Underwater Metal Detectors Assist in Recovery of Shipwreck Artifacts

News Release JW Fishers Manufacturing Inc. August 6, 2012

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<DIV> In October 1619 the naval warship
Warwick sailed into the King’s
Castle Harbour in Bermuda with an important cargo from England; the colony’s new
governor, Captain Nathaniel Butler. After taking on provisions the Warwick was to travel onto the struggling colony
at Jamestown, Virginia, but it never made the voyage. Before
the ship could sail, Bermuda was hit by a fierce hurricane. Battered
by strong winds the Warwick broke free from her anchors, was driven
into the rocky shore, and torn apart by the pounding
waves.
  
In 1969 Mendel Peterson of the Smithsonian Institution and now famous
Bermuda shipwreck hunter EB
“Teddy” Tucker located the remains of the Warwick and began an
examination of the wreckage. What they found was a good part of the hull
remained preserved under a pile of ballast stone. Fast forward another 50 years
and a new group working under the supervision of the island’s
National
Museum began a more extensive
examination of the site and recovery of some significant historic artifacts. The
museum enlisted some renowned experts in the field of marine archaeology to
assist in the project. One is Dr. Jon Adams, head of archaeology at the
University of
Southampton who says “the
Warwick is one of the largest
and most coherent pieces of early 17th century ship structures ever found.” Dr.
Kroum Batchvarov with the maritime archaeology program at the
University of
Connecticut adds “very few wrecks
of the early seventeenth century have been excavated which has limited our
knowledge of shipbuilding and seafaring in this period. This makes the
archaeological excavation and documentation of the Warwick an important
contribution to that body of knowledge.” Professor Kevin Crisman of the Nautical
Archaeology Program at Texas A&M also thinks
this wreck holds enormous potential for educating archaeologists, historians,
and the public. “It could illuminate the early years of
England’s great century of
overseas expansion, a time when the first English colonies were being planted in
North America and around the
world.”
  
The location of Warwick’s remains makes it an
ideal archaeological site. The wreckage lies in 15 to 30 feet of water in a
protected harbor. Seventy feet of the hull structure is preserved and
researchers are now beginning to excavate, record, and analyze it. During the
work this summer divers recovered a cannon, navigational tools, rudder hardware,
parts of barrels, and fragments of ceramic containers. One of tools aiding in
the recovery work is JW Fishers Pulse 8X underwater metal detector. Diver James
Davidson reports, “we have been quite successful with the detector finding a
range of targets including cannon balls, musket shot, bar shot, and various lead
artifacts at depths up to 3 feet below the seabed, and cannon buried as deep as
6 feet.”
  
Professor Crisman says “Collectively these finds tell us an amazing story
of the changes being wrought in Bermuda and around the world by
mariners, merchants, and colonizers. The fabric of the
Warwick, it’s framing timbers,
planks, beams, and knees are also providing us with a new benchmark for
understanding the ships that England sent around the world
in the 17th century. We already know much more about the materials, design
concepts and assembly practices of early English shipwrights than we did at the
start of the excavation.”
  
Another important archaeological project that is employing the underwater
metal detector is the African Slave Wrecks Project. One of the primary
objectives of the project is to locate and document the wreck sites of ships
that carried slaves. Partners in this project include the
IZIKO
Museums of
Cape Town in
South Africa, the
Slavery
Museum of
Angola, the US National Park
Service Submerged Resource Unit, The Southern African Heritage Resources Agency,
and George
Washington
University. The group intends to
identify and preserve maritime culture resources and promote them as tourism
sites, an alternative to the commercialization of archaeological artifacts.
Louis Mare, one of the researchers on the project reports, “We are very
impressed with the Pulse 8X. In our first test on a local beach we recovered two
cannon balls along with the usual coinage and some jewelry items. The team is
now convinced this device will be an essential tool in our
projects.”
  
Other groups using these detectors in their work are Center for
Archaeological Studies at Texas State University, the Archaeological Institute
at the University of West Florida, the Office of Underwater Science and
Educational Resources at the Indiana University Bloomington, the underwater
archaeology program at the University of Rhode Island, the Center for Marine
Archaeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University, and the Israeli
Antiquities Authority. 
  
For more information on JW Fishers complete line of underwater search
equipment go to <A
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