Institute of Maritime History

10 March 2012:  Maryland Historical Trust Archaeology Workshop, Crownsville MD.
24 March:  Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference, underwater session, Virginia Beach VA.
26 March to 13 April:  Scan and assess approximately 137 wrecks in the Chesapeake Bay for the Maryland Historical Trust. Dive about 35 of them.

Upper Chesapeake Bay, and Fort Elfsborg, Delaware River

For a period of 37 days from 31 March to 6 May 2012 (more or less) IMH will collaborate with the Archaeological Society of Delaware and the Swedish Colonial Society to search for the remains of Fort Elfsborg, a fort built in 1643 by the colony of New Sweden on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.  The fort was abandoned in 1651.

IMH is initiating two big reconnaissance projects for the next two years.  Dates are tentative.

The schedule for autumn work in the Chesapeake has loosened up.  We finished the rivers reconnaissance project for Virginia DHR, and the big Chesapeake-Delaware recon project failed for lack of funding.

Roper is due home from St. Augustine on 13 August.  She will go immediately up the Potomac and resume reconnaissance at Mount Vernon from 15 to 26 August; then go to Quantico from 27 August to 2 September (?) to map one steamer wreck and search for several schooners, then go to Aquia to map pilings from a Civil War railroad terminal, and then perhaps go back to Mount Vernon to finish assessing the 80 sonar anomalies we found there last year.  She will return to homeport at Tall Timbers MD in late September or late October, whenever the work is done.

On Saturday 23 July, Dawn and I went with Scott Tucker of Historic St.Mary's City to reconnoiter a site in St.Mary's River.  It was faintly visible on sonar.  It appears to be a shipwreck, lying east-west, perpendicular to the shoreline.  The site includes stones, worked timber, a piece of leather with copper tacks (perhaps a shoe), a cylindrical iron o

IMH's boat Roper assisted the St.Augustine Lighthouse & Museum in a month-long field school, which was climaxed on 28 June by successfully raising two guns off a late 18th or early 19th century wreck.  News article and video at http://m.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-06-28/story/shipwreck-yields-c...

For several reasons, it makes sense to cancel the big Chesapeake/Delaware reconnaissance that was planned for August through November, and to devote that time to the Potomac instead.

We finished scanning the Nomini, but found nothing worth investigating.  Roper took two hits there -- wrapped some rebar around her propeller, and got too much sand in her cooling system.  We will haul her on 28 April for engine and hull work.  With luck, she will be back into the water on Thursday 12 May, sea trials on Friday the 13th (of course), start work on 14 May on the Eastern Shore for the Maryland Historical Trust, and head south to Florida on the 29 or 30 May.

The mooring buoy and diver ball are on the U-1105 for the 2001 season, thanks to Dawn, Isabel, Efrain, Dan, Mike, and Bill.

During the last week of April we will will continue work at Nomini and Colonial Beach, dive the U-1105 on Saturday the 30th to recover a lift bag and some mushroom anchors we left on the site, and haul Roper on Sunday the 1st of May to start two weeks of engine and hull work.