Originally posted on Warwick, 1619: Shipwreck Excavation:
The previous week had been grey and miserable. The wind kept shifting and made rounding Castle Roads a choppy passage. For the most part, we were constantly working with the latent threat of a storm. On the morning of the 28th, however, the sun was brilliant, the sky cloudless,…

At last – the Warwick Excavation blog is up and running! Veronica and I are in beautiful Bermuda helping to uncover and document the sunken English galleon Warwick. For the next two months we will be blogging live from the project at http://warwick1619.wordpress.com/ Warwick sank in Castle Harbour, Bermuda almost 400 years ago. The galleon […]

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In 1619, when Sir Robert Rich ordered his Galleon Warwick to sail to the American Colonies with a load of much needed supplies, he may have had more than merchant work in mind. Sir Robert, the Earl of Warwick, was a major shareholder in the Bermuda Company. Although his stake in the joint-stock company was […]

In the fall of 1619, a hurricane dashed the English Galleon Warwick against the cliffs of Bermuda’s Castle Harbor. After lying beneath the sand for nearly four centuries, the ship has been uncovered again. Some people believe the most valuable thing that we can get from a shipwreck is information about the past. Others think […]

I love digging underwater, but loathe of the endless mechanical circus. Don’t get me wrong – being able to vacuum up sediment with a giant hose is far better than having to lug bucket  after bucket of backdirt up and out of your unit. And as far as archaeology is concerned, nothing can beat floating […]

Depending on technology to breathe is sketchy, particularly when that technology is not all that dependable. While diving in the Aucilla River, our crew relied on surface supplied air, run off a Brownie Third Lung hookah. We dug it out of the dive locker at the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research where it had been […]

Stained black by the surrounding swamps, the Aucilla River is an obsidian mirror; it reflects the overhanging forest while hiding a labyrinth of rocks, snags. In places it disappears, running underground – in others, it conceals deep sinkholes formed by collapsed limestone caverns. For decades, river divers have descended into these dark pits in search […]