Shroud lifts from shipwreck puzzle
Artifacts reveal growing rift between Britain, Colonies
By Molly Murray - Shroud lifts from shipwreck puzzle
WILMINGTON, Delaware
The cargo of the ship
https://historyhuntersinternational.org/index.php?topic=613.20;wap2Severn may have been left untouched for the past 233 years off the coast of
Delaware for the same reason the British were sending it to
Delaware in the first place -- nobody really wanted it.
The British were unloading on the Colonies stuff that was outdated, out-of-fashion or no longer wanted at home. When the Severn sank, it seems that no one was in a rush to recover its cargo.
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Senior research assistant Jessica Lingo works with artifacts Thursday at the Coast Guard station in Lewes
"You get the sense from this cargo that the British were essentially dumping" merchandise on the Colonies, said Daniel R. Griffith, head of the Lewes Maritime Archaeology Project.
The
salvage operation has produced a picture of 1774 painted by the thousands of artifacts recovered from the Severn during a two-year process that ends today.
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These mineral water vessels are all from Selters of Germany -- one (from left) is from the 1774 wreck, one from 1850 and one from 2005. An artifact like this gives researchers a glimpse into Colonial life.
For archaeologists such as Griffith, the Severn -- which sank in 15 feet of water off Lewes in May 1774 -- offers a telling portrait of life in the Colonies and the building resentment among colonists in the lead-up to the American Revolution in 1776.
"The Colonies were being taxed and essentially put-upon," Griffith said. "The ship and her cargo provide a case study of Atlantic world commerce ... a commerce dominated by the British Empire."
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This tin-glazed earthenware plate is among the artifacts recovered from the shipwreck discovered off the coast of Lewes in 2004 during a dredging project.
Discovering a bounty
The Severn, Delaware's second-most historically significant shipwreck, went undiscovered until an Army Corps of Engineers dredge started pumping a slurry of sand, water and artifacts onto the beach in September 2004.
Residents discovered hundreds of artifacts, contacted officials at the state Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs and an investigation began.
Initially, historians thought the artifacts came from a settlement that dated to the 17th century and the earliest European settlers in Delaware.
But in the weeks that followed the discovery, state archaeologists concluded that the artifacts came from a shipwreck. Griffith, a former state director of Historical and Cultural Affairs, was hired to lead the research effort. He contacted a historian in London, who looked through shipping records.
Meanwhile, other researchers, working in Delaware, looked for ways to narrow the time period of the artifacts using historic publications like Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette for reports of shipwrecks at Lewes.
Eventually, they found two dated artifacts from the shipwreck site -- a commercial token from
Denmark dated 1768 and a copper alloy plated button, with the date 1772, Griffith said.
Other objects further narrowed the time frame. Griffith, in a paper presented last month to the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference in Virginia Beach, said researchers concluded that the ship was lost no earlier than 1772 but before 1779.
Shipwreck records pointed to the Severn, the only reported commercial ship loss recorded in Delaware Bay or the near shore Atlantic between 1772 and 1983.
Completing the puzzle
In a Lewes lab, a small team of researchers will continue to mark and catalog artifacts that continue to be brought in by beachcombers. Jessica Lingo is piecing together and cataloging ceramic pieces.
In one remarkable find, she pieced together a fragment collected from Lewes beach to other fragments collected by the offshore dive team. The combination of pieces forms part of an earthenware mineral water bottle from Germany.
"This is like working on a jigsaw puzzle," said Faye L. Stocum, a state archaeologist. On Thursday, Stocum was looking at hundreds of pieces of glass, including some that came from an "onion" bottle, which was rounded and was going out of style in Britain.
It's an indication that "the Colonies are getting the less desirable vessels," she said. "They didn't get first choice." The onion bottles had been the traditional way of packaging wine but around the time the Severn sank, the bottles were being replaced with wine bottles similar to those used today.
Tracing the ship's history
The Severn was owned by British merchant Thomas Pennington and was captained by James Hathorn.
According to historical accounts, the Severn was "on the beach, full of water, and the crew was saved," Griffith said. Griffith believes the ship likely went down May 3 and 4, 1774.
When researchers check historic accounts of weather for those dates, they discovered there was a nor'easter that dumped 4 inches of snow in Germantown, Pa., and likely caused high winds along the coast.
Griffith said the ship rolled over on its side in about 15 feet of water. That means it probably would be been visible even after it went down. State teams never found items like anchors or rigging.
Griffith said he believes those items -- and possible some of the cargo -- were salvaged. But much of the cargo remained at the bottom of Delaware Bay.
Griffith said Severn sank during a period of growing political tension when the British insisted on keeping the Colonies both politically and economically subservient.
By 1763, Royal Navy ships were stationed between Cape Henlopen and Cape Henry, Va., and between Cape Henlopen and Sandy Hook, N.J., to enforce revenue acts, which prohibited direct trade to the Colonies with merchant ships from other countries.
For the time period, "it's a very mundane cargo," Griffith said. But for historians "it's a world-class collection."
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