Into the Abyss: Deep-Sea Shipwrecks

In April 2008 Wreck Watch Int. began collaborating with Odyssey Marine Exploration, the world leader in deep-sea commercial shipwreck archaeology. Odyssey operates globally from Florida to off southeast Florida, the western Mediterranean and as far north as the English Channel. In 1989 its director Greg Stemm conducted, with business partner John Morris, the world's first deep-sea excavation on a Spanish merchant vessel lost in 1622 off the Dry Tortugas islands, 70 miles off Key West, Florida. Some 16,900 artefacts were recorded and recovered from a depth of 400 metres using a custom-tooled Remotely-Operated Vehicle. 

From October 2003 to February 2005 Odyssey discovered and partly excavated the wreck of the side-wheel steamer SS Republic that was lost in October 1865 en route from New York to New Orleans during the perfect storm. In addition to 51,406 coins recovered from the wreck site, a further 14,459 artefacts were documented and lifted. These assemblages of glass bottles containing medicinal cures from the 'golden age of quackery', ink, alcohol and preserved fruit, as well as ironstone pottery from Britain and children's writing slates from Wales, are providing a unique window into the hopes and material needs of the post-American Civil War South. 

 

Collaborating institutions and scholars on the Sussex shipwreck project included Anthony Martin (Giffords Ltd, Chester), Dr. Richard Bates and Dr. Fernando Tempera (TEAM, University of St. Andrews, Scotland), Brian Lavery (Curator Emeritus, National Maritime Museum, London), Dr. Jacqui Pearce (Museum of London Archaeology), Dr. Peter Kokelaar (Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences, University of Liverpool) and Dr. Alyson Tobin and Jill McVee (School of Biology and Histology Unit, University of St. Andrews, Scotland). 

Since 2005, Odyssey has been conducting a comprehensive survey of the English Channel and Western Approaches, one of the most heavily trafficked sea-lanes in the world. These bodies of water are a renowned graveyard of lost ships. About 7,000 wrecks have been registered within the territorial waters (30 mile limit) of the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. Wreck Watch Int. estimates that a further 1,600 shipwrecks are likely to have foundered at depth, far out at sea in the English Channel. 

So far Odyssey has identified 267 wrecks dating between the mid-17th century and modern day, varying from wooden merchant vessels carrying cargoes of barrels to a concrete hull, submarines and steel ships. Major discoveries include a very badly eroded wooden hull (Site 35F) associated with ivory tusks, a wooden folding ruler for calculating timber volumes, iron cannon stowed along the keel and copper manilla bracelets, a primitive form of currency used by Europeans to barter in West Africa. By identifying the wreck of Sir John Balchin's Victory, lost in October 1744, 100 kilometres west of Alderney, Odyssey has solved arguably the greatest mystery in British maritime history. The bell and site of an armed privateer launched from Bordeaux in 1744, the Marquise de Tourny, is a third remarkable discovery. 

The evidence of a lobster pot, fishing net, trawler gear, side-scan imagery of trawl furrow marks, and an analysis of 838,000 satellite observations of fishing vessels strongly suggests that all of these delicate wooden hulls and related artefacts are at high risk from the deep-sea fishing industry, whose nets, chains and dredge teeth physically plough and drag the sea bottom to extract shellfish and drive fish into nets. 

 

 

Wreck Watch Int. has consulted for Odyssey in the identification of the wreck of HMS Victory (1744) and quantified the scale and character of deep-sea fishing impacts in the Atlas survey zone. Wreck Watch has also established and is managing an on-line publishing programme for Odyssey Marine Exploration, which has published 22 academic articles in the last two years. Pending reports will focus on the results of the excavation of a Spanish merchant vessel lost off Florida's Dry Tortugas islands in 1622 in 400 metres - the world's first deep-sea wreck excavation - and various Punic, Roman and post-medieval sites in the Western Mediterranean. 

N. Cunningham Dobson, La Marquise de Tourny (Site 33C): A Mid-18th Century Armed Privateer of Bordeaux (OME Papers 17, Tampa, 2010). 

 

N. Cunningham Dobson, H. Tolson, A. Martin, B. Lavery, R. Bates, F. Tempera and J. Pearce, 'The HMS Sussex Shipwreck Project (Site E-82): Preliminary Report'.  In G. Stemm and S. Kingsley (eds.), Oceans Odyssey. Deep-Sea Shipwrecks in the English Channel, Straits of Gibraltar & Atlantic Oceans (Oxbow, Oxford, 2010), 159-90. 

 

N. Cunningham Dobson and S. Kingsley, 'HMS Victory, a First-Rate Royal Navy Warship Lost in the English Channel, 1744. Preliminary Survey & Identification'. In G. Stemm and S. Kingsley (eds.), Oceans Odyssey. Deep-Sea Shipwrecks in the English Channel, Straits of Gibraltar & Atlantic Oceans (Oxbow, Oxford, 2010), 235-80.

 

H. Tolson, 'The Jacksonville 'Blue China' Shipwreck & the Myth of Deep-Sea Preservation'. In G. Stemm and S. Kingsley (eds.), Oceans Odyssey. Deep-Sea Shipwrecks in the English Channel, Straits of Gibraltar & Atlantic Oceans (Oxbow, Oxford, 2010), 145-58.

 

S. Kingsley, 'Deep-Sea Fishing Impacts on the Shipwrecks of the English Channel & Western Approaches.' In G. Stemm and S. Kingsley (eds.), Oceans Odyssey. Deep-Sea Shipwrecks in the English Channel, Straits of Gibraltar & Atlantic Oceans (Oxbow, Oxford, 2010), 191-234.

 

S. Kingsley, 'Odyssey Marine Exploration and Deep-Sea Shipwreck Archaeology: the State of the Art', Minerva 14.3. (2003), 33-37. 

S. Kingsley, 'Messages in 6,000 Bottles', History Today 58.7 (2008), 5-6. 

S. Kingsley, 'Into the Abyss: Deep-Sea Shipwrecks, Science and Scandal', Current World Archaeology 33 (2009), 34-43. 

S. Kingsley, 'Balchin's Victory. The World's Mightiest Warship Discovered', Current World Archaeology 34 (2009), 26-35. 

S. Kingsley, 'The Threat to HMS Victory and Other Shipwrecks', British Archaeology May/June (2009), 13-17. 

 

S. Kingsley, The Art & Archaeology of Privateering:  British Fortunes and Failures in 1744 (OME Papers 18, Tampa, 2010). 

G. Stemm and S. Kingsley (eds.), Oceans Odyssey. Deep-Sea Shipwrecks in the English Channel, Straits of Gibraltar & Atlantic Ocean (Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2010).