AJV Archaeology

Dr. Morgan Smith and Shawn Joy discuss the new Human Altered Lithic Detection (HALD) method, and they tell how they discover submerged precontact archaeological sites in Florida!

This multi-part podcast series is an attempt to locate a Royal Naval vessel, which was destroyed in Blackwater Bay, part of the Pensacola Bay System, Florida, during the spring of 1781. The study utilized maritime cultural landscape theory to construct an understanding of the setting and circumstances in which the ship sank. A history of the vessel is introduced to add context to the historical and environmental analysis defined by a critical examination of the Royal Navy’s 18th-century concept of the maritime cultural landscape of Pensacola Bay. The methodology behind the remote sensing survey for the ship and subsequent testing of previously known shipwrecks in this study’s project area is described, and a location for the wrecked vessel is presented.

This Master’s Thesis could not have been completed without the great assistance of my advisors Dr. Della A. Scott-Ireton, Dr. Gregory D. Cook, and Dr. Amy Mitchell-Cook. I thank you three for the continuous help and guidance!

This is the fourth part of the multi-part podcast series and is how maritime archaeologists use Spanish, French, English, and American hydrographic maps to build the Maritime Cultural Landscape Theory of 18th-century Royal Naval Pensacola Bay. Listen and Learn how the region’s environment and history is combined to construct an anthropological Maritime Cultural Landscape. This analytical mindset helps maritime archaeologists understand the historic battlefield in which HMS Mentor rests.

This multi-part podcast series is an attempt to locate a Royal Naval vessel, which was destroyed in Blackwater Bay, part of the Pensacola Bay System, Florida, during the spring of 1781. The study utilized maritime cultural landscape theory to construct an understanding of the setting and circumstances in which the ship sank. A history of the vessel is introduced to add context to the historical and environmental analysis defined by a critical examination of the Royal Navy’s 18th-century concept of the maritime cultural landscape of Pensacola Bay. The methodology behind the remote sensing survey for the ship and subsequent testing of previously known shipwrecks in this study’s project area is described, and a location for the wrecked vessel is presented.

This Master’s Thesis could not have been completed without the great assistance of my advisors Dr. Della A. Scott-Ireton, Dr. Gregory D. Cook, and Dr. Amy Mitchell-Cook. I thank you three for the continuous help and guidance!

This is the third part of the multi-part podcast series and is how maritime archaeologists use Spanish, French, English, and American navigational charts to build the Maritime Cultural Landscape Theory of 18th-century Royal Naval Pensacola Bay. Listen and Learn how the Maritime Cultural Landscape Theory helps maritime archaeologists understand the historic battlefield in which HMS Mentor rests.

This multi-part podcast series is an attempt to locate a Royal Naval vessel, which was destroyed in Blackwater Bay, part of the Pensacola Bay System, Florida, during the spring of 1781. The study utilized maritime cultural landscape theory to construct an understanding of the setting and circumstances in which the ship sank. A history of the vessel is introduced to add context to the historical and environmental analysis defined by a critical examination of the Royal Navy’s 18th-century concept of the maritime cultural landscape of Pensacola Bay. The methodology behind the remote sensing survey for the ship and subsequent testing of previously known shipwrecks in this study’s project area is described, and a location for the wrecked vessel is presented.

This Master’s Thesis could not have been completed without the great assistance of my advisors Dr. Della A. Scott-Ireton, Dr. Gregory D. Cook, and Dr. Amy Mitchell-Cook. I thank you three for the continuous help and guidance!

This is the second part of the multi-part podcast series and is the Introduction to the Maritime Cultural Landscape Theory of 18th-century Royal Naval Pensacola Bay. Listen and Learn how the Maritime Cultural Landscape Theory helps maritime archaeologists understand the historic battlefield in which HMS Mentor rests.

This multi-part podcast series is an attempt to locate a Royal Naval vessel, which was destroyed in Blackwater Bay, part of the Pensacola Bay System, Florida, during the spring of 1781. The study utilized maritime cultural landscape theory to construct an understanding of the setting and circumstances in which the ship sank. A history of the vessel is introduced to add context to the historical and environmental analysis defined by a critical examination of the Royal Navy’s 18th-century concept of the maritime cultural landscape of Pensacola Bay. The methodology behind the remote sensing survey for the ship and subsequent testing of previously known shipwrecks in this study’s project area is described, and a location for the wrecked vessel is presented.
This Master’s Thesis could not have been completed without the great assistance of my advisors Dr. Della A. Scott-Ireton, Dr. Gregory D. Cook, and Dr. Amy Mitchell-Cook. I thank you three for the continuous help and guidance!

This podcast was a live talk I gave on the Shipwrecks of Blackwater River at the Bagdad Village Museum on Saturday, March 7, 2020. https://blackwatermaritimeheritagetrails.org/ or https://BMHTrails.org/ sponsored the event along with Bagdad Waterfronts Florida Partnership 501c3 non-profit and the Bagdad Village Historic Preservation Association.
The map on the cover of the podcast is from 1937 and can be found: https://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/image=1265-11-1937

Don Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish Governor of Louisiana and Field Marshall of the Spanish troops, laid siege to the capital of British West Florida at Pensacola in 1781. The 61-day siege was the longest landlocked siege of the American Revolutionary War. The Siege of Pensacola was the conclusion of Gálvez’s conquest of the Northern Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River Valley. Commencing his conquest from New Orleans in September 1779, one month after a violent hurricane destroyed the General’s initial invasion there, General Gàlvez campaigned and took control of the British outposts of Manchac (September 7), Baton Rouge (September 21), and Fort Panmure at Natchez (October 5). The following spring Gálvez took Fort Charlotte at Mobile on March 14, 1780. Hurricanes and the Spanish miscalculation of merchants shipping at Pensacola in March 1780 delayed the Siege of Pensacola, which commenced in March 1781, a year after the siege of Mobile. After the siege of Pensacola in 1781, Bernardo de Gálvez was praised by his Catholic Majesty Carlos III for “the expulsion of the English from the entire Gulf of Mexico.” The Spanish King’s appreciation of Gálvez’s victory was rectified in re-naming the prestigious harbor of Pensacola to the “Bahia de Santa Maria de Gálvez.” Conde de Gálvez was raised to royalty and promoted to Lieutenant General and Governor of West Florida and Louisiana. Gálvez’s coat of arms incorporated himself aboard his flagship Gálveztown, flying a broad pennant bearing “Yo Solo,” which commemorated his entrance to and the defeat of Pensacola.

Cover Image accessible through the University of West Florida’s Archives:

https://uwf.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/digital_object_components/4229

https://archives.uwf.edu/Archon-Migrated/6.jpg

HMS Stork and HMS West Florida were merely two Royal Naval vessels dispatched to the Pensacola Station from 1777 to 1781.
HMS West Florida was purchased in 1777 and named after the colony it was sent to protect. The name was chosen as a means of distinguistion from the HMS Florida Sloop and HMS Florida schooner. West Florida lost the Battle of Lake Ponchartrain, in 1779, to the American ship Morris. It is rumored and very likely that the crew of Morris sold West Florida to the Spanish in New Orleans where the ship was made Galvez’s flagship, Galveztown.
HMS Stork was purchased in 1777. By 1779, the ship was unserviceable in Pensacola. In April of 1780, the Stork was made unserviceable by a violent gale of wind and was likely immobile at the Deer Point Carreenage Station near modern Gulf Breeze, Florida. The 90ft. long sixth-rate sloop-of-war has never been located.

Cover chart by George Gauld in 1780 found at: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3932p.ar166300

This paper will situate maritime battlefield cultural landscape theory in the archaeological discipline. Stemming from a variety of cultural landscape theory, an archaeological study of a single maritime battlefield may lend a synchronic understanding of how soldiers in fortifications on land, sailors aboard naval vessels in bodies of water, and more recently, pilots of planes in the sky, attacked and defended an area during a time of conflict. A collection of archaeological studies of maritime battlefields may ultimately develop a diachronic and holistic understanding of how political powers attacked and defended the land, air, and sea in the face of threats both foreign and domestic. It is posed that this methodology will not only aid the researcher in identifying movements and motives of opposing forces during conflict but will also yield a better understanding of patterned human behavior on the maritime landscape which, when taken together with the terrestrial and marine landscapes, can contribute to the broader understanding of warfare over time. An understanding of battlefields and their interpretation and public archaeological application is also addressed.

Cover image available:http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3884y.ar146200

The Deadman’s Island and Town Point Shipwrecks are unidentified wrecks that were archaeologically investigated and interpreted as small stripped and abandoned vessels from the British Occupational Period of Pensacola (1763-1781). The wrecks were in an 18th-century British Royal Navy careenage called Old Navy Cove at the landform known as Deadman’s Island near Gulf Breeze, Florida. Documents rediscovered may prove the Deadman’s Island Wreck to be HMS Florida, the last survey schooner of Royal Surveyor and Cartographer George Gauld, and the Town Point Wreck her attendant shallop.
This podcast is dedicated to the late Dr. Roger Smith and could not have been possible without the extensive assistance of Dr. Della A. Scott-Ireton, Dr. Marianne Franklin, and Billy Ray Morris III.