SHA Special Publication and Author Perspective
Wreck Divers & Archaeologists: A History of Maritime Archaeology in California (2024), Thomas N. Layton and James P. Delgado; Number of pages: 410; 120 figures; Society for Historical Archaeology Special Publications
By Mary L. Maniery, PAR Environmental Services, Inc., President; SHA Co-Publications Associate Editor
Wreck Divers & Archaeologists: A History of Maritime Archaeology in California (2024), Thomas N. Layton and James P. Delgado; Number of pages: 410; 120 figures; Society for Historical Archaeology Special Publications
ABOUT THE BOOK
Tensions between salvors and archaeologists. Questions of what archaeology can contribute beyond the documentary record. These are debates that have bedeviled maritime archaeology for more than half a century. Wreck Divers and Archaeologists tackles these issues. It illustrates the progression of maritime archaeology from divers looking for treasure to both a scientific understanding of the past and a legal structure for historic preservation.
This volume documents the professional progression of maritime archaeology with a focus on California. It presents the personal narratives of six California wreck divers, two of whose exposure to the underwater world began during World War II, and five professional archaeologists including both the first California State Underwater Archaeologist and his Federal counterpart, together with the perspective of a Native American poet. While they had different goals, all of the contributors are bound together by their interest in maritime history and linked by having touched the brig Frolic and its cargo. Frolic, one of the best researched shipwrecks in the Americas, was bound from Canton, China to Gold Rush San Francisco when it wrecked on California’s Mendocino County coast in the summer of 1850.
The Frolic narratives describe the arc of United States maritime archaeology from a hobby to a profession – as well as the times when the arc was not smooth. The transitions in the field, and in California maritime archaeology, are given greater depth and context with a history by James Delgado.
Thomas Layton and James Delgado are both past winners of the Society for Historical Archaeology’s James Deetz award for accessible writing. Other contributors include David Buller, Cliff Craft, Richard Everett, John Foster, Georgia Fox, Louie Fratis, James Kennon, Bill Kosonen, Dede Marx, Linda Noel, Larry Pierson, Sheli Smith, and Della Scott-Ireton.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
MM: What are some of your motivations for writing/spearheading this book?
Tom Layton here: As the final summary sentence of his book, In Small Things Forgotten, James Deetz assumed the voices of 16th and 17th Americans, and wrote “Don’t read what we have written; Look at what we have done.” Decades ago, I underlined that sentence in my copy of Deetz’s book, and its reverberating echo explains why in titling Wreck Divers and Archaeologists: A History of Maritime Archaeology in California, I listed wreck divers first.
Why? Because wreck divers discovered and pillaged most of the vessels wrecked in shallow waters along the California Coast long before professional archaeologists had developed the skills and the institutional backing to begin recording and documenting those vessels. And, returning to Deetz’ powerful summary sentence, those wreck divers left no written record of what they had done.
Thus in 1984, when I began to research the Frolic shipwreck, the only opportunity to view and describe the artifacts representing the Frolic‘s cargo and the parts of the vessel itself was to locate and establish rapport with the wreck divers and to record their first-person narratives of what they had done at the Frolic wreck site. Serendipitously, those life narratives described not only what the divers had done at the Frolic site, but also what they had done on many other California shipwrecks. Those wreck diver narratives, augmented by the narratives of the archaeologists who helped to put the pieces back together, formed the original core of the manuscript. Then, when Jim Delgado told me that he had written a draft history of what actual maritime archaeologists had accomplished in California, we suddenly realized that we had the makings of a book!
Jim Delgado here: I’ve been privileged to know Tom for many decades, and while never his student, I learned much from him, not only about the Frolic, but about the wreck divers, some of whom I had met. Tom’s approach to Frolic was eye-opening and revelatory. Coming years after my own interactions with that wreck, with Tom, and earlier work in California, what I learned from Tom and how he had worked with those divers, gaining trust, hearing their stories, I was confronted with my own attitudes of the past at an early stage in my own career. With educational and work history as an historian and archaeologist, and graduate degrees in both disciplines, I was drawn to add to the narrative, at Tom’s invitation. I wanted to share perspectives drawn from experience, as to how wrong some of us had been – on both sides – and how time had given me a more nuanced and mature perspective. As Mark Twain said, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
MM: Who would you like to read this book? Who is your audience?
Tom Layton here: In the absence of formal academic programs, many of our senior generation of maritime archaeologists were sufficiently passionate not only to train themselves but then to pursue research far beyond their formal job descriptions. Subsequent generations of maritime archaeologists benefit from formal academic programs providing not only technical instruction but also the skills to engage in meaningful research. We hope our book will provide a historical context for the careers of that younger audience whose passions will power the future growth of our discipline.
Jim Delgado here: I want colleagues to read this, but like Tom, I want anyone who loves the past, who loves diving, and especially those seeking a career in archaeology, as well as the various folks out there with their own legacy collections from the old days to find their own Tom Layton’s and places where those finds can go and be curated and learned from. The era of wreck diving, like that which occurred those many decades ago, is now history itself. While what happened was not perfect archaeology, not all archaeological projects are perfect. We do the best we can, and we strive to do better.
MM: Now that you have published this book, what kinds of things are you dreaming up next? What is in the works?
Tom Layton here: With the publication of Wreck Divers and Archaeologists, we are now assembling a final Frolic volume, comprised of high-resolution images and detailed captions intended to present the Frolic saga in an easily accessible form, not only to the people of California’s north coast, but for anyone else who has an interest in maritime history.
Jim Delgado here: I remain active on several projects and have a new book coming out in July, The Great Museum of the Sea: A Human History of Shipwrecks (Oxford University Press, 2025) in part builds on this book’s lessons, as well as others from a half century of my own work to look at wrecks from various perspectives and points of view, with the basic questions being: What exactly is a shipwreck? How do people view shipwrecks through time, and why do they care about them? Why should we care now, and do any of us have all the right answers or are we asking the right questions as we interact with wrecks?
SHA Publications
SHA members can order Wreck Divers and Archaeologists: A History of Maritime Archaeology in California at Lulu.com for $25 (color $45).
The SHA Co-Publications program partners with Springer Press, University of Nebraska Press, University of Alabama Press, University of Tennessee Press, and University Press of Florida to expand our membership’s publication opportunities. The SHA also publishes works independently through Lulu, Amazon, and Ingram as Special Publications.
If you are interested in contributing to an SHA book, please contact SHA’s Co-Publications Editor, Ben Ford.
