The Search for USS Monitor – 50th Anniversary of the Discovery of Monitor!

Thursday, 31 August 2023, 1 pm EDT

In the early morning hours of New Year’s Eve 1862, the Civil War Ironclad, USS Monitor, sank beneath the ocean waves during a terrible storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. That morning, 16 men went down with the ship, and although numerous people searched for it for over a century, the Monitor’s final resting location remained a mystery until 1973.

Join John Broadwater, president and founder of Spritsail Enterprises, former superintendent at Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, and IMH member, to learn about the search for the USS Monitor. Discover why the shipwreck was difficult to locate and learn about the expeditions to find it. Go back in time to August of 1973, when John G. Newton led a team of scientists in search of the elusive shipwreck. Learn why it continued to be difficult to identify once they thought they found it and what finally convinced the team it was indeed the USS Monitor.

This webinar is one of the first in our 50th anniversary celebrations of USS Monitor. Stay tuned for more, as we commemorate the confirmation of the location of Monitor in 1974 and the shipwreck becoming our nation’s first national marine sanctuary in 1975.

View the Webinar here.

The Ronson Ship: An Early Eighteenth-Century Merchant Ship from Discovery to Publication

Wednesday, 22 March 2023, 12 pm CST

Dr. Warren Riess co-directed the excavation of an early 18th-century colonial merchant vessel initially known as the Ronson Ship in Lower Manhattan. Dr. Riess shared the results of more than four decades of post-excavation research and analysis that led him to identify the ship and uncover its role in the developing the 18th-century Atlantic World. This important vessel is answering questions about colonial ship design, the merchant trade, and the development of early New York, Virginia, and Charleston. Dr. Riess’ first volume about the project, The Ship That Held Up Wall Street, won Mystic Seaport’s 2015 John Gardner Award for significant contributions to maritime history. The second volume is scheduled to be released in June 2023.

View the webinar here.

The Yukon River Steamboat Survey: The Construction and Evolution of the Northwestern River Steamboat

Since 2007, INA Research Associate John Pollack and his team have documented the archaeological remains of the Klondike Gold Rush in the form of 30 field sites and three heritage ships in the Yukon, British Columbia, and Alaska. John shared the results of his team’s comprehensive fieldwork, and discussed the evolution of the Northwestern river steamboat, its hull construction, and machinery.

View the webinar here.

Wrecked on Chicamacomico: A Look at the Shipwrecks of Wimble Shoals, North Carolina

Tuesday, 7 March 2023, 1 pm EST

Join Allyson Ropp, Maritime Archaeologist with the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology, to learn about the ships that wrecked along the northern portion of Hatteras Island. Like many places on the North Carolina coast, there lies a set of submerged shoals, Wimble Shoals. These shoals have been agents of destruction in the area for centuries, playing a role in the wrecking of ships sailing the Atlantic shipping lanes. Many of the wrecking events led to harrowing rescues by passing ships or by the U.S. Life Saving Service units stationed along the island.

This presentation explores the histories of some of the vessels lost along Wimble Shoals and northern Hatteras Island. It further examines the overall near shore and offshore wrecking trends of the area to understand various dynamics to the loss of vessels. You won’t want to miss these great stories of heroic adventures.

View the webinar here.

Seventeenth-Century Shipboard Food: The Ship Biscuit & Salted Beef Research Project

Wednesday, 25 January 2023, 12 pm CST

Join the Institute of Nautical Archaeology on Zoom for a Webinar with recent Texas A&M graduate Dr. Grace Tsai. Dr Tsai will discuss replicating shipboard food – salted beef and pork, ship biscuit, beer and wine, and other provisions – using archaeological and historical data. Grace’s team simulated an oceanic voyage by storing food in casks on Elissa, the 1877 tall ship docked in Galveston, Texas. By analyzing the food in a laboratory for their nutritional and microbiological data, the team got a glimpse into the unique food situation and health of past sailors during the Age of Sail.

View the webinar here.

Connecting Ancestral Memory through the History and Archaeology of Slave Shipwrecks

Thursday, 2 February 2023, 7 pm EST

Join Kamau Sadiki from Diving With a Purpose (DWP) as he shares the stories of two shipwrecks, São José Paquete de Africa and Clotilda, involved in the Transatlantic Era of African enslavement through underwater archaeological documentation.

In this immersive lecture, Kamau will highlight the work of DWP, a non-profit organization of SCUBA divers whose primary mission is to bring back into memory the stories of shipwrecks involved in the commodification and enslavement of Black bodies.

View the webinar here.

Twenty-year Evolution of Royal Navy Ironclads

Friday, 20 January 2023, 12 pm EST

New technologies enabled the development of armored warships. The naval race between France and Great Britain prompted the rapid evolution of ship designs to counter new uses of propulsion, gun platform layout, and hull design, including the ironclads HMS WarriorCaptain, and Devastation. These advances set the stage for the development of dreadnoughts in the 20th century.

View the webinar here.

Raising the USS Monitor Turret

Tuesday, 31 January 2023, 1 pm EST

Join NOAA for a webinar on the story of the USS Monitor, including the role that the U.S. Navy played in the salvage and recovery operations during MONITOR Expedition 2002. As told by CAPT Bobbie Scholley, the Navy’s On Scene Commander for the operation, you will hear how the Navy partnered with NOAA and The Mariners’ Museum to plan and execute a historic diving operation off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, 240 feet below the surface, to recover the unique revolving gun turret and two Dahlgren guns from the wreckage of USS Monitor.

View the webinar here.