Lynn Harris

This edited volume brings new perspectives on the topic maritime archaeology of the slave trade in the Caribbean. The book focuses on shipwrecks of the slave trade in the 18th century and suggests that there is a more complex and challenging social narrative than has previously been discussed. The authors examine biographies of ships, crew members, voyage logs, cargo inventories, trader correspondence and contextual analysis of the artifact assemblages to bring new insights into the microeconomics and maritime traditions of these floating prisons. The illustrious biography of Captain Edward Thache (aka Blackbeard) reveals past identities as a naval officer, slave trader, and pirate. Categories of artifacts in archaeological collections represent cultural connections and traditions of enslaved Africans. The volume includes several case studies that inform these narratives and examines slave ships such as la Concorde, Henrietta Marie, Whydah, La Marie Seraphique and Marquis de Bouillé. Within the larger context of slave trade during the 18th century, authors explore legal and illegal trade in the British West Indies. These studies also address the plethora of social, political, and environmental impacts on these island communities that played an integral and strategic role in slave trade economics. This volume presents up-to-date research of professional maritime historians, artifact curators, and marine archaeologists drawing upon primary source documents, artwork, and material culture. The research collaborators reconstruct the international spheres of colonial North America, Europe, Africa, and West Indies. It is an interwoven narrative, both unique and typical, to the social and economic dynamics of 18th century Atlantic World.

Princeville, NC, is the oldest town chartered by Blacks in America. Founded as Freedom Hill in 1865 and incorporated as Princeville in 1885, the town continues to be predominantly African American today. Built on the unwanted and flood-prone lands adjacent to the Tar River, Princeville has flooded multiple times throughout its history, including after Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Because of the town's historical significance, residents and town officials alike have been reluctant to accept offers for widespread buyouts from the government. Despite having limited financial resources and political clout, the town has developed a unique approach to managed retreat while rebuilding from Matthew-one that emphasizes the importance of historical sites while also recognizing the need to relocate residents out of harm's way from future floods. This manuscript uses a historical and narrative approach to examine how Princeville's unique history, and the relationship between the town and the Tar River, play important roles in the town's decisions regarding retreat and redevelopment in the aftermath of major flooding events. We highlight the voices of current residents, including leaders, as well as the structural and cultural conditions that both constrain and enable the town's collective agency. While focused on the present day, this case study is historically informed, using oral histories and archival documents.

This report builds on a multi-year effort to 1) compile historic and cultural data of U.S. Navy vessels lost in South Carolina waters to document the losses and subsequent wreck history of each vessel, which was used to update the Naval Historical Center's database of shipwrecks, and 2) conduct remote sensing operations on a limited number of shipwreck sites and areas of naval activities, primarily from the Civil War. A detailed inventory was produced, and the document includes a brief history of U.S. Navy presence in South Carolina and recommendations for the management of these resources.

Many cultures from which slaves were imported to South Carolina had extensive craft and trade skills well known to Europeans exploring or colonizing Africa. Planters made efforts to import slaves from areas of West Africa where certain valuable agricultural crops such as rice were grown. Skills like canoe building, coastal militia galleys, sailing, swimming, and alligator fighting can be added to this laundry list of less visible and neglected cultural contributions of slaves to the colonial world along the southeastern seaboard. Clearly, plantations incorporated boating and labor traditions practiced in seaports and along river systems of Africa. This article presents historical correspondences, travelers’ journals, plantation anecdotes, artwork, archaeological data, and ethnographic evidence to construct a formative vision of an African Carolinian maritime heritage.

Frederick H. Hanselmann’s riveting recent book Captain Kidd’s lost ship: the wreck of theQuedagh Merchant effectively combines explanations about academic archaeological approaches and cultural resource management with one of the most spellbinding and complex historical piracy narratives. Scottish privateer Captain William Kidd was executed for piracy by public hanging in 1701 for his capture of the Cara Merchant of Quedagh off the coast of Cochin, India. It was an Indian ship hired by Armenian merchants and loaded with satins, muslins, gold, silver and a variety of East Indian merchandise. The ship was subsequently abandoned by Kidd at Catalina Island in what is the present-day Dominican Republic. In 2007 a snorkeler found a coral conglomerate of cannons in shallow water and contacted the Dominican Republic’s Oficina Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural Subacuático. The government agency contacted Indiana University, and for several years thereafter Hanselmann, an underwater archaeologist, participated in collaborative scientific investigations aimed at proving the identity of this shipwreck. Most significantly, the remains of the ship’s hull on the seabed displayed unique Indian ship construction characteristics.

By the mid-eighteenth century, a distinctive maritime commerce in turtle and manatee products existed in the Caribbean. It was especially prevalent amongst English-speaking inhabitants, from the Cayman Islands and Jamaica to the outposts of Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Colombian islands. Consumption patterns led to a variety of encounters between indigenous Indians, Europeans, Africans and Creoles. Commerce in these natural resources, especially turtles, grew steadily, creating prodigious consumer demands for medical uses, culinary and fashion trends in Europe and the North America by the late-nineteenth century. This study intertwines themes of environmental history, maritime cultural encounters, fisheries and food history. Topics such as indigenous hunting techniques, processing, transportation, marketization, utilitarian and luxury consumerism and evolution of social attitudes towards natural resources are addressed. It is based on contemporary sources and covers various aspects...

How will academic institutions prepare new generations of maritime archaeology students for the unique challenges of a profession that frequently operates collaboratively in foreign arenas? International study programs and maritime archaeology field schools, above or below the water, offer unique but often complex teachable moments in cultural resource management. A central focus is consideration of tapping into other sustainable popular tourism packages to include maritime heritage education and outreach initiatives. Collaborations in Namibia, South Africa, and Dominican Republic are examined as case studies associated with different problems, perceptions, and challenges.

This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Archaeology and Anthropology, South Carolina Institute of at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Books and Manuscripts by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more ...

South African radar operators, who played a role in protecting the strategic sea route around the Cape, deserve more recognition and research attention. This rugged and rocky coastline was a supply lifeline for Allied troops voyaging between the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Some of the remaining features of this surveillance system are secret observation structures, radar stations, and military barracks hidden and camouflaged in the mountains and cliffs overlooking the ocean. These remote outposts were staffed with “station girls.” At the start of the war, men worked the stations, but by 1941 as the need for men in active service increased, women with university credentials were recruited and trained as radar operators. African men, enlisted in the Native Military Corps armed with traditional weapons like assegais, guarded the outposts.

The following report details the results of an investigation of the remains of a small historic sailing craft, The Malcolm Boat (38CH803), discovered in a mud bank of the Ashley River in 1985. The investigation, conducted in June of 1992, with partial funding support from the South ...

... Rojas Sandoval, Eugenio Acevez Núñez, Jerónimo Avilés Olguín, Santiago Analco Ramírez (†), Octavio del Río Lara, Pilar Luna Erreguerena, Adriana Velázquez Morlet, Wolfgang ... Port Royal, Jamaica: Archaeological Past, Present, 259 and Future Donny L. Hamilton 17. ...

Jamaican Rum, Snakeroot and Walking Canes: Exploring 18th Century Port Brunswick Cargoes
Lynn Harris

ABSTRACT
Port Brunswick primary source records in the NC State Archives contain a wealth of shipping information about incoming and outgoing cargoes during the 18th century. These inventories provide data on consumer trends related to diet, health, fashion, recreation, and labor.  Cargoes represent a network of global trade, class, gender,  race, and environmental dimensions. For example, inventories include descriptions of  women’s clothing, various species of pickled fish,  assorted alcoholic drinks, games, and kitchenware.  More significantly, there is also data on incoming enslaved people aboard these vessels listed alongside cargoes. Analysis of the records will assess trends in the pre- and post-Revolutionary War era, and historic Wilmington’s connections to popular ports in the West Indies and along the eastern seaboard of North America.

A large infusion of slaves into Caribbean Costa Rica came from two Danish frigates, Christianus Quintus V and Fredericus Quartus IV, wrecked in 1710. Testimonies of witnesses presented in the Danish Court suggest that the two captains conspired from the beginning of their voyage to sail to Panama, instead of the intended destination of St. Thomas. Here they could sell the slaves at a higher price. Part of the voyage account noted that the Danish ships had an unintended stopover at the island of Santa Catalina, a strategic base for British pirates and Miskito Indian allies engaged in slave raids in Costa Rica. After this stopover, the captains amended their plans to head to Central America. It is a significant global narrative intertwining the history of Denmark, England, Costa Rica, and West Africa that contributes towards understanding another complex dimension of slave trade in the early eighteenth century. This study aims to present a historical context for events surrounding the voyage and introduce subsequent investigations of signature artifacts, especially bricks and manillas, from two shipwreck sites in Cahuita National Park.

Scientists, hunters, and business entrepreneurs in the Carolinas all had mutual interests in Giant Manta Rays (Mobula birostris) during the early decades of the 1900s. Eastern seaboard coastal communities called it a Devil Fish attributed to the horn shaped fins on its head. Although the Ocean Leather Company in Morehead City primarily processed shark skin leather, it also experimented with the skins of rays, and other sea animals for producing a great variety of consumer products. Authors wrote articles for scientific journals and contributed ray specimens to National Institutions like the American Museum of Natural History. Local fishermen, along with celebrities like Teddy Roosevelt,  harpooned Devil fish in Cape Lookout, while marveling at the grace and strength breaching up to 6 feet above the water surface. Beaufort planter William Elliott presented many accounts of what he called “the mightiest, strangest, most formidable” of all fish with vivid stories of enslaved African harpooners jumping off boats onto the backs Manta Rays. The research combines historic accounts and images, newspaper advertisements, and talks at local explorer clubs to illustrate case studies of the community obsession with collecting, cooking, hunting, and conquering rays as an important component of maritime leisure and environmental history.

Trypots and Tramways: Re-imagining  Whaling Ports along the African Coast
Evidence of whaling operations and cultures exist in African ports in the tangible form of historic work buildings, transportation infrastructure, wharves, and abandoned or curated watercraft. While intangible heritage like oral histories, poems, and songs provide a rich and colorful cultural fabric highlighting the diverse ethnicities and experiences of the whalers and their families.  What are the community memories of whaling and how are they preserved? How has material culture contributed towards these mindscapes? Combining case studies of whaling enterprises in African ports contributes towards a deeper and comparative understanding of intersecting labor, industrial, environmental  and immigrant histories over the long durée.  Case studies include ports of South Africa, Namibia,  and islands off the continent like Cape Verde, Sao Thome,  and Annobón. These narratives start with the interactions with indigenous populations and continue through to the last remaining harpooners.

Key words: Whaling – Maritime Landscapes – African Ports – South Africa - Cape Verde -Sao  Thome - Annobón