A replica of a Spanish galleon entering the harbor off downtown St. Augustine. While this is an authentic replica of vessels that were instrumental to the founding of our nation's oldest port, no ship this large could have ever entered St. Augustine due to our shallow and treacherous inlet.

Yesterday we got a phone call from a St. Augustine city official, asking if a LAMP research vessel could help escort into our inlet a replica Spanish galleon. We had already heard the news that our city was to feature a visit from the galleon, as part of Florida's 500th birthday celebration, and we have been looking forward to the day of its arrival! The galleon, named El Galeón Andalucía, is owned and operated by the Nao Victoria Foundation in Spain, and will be visiting four cities during its Florida tour. It measures 175 feet in length and is a 495 ton vessel. It is probably an accurate depiction of a medium to large sized galleon of the second half of the 16th century through first half of the 17th century.

Ironically, however, the sight of this galleon in our harbor, no matter how authentic the ship itself is, could never have been seen in our ancient city.

Continue reading "A Spanish Galleon in St. Augustine" »

The St. Augustine Archaeological Association (SAAA), made up of archaeologists and locals with an interest in St. Augustine archaeology, will be hosting the annual meeting of the Florida Anthropological Society (FAS) this May. The SAAA is our city’s local chapter of the FAS, and last hosted the annual meeting, which is held each year in different cities across the state, in 2001. This conference will attract avocational and professional archaeologists from across the state and beyond.

Continue reading "The 65th Annual Meeting of the Florida Anthropological Society, St. Augustine, May 10-11, 2013" »

The original St. Augustine Lighthouse was built of coquina around the 1730s, and collapsed into the sea just three years after the present-day tower was completed in 1874. It was here that Minorcan resident Maria Andreu served as Lighthouse Keeper after her husband, the former Keeper, died in 1859.

There was a great article in the St. Augustine Record today, that also ran in Jacksonville's Florida Times-Union, about the first woman to serve as a Lighthouse Keeper in the U.S. And it happened right here, another first for America's first successful, continuously operating port city. Not surprisingly given St. Augustine's diverse heritage, this pioneer was not only the first woman but the first Hispanic woman to serve in this post, and is also considered the first Hispanic woman to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard (though at the time, the agency managing Lighthouses was known as the U.S. Lighthouse Service).

From the St. Augustine Record:

Maria Mestre de los Dolores Andreu stands out both in the annals of the U.S. Coast Guard and the federal government.

In 1859 she assumed the watch as the lighthouse keeper at St. Augustine Lighthouse after her husband, Juan, died. Maria Andreu thus became not only the first Hispanic-American woman to serve in the Coast Guard but also the first to command a federal shore installation, say officials.

Her appointment came after her husband died on the job. According to a report in the St. Augustine Examiner on Dec. 10, 1859, “Monday last … (Joseph Andreu) was engaged in white washing the tower of the Light House” when the scaffolding gave way and he fell 60 feet. He died almost instantly.

Its a really great article, one of the best I've seen on the Lighthouse, so go read the entire thing here.

Before and after photographs of the tower, after an outbreak of mold was cleaned in March 2013.

Historic preservation and the maintenance of historic structures is a never-ending challenge. Our team recently made a great step forward in the ongoing caretaking of the Lighthouse. Improper maintenance back in the 1970’s destroyed the surface of the brick on our keeper’s house, presenting us with a special problem today. Mold grows on the side of our tower (especially on the north side, like moss on trees) and it must be regularly cleaned. Previously, we used scaffolding or harnesses to do so, a process both expensive and dangerous. This year the maintenance team at the Lighthouse put their heads together and developed a special cleaning system, consisting of a pressure washer suspended and controlled from a series of lines running from the ground to the top of the tower. The pressurized spray of bleach and water, controlled like a marionette by our maintenance staff, worked great, and the new tower looks fabulous! Kudos to our Operations team, including Site Supervisor Brenna Ryan and Maintenance staff David Popp, Brian McNamara, and Blake Soulder, and directed by Deputy Director of Operations Rick Cain.

Click below to see some more before/after shots of the tower.

Continue reading "Cleaning the Lighthouse" »

This listing of a 190-ton vessel named Sally, commanded by a Captain Crossgil, was discovered on a document in the British National Archives. This document listed the ships that were to be used by the British Army during the evacuation of Charleston in December 1782.

Ask any maritime archaeologist and they will candidly point out that for every hour spent diving on a shipwreck there is easily another hundred hours required to process the information one has collected. I have been living proof of this since our last major discoveries on the Storm wreck with the regimental buttons and “brown bess” land pattern muskets. If the formulae holds true, then I have spent enough time diving on the site to keep me busy for the next several years.

Continue reading "Research Continues, Why Storm Wreck is not a “Sally”" »

Check out this video we made showing students in the 2010 LAMP Field School raising a cauldron from the 1782 "Storm Wreck."

Students in the 2012 Field School preparing for another "day at the office."

The 2013 Field School in Maritime Archaeology will run from May 27 to June 21, 2013. Each year LAMP sponsors this internationally acclaimed opportunity for training in maritime and underwater archaeology. Students from universities across the U.S. and abroad will learn these specialized skills by working side by side with LAMP archaeologists. Participants will be instructed in scientific diving procedures, archaeological recording and excavation, the use of hydraulic probes and induction dredges, marine remote sensing survey and analysis (magnetometer & side scan sonar), artifact collection and documentation and basic conservation laboratory methodology. The field school will also host an evening lecture series with field school instructors and visiting professionals from various public, private and academic institutions throughout Florida.

Follow the links below for more information, or continue reading after the fold . . .

Click here to see the official webpage for the 2013 Field School, with complete information on activities, lodging, applications, paperwork, etc.

Click here to see an article on last year's field school in the Jacksonville newspaper, the Florida Times Union.

Continue reading "2013 Maritime Archaeology Field School" »

Almost there! Class participants (minus one student) show off their progress.

This spring LAMP has partnered with the University of North Florida to teach a class called The History of Shipbuilding. LAMP's Sam Turner teaches the Tuesday lecture and Brendan Burke teaches a Thursday lab. In the class students are learning about vessel construction from the times of the ancient Phoenicians to our nuclear navy. On Thursdays the students meet in the lab and have been working to learn how to properly construct a ship's half model. The process of learning how to build a half model is an invaluable part of learning how vessels are designed and how the complex lines of a boat interact with water, gravity, and motion. A secondary part of the class is learning to use some basic hand tools that require the user to go slowly and think about the pending accomplishment. As we are about to wrap up the class I thought I'd offer some commentary on how it has progressed.

Continue reading "LAMP and UNF Partner in Historic Shipbuilding Class" »

A few weeks back I had a great little phone interview with the writer Gary Boulard, who was really fun to talk with. He was on assignment for WorkBoat Magazine. He was calling because of a press release announcing the archival research that I had recently carried out in England. Now Garry's article has come out, and its a fun read . . . .

From WorkBoat Magazine:

In May 1782, the editors of the British-run Royal Gazette in Charleston, S.C., posted an almost idle boast.

“We insert with pleasure, what gives us every reason to believe,” the paper declared, “that neither American independence will be recognized, nor the friends of British Government in this country deserted, by the present Ministry of England.”

Just seven months later, with the Revolutionary War all but over, the British left Charleston.

“They evacuated Charleston, which was a huge port, and went in several different directions,” said Chuck Meide, the director of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum. “One squadron went to England, one went to Halifax, one to Jamaica.”

But many of the vessels headed for St. Augustine, Fla. “We were getting swamped with people — our population exploded,” noted Meide. “We became the third or fourth largest city in all of the colonies.”

But on the way to St. Augustine, the vessels loaded with British loyalists confronted head-on a treacherous and well-known sandbar. At least 16 ships were wrecked as a result of the sandbar or for other reasons in December 1782.

One of those vessels was the Storm Wreck, currently being excavated offshore by archaeologists with the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program.

Read the entire article here!

Garry has expressed interest in a follow-up story, focusing on our research vessels and the equipment used during shipwreck excavations and artifact recovery. I'm looking forward to working with him again, and hope that this time we can meet in person and get him out on the deck of the Roper!

The state of Florida is considering a Citizen Archaeology Permit program, similar to the Isolated Finds program it experimented with and abandoned a few years ago. The idea is that private citizens could collect isolated artifacts from public lands and report them to the state, an activity that is usually illegal unless conducted under a state permit by archaeologists. The problems are many: under the original policy the finds were rarely reported or reported with little useful detail, the policy lead to widespread looting of archaeological sites, and the policy prevented law enforcement officers from protecting archaeological sites from looting as it provided a "cover" for looters. This program would extensively impact archaeological sites on state lands.

To learn more, read the official statement put out by FPAN (Florida Public Archaeology Network) here.

If you'd like a little more background, you can read a recent blog post by Jeff Moates, Director of FPAN's West Central Region, here.

If you are a friend of Florida archaeology, YOU CAN HELP!! Please voice your opinion on this issue to Florida legislators, and tell them to oppose the implementation of the proposed Citizen Archaeology Permit program. State Senator Alan Hays has invited Floridians from across the state to express their views to him. You may contact him here, and you can see the letter I wrote him below. If you are from out of state, feel free to share your views with him and let him know that Florida's archaeological heritage is one of the reasons you like to visit Florida.

To find the state legislator for your area and share your thoughts, visit this page.

Click below to see the letter that I have sent my legislators.

Continue reading "ACTION ALERT: Save Florida archaeology and stop the proposed Citizen Archaeology Permit program" »

From the Gainesville Sun:

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Inside a Catholic convent deep in St. Augustine's historic district, stacks of centuries-old, sepia-toned papers offer clues to what life was like for early residents of the nation's oldest permanently occupied city.

These parish documents date back to 1594, and they record the births, deaths, marriages and baptisms of the people who lived in St. Augustine from that time through the mid-1700s. They're the earliest written documents from any region of the United States, according to J. Michael Francis, a history professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Francis and some of his graduate students in the Florida Studies department have spent the past several months digitizing the more than 6,000 fragile pages to ensure the contents last beyond the paper's deterioration.

"The documents shed light on aspects of Florida history that are very difficult to reconstruct," Francis said.

Dr. Francis is a colleague of ours who I first met at a First Light Maritime Society function in Washington, D.C. Like our own Dr. Sam Turner, Michael Francis is one of the few scholars fluent in 16th century Spanish script. It will be very exciting to see what stories are revealed in these 6,000 pages of forgotten St. Augustine history . . .

Read the entire article here.