tasmania.”
Subsequently Rick has been awarded an
Australian Postgraduate Award (APA)
scholarship to undertake a Ph.D. within
the Australian Shipbuilding Project and
has started fieldwork with the support of
Heritage Victoria on Australian-built shipwrecks
in Port Phillip Bay. The other new
Ph.D. student in 2006 is Claire Dappert
who earned her master’s degree from East
Carolina University and has been awarded
an Endeavour International Postgraduate
Research Scholarship (Endeavour IPRS) to
undertake research on “US Shipbuilding
Activities in the Maritime Cultural Landscape
of Australia.” Claire has started her
fieldwork with survey work on Kangaroo
Island where the Independence was built by
American sealers in 1803 and she will also
conduct survey work on Cape Barren Island
in early December 2006.

The Department of Archaeology is excited
to announce the launch of the new
Flinders University Maritime Archaeology
Monograph Series (MAMS). Previously,
the department published the Maritime Archaeology
Monographs and Reports Series
(MAMARS) as a way to offer research conducted
by students to a broader audience
and this is still MAMS goal. MAMS will reprint
MAMARS issues 1-7 in a new format
with a higher level of editing, and these will
be available for sale in early 2007. The three
newest publications by Rick Bullers, Kylli
Firth, and David Nutley will be available
in December 2006. Look for several new
MAMS in 2007, including Debra Shefi’s
“The Development of Cutters in Relation to
the South Australian Oyster Industry: An
Amalgamation of two Parallel Developing
Industries.”

United Kingdom

Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS):

The
NAS has charitable status and is a company
limited by guarantee. Its business is conducted
through an executive committee
which is supported by subcommittees for
management, publication, and outreach,
each with terms of reference defining the
subcommittee’s particular responsibilities.
The society’s constitution is set out in the
Memorandum of Association and Articles
of Association, and a Statement of Principles
defines the society’s values regarding
archaeological and heritage practice. The
society has explicit policies on education,
data protection, and health and safety. Its
offices and staff are housed within Fort
Cumberland, Portsmouth, UK.

Membership: The society’s membership
remains stable at around 600, with about a
third of the membership located outside
the UK. Under a new system which allows
for a degree of semiautonomy, two regions
have been established in Scotland and in
the North East of England. The main aims
of the regionalization of the society are to
better meet the needs of local grant-aiding
bodies and to generate more regional activity.

NAS Scotland, supported by Historic
Scotland, carried out two research-driven
projects in Scotland; in North Uist, featuring
an unnamed moderately sized wooden
sailing vessel; and at Unst in Shetland,
which also involved members of DEGUWA
recoding a fishtrap, likely to be of Norse/
Celtic origin. NAS Scotland also supported
the University of Southampton in the ongoing
recording of collection of ethnic craft,
A World of Boats exhibition, located in Eyemouth.

NAS NE continued to offer NAS training
courses and carried out a second season
of research on the Saltburn Rutways.
A Heritage Lottery-funded, Young Roots
project entitled “Dig, Dive and Discover” in
conjunction with Hartlepool Divers, Hartlepool’s
Library Service, and Hartlepool Port-
Cities, introduced 14 cadets to diving and
maritime archaeology and included field
work on the Middleton Sands Wreck.

In September NAS NE was awarded
an English Heritage grant to establish the
North East of England Maritime Archaeology
Research Archive. The regional group
also received an award under NAS’ Joan
Du Plat Taylor awards scheme. Activities
in Wales supported by CADW are managed
directly by the society’s staff in Portsmouth
and included a number of presentations
and training courses.

The NAS received support from the
following organizations: English Heritage;
CADW (Wales Heritage Agency); Historic
Scotland; British Sub Aqua Club Jubilee
Trust; PADI Project Aware; and Crown Estates.
Additional support is also received
through contributions from individuals
and organizations.

The NAS continues to provide editorial
services for the peer-reviewed International
Journal of Nautical Archaeology, currently
published twice a year by Blackwell. The
society’s quarterly newsletter Nautical Archaeology
is distributed to all members, either
in hard copy or electronically, and is
also made available at public events. The
NAS has agreed with Blackwell to produce
the second edition of the NAS’ Handbook of
Underwater Archaeology, which should be
available in 2007.

On behalf of the Joint Nautical Archaeology
Policy Committee, the society published
the proceedings of the Burlington
House Seminar, a seminar aimed at discussing
and raising awareness of the UNESCO
Convention. Robert Grenier of ICUCH
presented the case for the convention. The
resultant Burlington House Declaration
was presented to the government seeking
a re-evaluation of its current decision not to
ratify the convention.

The NAS is planning a series of publications
covering archaeological research
undertaken by society members. The first
will cover the results of the Sound of Mull
Archaeological Project, carried out on the
west coast of Scotland.

The NAS Web site is also a means of
Volume 40: Number 2 Summer 2007 Page 32
reaching out to a wider public, as well as
providing information on forthcoming
courses, projects, and events.

The NAS continues to provide training
courses following a progressive qualification
model and offers volunteers a variety
of opportunities to participate in archaeology
projects. During the year the society
laid out an education policy committing
itself to equal opportunities, welfare, and
quality assurance.

During the year the society formed a
Training and Advisory Board consisting
of experts drawn from outside the society.
The main aims of the board are to ensure
that the NAS Training courses deliver a
consistent, quality learning experience; that
the NAS Training portfolio of qualifications
and training courses are relevant to the
needs of the sector; that appropriate educational
standards are maintained and that
best practice from other organizations and
sectors is taken into account in the training
and education services.

CADW (Wales) and Historic Scotland
continue to financially support the society’s
training program. Scotland has its own
Training Officer, with Wales activities organized
from the NAS’ offices in Portsmouth.

The NAS remains committed to working
closely with the UK’s recreational diver
agencies to ensure that the basic training of
every diver includes information relating
to the protection of the underwater cultural
heritage.

NAS Training continues to be franchised
to organizations outside the UK,
most notably Parcs Canada and the Australian
Institute of Maritime Archaeology.
Through this system the society continues
to promote international cooperation and
aims to establish an international standard
for avocational training.

The NAS provides a range of opportunities
for volunteers to contribute to research,
organized by it and by partner organizations.
Since 2004 the society has run a project
in collaboration with the National Trust
at the Stourhead estate, Wiltshire, England.
The project is an innovative research activity
in and around the man-made decorative
lake. The project also provides the society
with a high-profile outreach opportunity.
The project is expected to continue until
2008.

An award from the Heritage Lottery
Fund will fund a two-year Dive into History
project that will consist of training and
outreach initiatives and will target a wide
range of audiences, including younger and
ethnic groups. A number of field schools
were completed at Purton and Portishead
(SW of England) with a collaborative project
with the Hampshire and Wight Trust for
Maritime Archaeology taking place in Forton
Lake, Gosport, Hampshire, England,
grant aided by the Local Heritage Initiative
scheme.

Additional projects were organized on
the historic submarine Holland V and on the
Edderline Crannog in collaboration with
Nottingham University. NAS Part I course
members carried out a monitoring survey
of the Coronation (a Protected Wreck under
the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973). NAS
organized an international exchange visit
to Roskilde Viking ship center, and carried
out a UK-wide project to encourage divers
to record wrecks in the UK—Wreckmap
Britain 2006 (sponsored by BSAC Jubilee
Trust, PADI Project Aware, and Crown Estate).

An NAS ‘trade stand’ was present at
the Institute of Field Archaeologists (IFA)
general conference and the IFA Maritime
Affairs Group conference, as well at both
the London and Birmingham recreational
diving exhibitions to promote Wreckmap
Britain as well as the other activities of the
society.

Meetings of Interest

Eighth Maritime Heritage Conference. 9-
12 October 2007. The conference sessions
will be held jointly at the Maritime Museum
of San Diego and the USS Midway/San
Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum, San Diego,
CA. More than 500 attendees are expected.
The conference will open on Tuesday
9 October with a welcome reception to be
held on the Star of India, flagship of the
Maritime Museum of San Diego. Program
sessions will continue through Friday 12
October. A total of 76 conference sessions
are planned. Most sessions will run for 75
minutes. These will cover the entire range
of maritime and naval heritage topics. Sessions
will be held concurrently on the USS
Midway, the Star of India, and the Berkeley.
The conference will conclude with a dinner
cruise on San Diego Bay on the evening of
Friday 12 October. A formal call for papers
was issued in the fall of 2006. For more information
please contact Conference Chair
Raymond Ashley at 619-234-9153 ext. 104,
<ashley@sdmaritime.org>.