Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico in the Nineteenth Century: An Historical Overview and the Likely Context of Two Deep-Water Shipwrecks

The Gulf of Mexico emerged as an American fishing frontier in the nineteenth century. Maritime activities expanded and matured in terms of technology, scope, and scale. This activity left a substantial archaeological record on the seabed in the Gulf. Two deep-water shipwrecks offer archaeologically well-preserved, essentially undisturbed opportunities to assess vessels likely engaged in the fishing industry in and around the Gulf in the nineteenth century: the 7000-Foot Wreck (c. 1890–1920), and the Green Lantern Wreck (c. 1890–1920). These two deep-water wreck sites are significant for their presumed archaeological integrity as sites associated with a type of vessel and trade not often studied archaeologically, and are worthy of further work.

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Introduction

The Gulf of Mexico’s abundant pelagic resources have been harvested by humans for thousands of years. Industrial-scale fishing and marine harvesting commenced in the American period, which began with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Initially small-scale and local market-focused, the Gulf as a fishery expanded after the mid-century and by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a well-established, nationally important industry. At that stage of its development, the Gulf fishery continued to be seasonal, taking part in interchange and exchange with older established fisheries on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, specifically the northeastern fisheries that focused in and around New England. Vessels built and worked there were also seasonally working in the Gulf, as they had since mid-century, all part of an ongoing process of American assimilation of the Gulf of Mexico as an “American Mediterranean.”

An assessment of 12 nineteenth-century deep-water shipwrecks for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) as part of a multiple property submission (MPS) for historic shipwrecks of the nineteenth century in the Gulf has proposed for nomination two of those wrecks as likely or clearly-identified fishing vessel wrecks of nineteenth century origin: the 7000-Foot Shipwreck (Wreck 15373) and the Green Lantern Shipwreck (Wreck 337). These two wrecks represent a unique, archaeologically well-preserved collection of deep water shipwrecks in the Gulf, and these fishing vessel shipwrecks from the late nineteenth century are tied by location and likely context to the Gulf’s fisheries and their connections to the wider American fishing industry in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

While the archaeology of fishing from antiquity into the modern era has been assessed by scholars, the archaeology of fishing craft internationally has primarily focused on derelict and abandoned craft, some in ships’ graveyards, with few examples of vessels lost while actively working [e.g., see Bernal Casasola and Bekker-Nielsen (2007), Pham et al. (2010), Barrett and Orton (2016), Graham and Hambly (2020), Evans (2016)]. As Beltrame (2007, p. 230) noted, even while speaking of ancient (classical) sites, “evidence of boats used to fish at sea… is not completely lacking, but it is not always easy to interpret.” These two more recently documented deep-water North American examples now add to that study. While relatively modern deep-water sites, they offer insights into an evolving American fishing frontier as well as the levels of preservation in deep-water sites and the benefits and challenges of archaeological assessment and documentation via robotic vehicles.

Nineteenth-Century Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico

Harvesting fish, mollusks and crustaceans from the Gulf’s coastal waters for subsistence and for smaller market sales in their home ports gradually gave way to industrial scale activity in the second half of the nineteenth century. The story of global fisheries begins with shallow, nearshore harvesting, and then expands to deeper offshore fishing grounds. Near-shore and bayou fishing was a source of food for New Orleans and other Gulf ports, as it was elsewhere, and remained a source of food throughout the nineteenth century and into the next, especially for lower economic status communities that lived in close proximity to the water.

Recent scholarship examining historical archaeological sites in New Orleans suggests that “fish were never the primary meat source for New Orleans residents,” but were “consistently part of the menu contributing to the culinary creativity that continues to characterize the city” (De France and Kennedy 2020, p. 369). This may be a reflection of class, social status or economics, but this may also reflect the fact that deeper water fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico did not evolve into an industry until the mid-nineteenth century. Until then, New Orleans had a reliance on near-shore species as people “more commonly consumed fishes from local brackish habitats followed by freshwater habitats with the least evidence for fishes from marine settings” (De France and Kennedy 2020, p. 377). Some sites have yielded non-local fish that had been imported from “northern locales” namely cod and herring which may have arrived as merchandise from the north in salted or pickled form (De France and Kennedy 2020, p. 392).

Fish and other marine food were easily harvested from the estuarine environment around New Orleans, and communities of local fisherfolk established themselves in that environment for sale in the New Orleans public market as well as subsistence, notably the Canary Islanders known as Isleños (De France and Kennedy 2020, p. 375). During the American period, while the New Orleans market continued to offer a diverse range of fish, shellfish and crustaceans to local homes and businesses, a growing offshore fishery began to introduce a more diverse range of seafood, including anchovy, shad or herring, jacks, snappers, Sheepshead, mullet and flounder (De France and Kennedy 2020, pp. 382–389). The registries of enrollments of vessels working out of New Orleans includes a number of vessels that hailed from other ports, some with strong fishing traditions as well as the general carrying trade. The enrollments that span 1831–1840 included vessels from Baltimore (n = 12), Boston (n = 43), Gloucester, Massachusetts (n = 8), and New York (n = 62) (Ship Registers and Enrollments of New Orleans 1942).

The New Orleans market was diverse, and so too, by extension, were those of other smaller markets along the Gulf coast, including Mobile and Pensacola. The history of the Gulf fishery suggests the estuarine environment of the Gulf provided a rich source of a wide range of food that could be gathered near-shore. There was no need for a vast fleet of fishing vessels ranging the Gulf; when they came, they were transient fishermen from the north seeking new hunting grounds just as whalers did. The introduction of large or industrial scale fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico was not to serve a local or regional market, but was a reflection of larger patterns of integrating local and regional resources into national and global economies in the American period, especially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Market demand for fish in the nineteenth century not only introduced more vessels, but also a shift in the requirements for fishing vessels in a growing trade; deeper-draft vessels that could work offshore and vessels that were economical to work. Vessels that could return to market on a regular basis with catches worthy of sale—especially fresh fish—became a need for a successful offshore fishing industry as opposed to bayou-focused grounds like those that had been worked locally since colonial times.

An Evolving Industry

A detailed look at the fisheries of the United States as part of the tenth census of 1880 provides a focused late-century look at the fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico that was then in the early stages of its industrial growth. The entirety of the Gulf coast and its fisheries found that the:

principal products are oysters, sponges, groupers, mullet, shrimp and red-snappers. These are named in the order of their monetary importance, the value of oysters taken exceeding by over 35 per cent…It is to be hoped that the inhabitants will soon awaken to a realization of the store of wealth which benevolent nature brings to their very feet…When there shall be a fuller knowledge of the importance of these resources and better facilities of transportation have arisen, the fisheries of the American side of the Gulf of Mexico will take an enormous stride and compete even with those of enterprising New England. (Goode 1887, p. 535)

Coastal and nearshore activities with colonial beginnings included harvesting green turtles and terrapins; an 1898 account noted how several small coastal ports had built “small inclosures” for their catch where “they are generally fed on algae, fish, etc. until it is desirable to market them, when they are placed in boxes, barrels, or otherwise secured, and shipped without further care” (Stevenson 1899, p. 341) (Fig. 1). While the essential nature of this aspect of the fishery did not reflect significant change in the nineteenth century, others did. The first new industry to emerge, around 1852, was the Florida sponge fishery, which gradually expanded, first around Key West, where it was dominated by the firms of Samuel Kemp & Sons and Brown & Curry.

The sponge fishery then expanded to Apalachicola around 1870, when new sponge grounds were located near St. Mark’s and Cedar Keys (Rathbun 1887a, b, p. 830). By 1880, New York sponge importers had noted this new source of sponges and began to pursue investments in the Florida industry (Rathbun 1887a, b, pp. 819–821). Unlike Mediterranean sponge collecting with divers, the Florida sponge fishers harvested “by means of hooks fastened at the end of a long pole and managed from a small boat… vessels of from 5 to 50 tons measurement are employed to visit the grounds, to afford quarters for the men, and to bring home the catch” (Rathbun 1887a, b, p. 822).

These vessels were described as “mostly of light draught and schooner rigged, having proportionately large decks on which to carry boats, working gear, and the sponges as they are taken. The holds are of considerable size for storing dried sponges, and the cabins generally small” (Rathbun 1887a, b, p. 822) (Fig. 2). The spongers used “sponge glasses,” or glass-bottomed wooden boxes, in time replaced by glass-bottomed water buckets; “it is placed upright on the surface of the water and the head is thrust down into it as far as is convenient” (Rathbun 1887a, b, p. 823). Most of the sponge boats were located in Key West; in all, there were 86 there, and only 16 at Apalachicola as of 1879 (Rathbun 1887a, b, pp. 823–824). By 1898, however, while the industry remained centered at Key West, “where seven-eighths of the business is carried on,” other sponge ports were “Apalachicola, St. Narks, and Tarpon Springs” with about “100 registered vessels and 200 unregistered vessels and boats… manned by upward of 1400 fishermen” (Smith 1898, p. 226).

Offshore Fisheries

The Gulf’s largest offshore fishery, the red snapper fishery, began around 1845 in Mobile and New Orleans, and focused exclusively on that fish, and “for a long time the only red snappers landed anywhere were brought to these ports by two or three small sloop-smacks which were the greater part of the time engaged in seining shore fish, and sold there at high prices in the public markets” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 587) (Fig. 3). The New Orleans Times-Picayune (5 June 1858, p. 4) advertised “a full assortment” of fishing seines were about to arrive on the steamer Cahawba and available for sale at the store of McCutchon, Howell & Co. on Howell Street in June 1858. The firm had been in business for several years catering to fishermen; an August 1850 advertisement had offered a wide range of tackle, seines, and nets (The New Orleans Crescent, 22 August 1850, p. 3).

This all fits with later accounts that “in the late forties or early fifties some New London fishermen ventured into the Gulf of Mexico… they fell in with the red snappers off the West Coast of Florida, and made good catches, which they marketed at New Orleans” (Jordan and Evermann 1905, p. 411). They came in small sloops “none being over 15 or so tons measure, and carrying in their wells loads of live fish not more than 3000–6000 pounds,” and were “sold at New Orleans at a price commensurate with the dangers of the passage from the home port and with the scale of values that then governed the markets of New Orleans in all lines” (Warren 1898, p. 331).

Some vessels did sail with their catch to other markets. On 23 May 1845, an advertisement in the Charleston Daily Courier noted that a “choice lot of fish, consisting of GROUPERS, red and black; red snappers, and red Fish, Pompinoes, and Sheep Head” had come in from Florida and were being sold at the Fish Market. Of those Yankee fishermen who made their way into the Gulf each year, “Capt. Leonard Destin, of New London, seems to have been the pioneer” after moving into the Gulf following an 1835 wreck on Florida’s Atlantic coast and fishing in and out of New Orleans until settling “on the Florida coast, near East Pass, Pensacola Bay” by 1848 (Warren 1898, p. 331). Captain Destin’s success fishing in and around Pensacola induced others to follow, using vessels of “Southern build and others from Connecticut” who “mostly disposed of their catch in New Orleans” and “held a monopoly on the trade” in red snapper but it was “local and mostly retail, in New Orleans and Mobile, and not until the seventies was an effort made to extend the trade” (Warren 1898, p. 331; Jordan and Evermann 1905, p. 411).

The local and regional nature of the fishery is reflected in a New Orleans Times-Picayune advertisement of 16 December 1857 (p. 3), which stated that John Davis “has received 100 barrels of Galveston Bay OYSTERS, fine, fat and salt, from Peter Johnson, Captain of the Citizen, Frank Urdish, Captain of the Phoenix. Also, 50 RED SNAPPERS and RED FISH”. Phoenix was probably the 81-ton, single decked two-masted schooner of Apalachicola, rebuilt from an older hull at Pensacola in 1852 (Ship Registers and Enrollments of New Orleans, Volume V, p. 209). This suggests that, as the fishery expanded, larger vessels may have begun to take larger catches to the New Orleans market. The fisheries of the Gulf also grew as the richness of the resource, with massive schools of fish, attracted settlers, especially those seeking to stake out claims not to land but to work on the water; “Fishing people became the American Gulf’s frontiersmen and women, full of yearning and determination, and dreams of unlimited opportunity” (Davis 2017, p. 113).

Red snapper grounds were known throughout the Gulf of Mexico at least since the 1840s, extending into the deeper waters of the continental shelf along the Florida Escarpment, a swath south of Louisiana and Texas, and along the Campeche Bank north of the Yucatan Peninsula, three areas of deep but relatively flat shelf (NOAA Fisheries 2021). These historic fishing grounds were utilized as early as 1865 and pushed into deeper waters in the early twentieth century as stocks diminished and as fishing and vessel technology allowed these waters to be reached. Even in the late nineteenth century, the effect of overfishing was apparent as availability of larger fish declined and vessels extended their time at sea and also began fishing at Campeche Bank in the 1890s.

The decline of fish size during catch was also apparent in the mid-nineteenth century as it had affected sheepshead populations. Excavated fish bones from historic sites in Louisiana show a decline in the size of fish from the eighteenth century to the 1840s, indicative of long-term negative impacts from overfishing (Guiry et al. 2021). A sharp increase in fish size occurred between the 1840s and 1860s, indicative of fishers finding new fishing grounds with unfished or under-fished populations. This was then followed by a return to the steady decline in fish size from previous decades as that population was overfished (Guiry et al. 2021). The shift mid-century to new fishing grounds may be reflective of the rise of rail and ship transportation or of fishers moving farther offshore to make their landings.

Post-Civil War, the major investment opportunity was in Pensacola, where a larger fleet of “well-equipped schooner-smacks” from Connecticut were chartered “to fish off Pensacola during the winter” (Warren 1898, p. 332) (Fig. 4). However, the high costs of the fish, and their “strangeness to inland people,” as well as a lack of facilities, even with the 1872 establishment of the Pensacola Ice Company to preserve the catches for shipment to market, did not expand sales ashore. The “beginnings were small,” as Pensacola fishermen “pushed into every market that could be reached by express or freight, without much regard to present profit, but looking to the future trade for compensation. During this time the business was suspended in the summer months, the principal dependence for supply being on contracts with northern smacks, which came every fall from the North and East and returned home at the end of lent” (Warren 1898, p. 332). This continued well into the next decades, as the Gulf’s expansive fishery attracted even more Atlantic seaboard fishermen and boat owners who were facing declines in their own fisheries. In November 1885, the Boston Globe (14 November 1885, p. 8) reported that the Provincetown, Massachusetts schooner Alice Chase “is fitting out for a snapper fishing cruise on the Florida Keys… This is a new business for the eastern mackerel fleet. Four vessels are to try the business this winter, one from Portland, two from Boston and one from here. The fish are sold fresh in Pensacola”.

Business lagged until 1880–1881 when a new approach entered the market (Stearns 1887a, b, pp. 587–588) as dealer-owned boats were purchased, starting with one vessel in 1879 (Warren 1898, p. 332). The following year, the “season witnessed the most decided changes… the fleet of vessels was considerably enlarged, and the whole improved in equipment and in the plans for catching and preserving fish” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 588). One of the switches was to not use smacks with wet wells to preserve the fish, but instead to larger vessels that carried five to six tons of ice (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 588). “The business grew rapidly, and in 1898 there were engaged in the red-snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico more than 40 vessels” (Jordan and Evermann 1905, p. 411). The hopes of Gulf entrepreneurs were focused beyond Pensacola; in July 1881, the Gulf of Mexico Fish Company of Mobile advertised in the Memphis Daily Appeal (30 July 1881, p. 4) for a “YOUNG MAN—Energetic and reliable, to represent us in Memphis” and sell their fish.

Within a few years the red snapper fishery and the Havana Market Fishery, both “located almost entirely in the Gulf of Mexico,” ranked “next in importance to the sponge fishery,” of Florida, employing both the newer “smacks and smaller vessels that preserve their catch in ice,” and the older “small boats that fish near the harbor mouth, using no preservative of any kind” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 585). Pensacola was the central distribution point, known as the “Gloucester of the Gulf” (Bucchino 2014, p. 1) and all vessels “belonging to Mobile, New Orleans, and other western ports land their fish here, to be shipped to their home ports,” in large measure because the red snapper grounds stretched along the coast from Mobile to “the latitude of Tampa Bay, in depths ranging from 10 to 40 fathoms” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 585).

South of Mobile Bar in 37, 39 and 40 fathoms are called the “The Southwest Ground,” southeast of which is the “Trysail Ground;” a small spot in-shore of that is known as the “Dutch Bank.” Then from Pensacola Bar, is the “Old Southwest Ground,” a small shoal-water spot but a few miles from land; the “Middle Ground” is another small bank, situated 5 or 6 miles from the bar; the “Old Deep water,” a 40-fathom ground S. by S. by E. off-shore; and the Charles Henry Ground,” and the Henry Holes,” at the edge of deep-water southeasterly from the bar. Between Pensacola and Cape San Blas there are numerous small ports for fishing which have several names given according to the fancy of the fishermen. (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 586)

The Pensacola fishing smacks “deliver their cargoes as they arrive in port, handling them in bulk, and selling by the pound for fish weighing under 7 pounds, and so much per a piece for all over that,” carrying ice with them to preserve their fish, some of them working for the Pensacola Ice Company (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 586). The Mobile and New Orleans smacks “bring most of their fares to Pensacola, to be shipped to homeports by rail or by steamboats” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 586).

The other major change was to bring in experienced fishermen. “Men of experience from the deep-water fisheries of the northern countries were employed, some receiving shares of the voyages, while the majority were paid monthly wages. The crews were enlarged in number from five to seven or eight men, the extra men being required to fish from dories at different parts of the ground” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 588). This also shifted the fishing grounds to deeper water, farther offshore. “Too far farmland and so small area” that precise navigation was required as opposed to the “old plan of steering a certain course and then blindly searching with sounding line” for the deep gullies where the fish were, and so “vessels were provided with patent taffrail logs, and the captains in some cases instructed in the simple methods of finding their position at sea by the sun” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 588).

The hand-line remained the preferred means of catching the fish (Stearns 1887a, p. 9), as trawls and gillnets had been tried without success under sail, and “a fishing steamer of about 85 tons was thoroughly tried” with some success, it proved too expensive to operate profitably (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 589). Instead, noting that more schooners operated at the same cost, and would “give much larger returns of money, as well as of fish,” saw Gulf fishing companies bring down a “larger and better class” of fishing boats “from the north, where they were engaged in the cod, mackerel, or New York market business” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 589). Well smacks began to shift out of the market after 1858 as trawling entered the fishing industry. “Tight-bottomed” vessels were employed, although some older smacks remained in the trade with their wells “plugged up” (Stearns 1887a, p. 34).

By the end of the century, in 1898, the red snapper fleet stood at 41 vessels, most of them owned in Pensacola, with four at Mobile and two at New Orleans (Warren 1898, p. 332). They were described as being “of many sizes, ranging from 20 to 50 tons measurement, and of varying ages, from 50 years to those which were launched last year. The old ones are of all descriptions, some having been Boston and New York pilot boats, others eastern bankers, and many were built for the New York and Fulton market fisheries” (Warren 1898, p. 332). Warren (1898, p. 332) noted that new vessels of “the most modern design and construction” were entering the fishery from Maine and Massachusetts shipyards, and a recent “one of this design” from a Pensacola shipyard and built of Florida woods.” The Boston Globe (10 January 1898, p. 3) noted in January 1898 that Essex, Massachusetts, shipbuilders the previous year had built three fishing boats “for a Galveston, Tex. Firm, and are now in commission in the Gulf of Mexico fishing business”.

Meanwhile, the Havana Market Fishery at Key West began in the 1830s with “Connecticut fishermen who spent their winters in the Gulf” who sold their catches in Cuba, crossing the Florida Straits in small smacks loaded with grouper (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 592). By 1860, “there were eight to ten smacks engaged in the trade” as there was “a great demand for fresh fish in Havana,” which led to an active trade that saw smacks making several voyages a year to and from Cuba. Following the Civil War, the business expanded so that by the 1880s “the smacks now make twelve or fourteen trips a year, or more than a trip per month,” while also engaged as wreckers and salvaging vessels since “all smacks, and spongers have licenses for wrecking” in those dangerous waters (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 592). The Havana Market fishermen fished off the West Florida Coast “from Charlotte Harbor to Cedar Keys in water that is deeper than 7 or 8 fathoms” in increasingly large schooners (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 592). While American fishermen worked the Havana Market Fishery in the nineteenth century, Cubans also did, both as participants on American-owned and registered boats and from boats of their own.

The trade was described late century; “No fish are put into the well that are caught in over 10 fathoms of water, as they would not live until the smack reached Havana. Fish caught in over 20 fathoms appear at the surface swollen all over, eyes pushed nearly out of the head, and even the scales on the sides started and standing erect, presenting a disturbing appearance” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 593). To deal with the pressure, “the fishermen have a small metallic cylinder which they thrust into the bladder from the side. Just above and a little back of the pectoral fin, whereupon the air rushes out with a hiss and the relieved fish flaps into the well and swims downward. Every fish must be “pricked,” as this operation is called, and one of the crew does nothing else” (Stearns 1887a, b, p. 593).

Other fisheries of note in the 1880s were the Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus) fishery, although as of 1880, the catch was “so small as to be of little commercial importance, though this is perhaps due to a lack of suitable apparatus than to any scarcity of the mackerel” (Earll 1887, p. 545). Mullet was also fished, starting with small boats that were “frequently employed” both locally and by visiting New England fishing vessels that journeyed south in the 1840s “for the purpose of catching mullet, groupers, and red-snappers” (Earll 1887, p. 559). By the 1880s, the mullet fishery had grown, with the “fisheries of Cedar Keys and Apalachicola…perhaps more extensive than those of any other towns in the Gulf of Mexico, while those of Sarasota and Tampa Bay are also important,” with “seven hundred and thirty-six men, with 85 seines and 123 gill-nets” were employed in it, in grounds largely confined to the western Florida coast (Earll 1887, pp. 559–561).

Legacies

For such a heavily worked industry, only three nineteenth-century Gulf fishing vessels survived into the twenty-first century. The National Register of Historic Places and the National Historic Landmarks Program, both managed by the U.S. National Park Service, are the official means of recognizing and designating properties of historical, archaeological, and architectural significance in the United States. The designation of these three historic fishing schooners, therefore, speak to their modern rarity as well as the national importance of their design, construction, and careers.

One was the former schooner Virginia, a mid-nineteenth-century Mobile Bay oyster schooner later converted to a motor vessel and employed in the red snapper fishing industry on the west coast of Florida until the 1980s (Wittig 2013). Virginia, hauled ashore for restoration, ultimately deteriorated and was destroyed in an arson attack in June 2020. Therefore, the only surviving, non-archaeological nineteenth-century Gulf of Mexico fishing vessel in the Gulf region is the 1877, Pascagoula-built two-masted schooner Governor Stone, “the oldest extant wooden sailing vessel in the American South,” and a National Historic Landmark currently undergoing restoration in St. Andrews, Florida, following severe structural damage from Hurricane Michael in 2018 (Delgado 1990a; Sikes 2004) (Fig. 5).

The other is the 1893-built, two-masted Fredonia-style wooden schooner Lettie G. Howard, which shifted from Massachusetts to Pensacola, Florida, in 1902 to work in the red snapper fishery, and has been restored and is displayed and sailed out of South Street Seaport in New York. A National Historic Landmark, it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (Delgado 1990b). It is also extensively documented in the Historic American Engineering Record at the Library of Congress.

While not known to have seasonally worked in the Gulf as did many of its contemporaries, the 1984-built two-masted Fredonia-style schooner Ernestina (ex-Effie M. Morrissey), recently restored, is one of only three nineteenth-century American offshore fishing schooners that survive, and it is a National Historic Landmark listed in the National Register of Historic Places (Foster 1988) (Fig. 6). It is also extensively documented in the Historic American Engineering Record at the Library of Congress. While it did not work in the Gulf, Morrissey is essentially identical to the many late-nineteenth-century vessels of its type that did fish in those waters. The assessment of these vessels and their context and significance was done as part of a late 1980s-early 1990s national inventory and evaluation of the nation’s historic maritime resources (Delgado 1991; Delgado and Clifford 1991).

The full range of nineteenth-century shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico associated with fishing is likely larger than what might be suspected given the inherent risks to these small workaday craft; existing surveys document only three wrecks in and around Pensacola that have been studied: the Snapper Wreck (8SR1001), Hamilton’s Wreck (8ES2238), and the alleged Priscilla (8FR813), all of them probable fishing vessels (Bucchino 2014; also see Damour and Horrell 2002; Raupp 2004; Moore 2002; Hunter et al. 2000; Meide et al. 1999).

BOEM, Shipwrecks and Fishing in the Archaeological Record

During the course of ongoing surveys mandated by the Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM), previously known as the Minerals Management Service (MMS), in the past four decades, several hundred out of an estimated 5,000 shipwrecks have been discovered through remote sensing. As a U.S. federal agency, BOEM is required by the National Historic Preservation Act to require surveys and assessment of submerged cultural resources that may be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and if found eligible through assessment, to protect those resources as they lie within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the United States where U.S. laws apply.

Of hundreds of suspected or known shipwrecks located as a result of surveys in the Gulf, nearly 100 have been assessed by contractors or by government archaeologists as part of BOEM’s obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act to determine their probable contexts and specifically, as the law stipulates, whether they may be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. After two decades of study, and in particular in addressing the question of national significance, in 2020 BOEM issued a call for proposals to develop, using maritime cultural landscapes as a theoretical construct, a model based on a more thorough understanding of the development, extent, and frequency of maritime transportation in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, this information would help to support the nomination to the National Register of Historic Places of a backlog of NRHP-eligible properties that have been subject to archaeological analysis but not yet nominated.

Through this process, a detailed historical and archaeological context study was completed in 2023, focusing on the nineteenth century as the period of the highest frequency for shipwreck losses in the Gulf of Mexico. It is included in a pending multiple property submission to the national Register of Historic Places for the “Gulf of Mexico in the Nineteenth Century.” While developed for a U.S. Government agency, and constrained to assess only shipwrecks within the waters of the United States EEZ, the study recognized the Gulf as an international body of water transited by many nations, and a shared maritime cultural heritage that encompasses France, Spain, México, Honduras, Panamá, Columbia, Cuba, the Bahamas, and a variety of Caribbean states. The underwater cultural heritage, even when considering national boundaries and jurisdictions, is a global heritage.

Following the completion of the context study, we assessed 12 nineteenth-century deep-water shipwrecks, some of which had been previously assessed and studied, referencing raw data and published reports, to prepare National Register of Historic Places nominations utilizing a maritime cultural landscape-focused “multiple property submission” approach. The MPS approach has been successfully used and has become the standard for national register nominations of historic and archaeological properties including shipwrecks but also associated non-shipwreck maritime archaeological and historic sites. It is important to note that while all sites had been initially assessed and documented, subsequent analysis had not been completed to the point of publication, and six of the 12 shipwrecks selected for the initial study had no final reports, although final reports were in progress for all of them.

We focus now on two of those wrecks as likely or clearly-identified fishing vessel wrecks of nineteenth century origin. This group represents two fishing vessels that are part of a unique set of archaeologically well-preserved shipwrecks that spans the development of the Gulf’s maritime history and their connections to wider maritime trades, activities and industry in the nineteenth century. These two shipwrecks are the 7000-Foot Wreck (Wreck 15373) and the Green Lantern Wreck (Wreck 337). Both of these wrecks had been previously documented and reported (Brooks et al. 2016).

THE 7000-Foot Wreck

The shipwreck site of Wreck 15373, known as the “7000-Foot Wreck,” is the remains of a yellow metal-sheathed, late-nineteenth-century fishing vessel sunk in the Gulf of Mexico in the Mississippi Canyon area. The 7000-Foot shipwreck lies in approximately 7,450 ft (2,270.6 m) of water southeast of New Orleans. The wreck was first discovered during a deep tow survey of the Mississippi Canyon area in 1986, then resurveyed and identified as likely being a wooden sailing vessel wreck in 2006. An AUV survey with the Sentry AUV as part of the last year of a four-year scientific mission to explore and study deep water coral communities in the Gulf of Mexico, Lophelia II: Reefs, Rigs, and Wrecks cruise in 2009 (Brooks et al. 2016), produced visual imagery of the site. The imagery confirmed it as a wooden-hulled, possibly copper-sheathed shipwreck. Close visual analysis of the sheathing on the hull of this and the Green Lantern Wreck (later in this paper) with an ROV in 2009 determined the sheathing was not thick copper but a composition metal of the later nineteenth century, generically known as “yellow metal.”

The shipwreck site is a concentrated, well-defined area of vessel wreckage and associated artifacts lying within an area with an overall length of 88.5 ft (27 m) and a breadth of 21 ft (6.4 m). Within the site, the remains of this ship consist of the outline of the vessel’s sharply-built hull, which is 50 ft (15 m) in length with a 15 ft (4.5 m) beam. A small section of foremast rigging lies outside the vicinity of the wreck. The shipwreck is oriented approximately north to south with the bow pointed south, which is identified by the stem post, anchors, and foremast rigging which both in terms of location and fittings indicate that this was a two-masted, schooner-rigged vessel (Fig. 7).

The outline of the hull is defined by surviving timbers, covered with yellow metal plates that had sheathed the white or red oak outer hull planks at and below the waterline. The stem post, with a prominent and diagnostic head knee and with hardware for mounting the bowsprit, two bower anchors, an overturned pump-brake windlass, a galley stove, the upright steering gear and wheel, and a third anchor stowed aft are prominent and diagnostic features of the wreck with other small artifacts. The sharp bow with the head knee formed a long, narrow entrance, with the hull trending to a midsection with what would have been a moderate deadrise, and a long run aft to a narrow counter on an elliptical stern.

The placement of the visible fittings and the layout of the wreck site indicate a deck plan that would have been defined first by a towing bit and the windlass, both forward of the foremast, a companionway that led below to a forecastle, which included the galley and the visible galley stove and scuttlebutt, an open expanse of deck with a main-hatch, the mainmast, an after-hatch, cabin house, and the patent steering gear. Below deck, the wreck would have been divided into three areas by two bulkheads, with a relatively large “fisherman’s forecastle,” in which the crew berthed, cooked and ate, an amidships fish hold, and the stern cabin with lazarette for storage.

The site represents the remains of a two-masted fishing schooner similar to the Fredonia type (introduced in 1889), likely New England-built that engaged in Gulf fisheries in the last decade of the century. The form of the hull, its fittings and layout closely conform to those of two extant late nineteenth-century fishing schooners preserved afloat as National Historic Landmarks: the 1893-built, two-masted schooner Lettie G. Howard (NRIS 84002779) and the 1894-built Ernestina, ex-Effie M. Morrissey (NRIS 85000022). Fredonia was designed by naval architect Edward Burgess of Boston, and built by Essex, Massachusetts, shipbuilder Moses Adam in 1889 (Chapelle 1973, p. 172). From that form, schooners ranging from 50 to 110 ft (15.2 to 33.53 m) were built in large numbers. The Fredonia model, while not exactly copied, defined the “fashionable type” of American fishing schooner and as a type name was the most common offshore American fishing schooner type of the late nineteenth century until replaced by Indian- Header schooners and in the twentieth century by motorized vessels (Chapelle 1973, pp. 175–177, 215, 223).

Site Investigations

The 7000-Foot Wreck was discovered in 1986 during an oil and gas exploration of the Mississippi Canyon area. The name of the wreck later came from a nearby seafloor isobaths. The wreck was reevaulated in 2005 when the entire Mississippi Canyon area was determined to be a high-probability archaeological region and a 2000 ft buffer was established around the sonar target for avoidance (Brooks et al. 2016). C&C Technologies conducted the first follow up mission to the site with the C-Surveyor II AUV system in 2006 with high-frequency (430 kHz) side-scan sonar. Daniel Warren concluded the target was a likely nineteenth-century, yellow metal clad wreck based on the intact nature of the site (Warren 2006). A second AUV mission followed in 2009 with WHOI’s Sentry vehicle, which included multibeam sonar and a still image camera. A rough photomosaic from this imagery was the first visual evidence to confirm the identity of the site as a shipwreck and confirmation of previous age and condition estimates.

The 7000-Foot Wreck was one of several archaeological sites investigated during the Lophelia II: Reefs, Rigs, and Wrecks cruise in 2009 (Brooks et al. 2016). The expedition conducted a 15.5-h dive on the site with the Jason II ROV from NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown. During this ROV dive, a visual reconnaissance survey was conducted followed by photomosaic imaging transects and detailed visual inspection of features of the wreck. Microbiological experiments were deployed near the site and a small number of artifacts were collected for diagnostic purposes. The photomosaic survey was conducted in 12 parallel track lines spaced 1 m apart at an ROV altitude of approximately 6 m. Artifacts collected were a gimbal compass, and a sample of white or red oak hull planking with yellow metal sheathing attached to it. The artifacts underwent conservation at the University of West Florida’s conservation lab.

Archaeological Remains

As previously noted, the vessel is a wooden-hulled, sail-powered fishing vessel of the Fredonia type, dating to the last decade of the nineteenth century. The 7000-Foot Wreck site consists of the outline of the vessel on the seabed in the form of the yellow metal sheathing that had covered the outer planks of the wooden hull, and the remains are nearly flush with the seabed with little vertical relief other than the prominent stem and the steering apparatus. The position of artifacts such as the bobstay fasteners on the stem, the survival of a hawse pipe in wooden hull remains, which would have been positioned at the deck level, and the orientation of the anchors, windlass, galley stove, scuttlebutt, mainmast ring, section of deck with an auxiliary anchor and the steering gear and wheel, all in line and in their original positions as they would have been on deck, indicate the vessel settled evenly into the seabed, with gradual biological consumption and deterioration removing the upper hull, decks, superstructure and masts (Fig. 8). Sub-bottom profiler data suggests that as much as nearly 6 ft (1.8 m) of hull remains lie below the sediment and comprise the sheathed-lower hull in its entirety (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 386).

As previously noted in the summary, the placement of the visible fittings and the layout of the wreck site are diagnostic features and common elements of two extant late nineteenth-century fishing schooners preserved afloat as National Historic Landmarks, the 1893 two-masted schooner Lettie G. Howard and the 1894-built Ernestina, ex-Effie M. Morrissey. A comparison of the site’s configuration and that of Lettie G. Howard provides a comparison with an intact version of the likely form, configuration and type of vessel represented by the 7000-Foot Wreck. The hull sweeps aft from the bow, progressively passing the location of the foremast (and windlass), the scuttle (companionway) that led into the fishermen’s forecastle, the location of the main mast, the hatch for the main hold, the trunk for the aft cabin (for the captain and officers) and the steering gear box and wheel.

These aspects of the site were noted by the archaeological team in 2009, particularly noting the bow, and drawing a comparison to Lettie G. Howard (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 390). The clipper shaped bow with its raked stem and head knee, a timber that supported the base of the bowsprit, are features of late century schooners including the Fredonia type, as seen in the bow of both Lettie G. Howard and Ernestina, ex-Effie M. Morrissey. There are two bobstay chain plates on the stem on both vessels. This was standard for the period as the “double-bobstay.” Flat iron or steel, these were set into the stem and through-bolted for strength (Fig. 9). The stem post has a molded and sided dimension of approximately 12 in. × 8 in. (30 × 20 cm).

The double bobstay plates above the waterline on the stem connected the bobstays to the bowsprit to exert downward pressure to offset the stays that pulled up as part of the head rigging. “The lower end of the stay shackles to the bob-stay plate on the stem; while the upper end of the chain shackles to the iron strop” (Underhill 1946, p. 76). Head rigging for the bowsprit, including the flying-jib-boom stay, the flying-martingale-stay, the martingale, also known then as a “dolphin-striker,” the martingale-stay, jib-boom stay; and the martingale-guys and martingale-back-ropes. The assemblage of rigging at the bow of the wreck is consistent with late nineteenth-century standing rigging for the various stays associated with the bowsprit, as would be expected. The anchors lie alongside of the bow, aft of the stem. They were catted and slung in sailing but ready position, with their flukes pointed aft where they would have been secured to the cap rail.

The vessel’s anchors are nineteenth century in form, dating from approximately mid-century when a variety of patents were issued for variants on the Admiralty Pattern (Curryer 1999, pp. 92–93). They are not the same size, which is not uncommon for working vessels as opposed to naval craft. One anchor has an 8 ft (2.44 m) and the other a 6.5 ft (1.98 m) long shank. Both appear to have been wooden-stocked types; there is no visible iron stock on either as would be expected on late century anchors. The wooden stocks of these anchors have deteriorated. However, anchors were portable, valuable fittings for a ship, and older styles persisted in use for more than a century.

A third anchor is also present, aft and close to the main mast position. It was likely an auxiliary anchor, stowed aft on the deck. It could have been utilized as a spare anchor, or also to secure the stern in a two-point mooring. It is also a wooden-stock anchor, intermediate in size between the two bowers with a stock length of approximately 6 ft (1.83 m) (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 404). It rests on a section of wooden deck that its ongoing corrosion has helped preserve through the infusion of the wood with corrosion product.

Aft of the anchor, and in close proximity to the starboard anchor, are the remains of a wooden split-barrel, pump-brake windlass (Fig. 10). This style of windlass emerged in American use in the mid-nineteenth century and continued in use into the twentieth century (Chapelle 1973, p. 677). The windlass is upside down, with the entire starboard standard-knee, carrick bitt and cheek of the carrick bitt surviving with fragments of deck planks on the bottom of the knee. The port carrick bitt and a portion of the cheek remain attached to the windlass, with the port knee and the remaining pieces of the cheek and bitt lying in the sediment just aft that area of the windlass. The main piece (barrel) of the windlass, with whelps, pawl, pawl rim, purchase rims, and windlass-ends are visible along with what may be a purchase-rod, but the pawl bitt, strong-back and crosshead are not visible and may rest beneath the overturned windlass assemblage. The windlass assemblage spans approximately 7 ft (2.1 m). Based on its position and location, the windless was in its original position and likely dropped and turned over as the deck gradually collapsed into the sediment.

The next feature on the site is an assemblage associated with the galley, which was in the forecastle, as was the case with most Fredonia type fishing schooners (Fig. 11). It is 27.5 ft (8.4 m) aft of the stem. This assemblage is largely buried, suggesting it rests within the lower hull, and in its location, in what would have been the forecastle. Decks needed to be clear for boats and gear and stowing fish, and as much space as possible in the hold allocated to fish, so crew accommodations were crowded as the crew berthed and ate in the forecastle. As a result, galley stoves were small, with a combination oven and stove top, and a small patent stove, aft of the foremast, was the usual location for a galley stove. The below-deck plan for Lettie G. Howard shows this exact configuration, which is likely close to that of the 7000-Foot Wreck.

Buried in the sediment with the top visible, the stove is aft of the dislodged port knee and the remaining pieces of the cheek and bitt of the windlass. The edge of the fiddle, or rack for keeping pots and pans from dislodging when the vessel is in heavy seas, is present at the starboard edge of the stove; in the opposite corner, the base of the stack, known to sailors by the term “Charley Noble,” is clearly visible. The top of the range is covered with silt, and the remains of an oil or kerosene fired lamp lie on top of the stove. The stove measures approximately 55 in. (1.4 m) by 22.3 in. (0.57 m) (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 407) (Fig. 12). In shape and size, it is similar to the nineteenth-century style which, by the late century, were standard Shipmate stoves made by the Stamford Foundry in Connecticut. This type of stove, probably a different model, and which may be the schooner’s original stove, is in the forecastle of Lettie G. Howard aft of the foremast. On Howard, it is shielded by a sheet of metal, and has the piping for “Charley Noble” curving around to come up through the deck on the starboard side.

Immediately aft of the stove on the wreck site are the remains of a rectangular wooden, likely iron-strapped, “scuttlebutt” or water tank. While initially identified in 2009 as a barrel, it has a rectangular shape which suggests a late nineteenth-century wooden water tank similar to that on the 1895-built, three-masted, National Historic Landmark schooner C.A. Thayer at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park (Fig. 13). Chapelle (1973, p. 665) notes that this style of wooden water tank came into use c. 1870 and were rectangular in form, and “made of cypress and bound with iron rod or straps… with the longitudinal corners rounded.”

Aft of the stove, the next major feature consists of the patent steering apparatus of the schooner, in its original position and upright (Fig. 14). The corrosion of the iron or steel that comprises the gear has preserved some of the wooden wheelbox encasing for the gear, as well as the deck it stood upon, and, beneath it, the rudder case; it rises some 4 ft (1.2 m) off the sediment, and the mechanism, with the wheel mounted at an angle, is approximately 4 ft long by 2 ft, 6 in. wide and 2 ft high (1.2 by 0.85 by 0.60 m). This is the same type and configuration of steering gear and helm as found on Lettie G. Howard, Ernestina ex-Effie M. Morrissey and C.A. Thayer, which include cast iron wheels with wood-sheathed handles.

This style of steering gear came into use in the U.S. in the 1860s and 70s and were common by the mid 1880s (Chapelle 1973, pp. 629–630). The wheel on Ernestina is a Gloucester-made A.P. Stoddart & Co. wheel, dated 1891. The wheel on the 7000-Foot Wreck is also cast iron with spindles and the remains of wooden sheathing on the handles (Fig. 15). The 2009 archaeological assessment estimated the wheel on the wreck to be approximately 31 in. (80 cm) in diameter through the use of parallel lasers as a scale. Chapelle indicates that cast-iron fishing schooner wheels were usually 4 ft (121.9 cm) (Chapelle 1973, p. 633).

Aft of the helm is the line of the cant frames that form the stern, and then the stern post, which retains the gudgeons, pintles and remnants of the wreck’s rudder. A faint outline in the sediment aft of the steering mechanism may delineate the curve of the vessel’s transom, another indication that more of the hull lies buried in the sediment. Scouring near the port stern has revealed the remnants of frames and a consistent line of yellow metal sheathing that is evidence of hull survival in areas up the line of the sheathing. Intact rows of sheathing still attached to the remnant of outer hull planking were observed on the site, and a sample of hull planking with sheathing was recovered for analysis.

As previously noted, while the masts are gone, there are substantial remains of the standing rigging and rigging hardware from both the foremast and the mainmast, and they indicate that the two-masted configuration was that of a topsail schooner. Mast bands and caps for the fitting of topmasts are evident in the assemblage of rigging elements in the feature. The mainmast rigging was also observed lying in a similar alignment to the foremast rigging elements, lying angled forward at 15 degrees to port, suggesting both masts fell in this direction, and may have occurred during the sinking event. Much of the mainmast and foremast rigging elements are combined and hard to differentiate.

The standing rigging on the wreck is comprised of steel wire rope of a “regular lay” or “right lay” configuration; introduced into the American fishing fleet in the 1880s, steel-wire standing rigging was common by the late nineteenth century as “an innovation in marine technology that improved the efficiency and reliability of both sail and steam-powered vessels during the last half of the nineteenth century,” with early rope being “strands of heavy gauge steel wire twisted around an oiled hemp core…. This arrangement had stronger tensile strength per weight than hemp rope” (Martin 1992, p. 101; Chapelle 1973, p. 352). In addition to the wire rope standing rigging for the bow sprit, an assemblage of mixed standing rigging from the fore and main masts lies 44.3 ft (13.5 m) south of the bow, and represent what is likely the deterioration and falling of the masts post-sinking as the wreck deteriorated.

The rigging of a schooner was described in detail by Underhill (1946) based on decades of experience and thorough research; pertinent to the 7000-Foot Wreck are his comments that “the mast-caps are usually iron and quite normal in design,” and that the gaffs (the spars on which the fore-and-aft sails were set), the boom being the lower spar and the gaff being the upper spar, “the gaffs have timber jaws… but most of the later ships have iron goose-necks” (Underhill 1946, p. 207). What was described as a yoke in 2008 is the jaw of the main boom. As with the other diagnostic features, the rigging of the wreck indicates a late nineteenth-century date.

Other artifacts noted on the assessment dives included:

At least one possibly intact bottle was observed near the bow section. One intact jug, possibly a demijohn was also visible. Other bottle fragments were observed clustered in the same area but the exact number could not be ascertained since most of the fragments were partially buried or obscured by silt and debris. The bottle is manufactured of dark, possibly green, glass. The jug appears to possibly be brown slipped stoneware, but it is difficult to determine based on the video data. The presence and number of the containers indicate they are associated with daily shipboard activities rather than cargo. Their location in association with other artifacts, such as the nearby stove suggests this portion of the wreck contained a crew area, most likely the galley. (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 408)

Lastly, the remains of a boxed marine compass were recovered by ROV Jason II in 2009 and conserved at the University of West Florida. This type of instrument is characterized by a printed wet floating compass card, a brass case, and was mounted on a gimbal set inside a mahogany, two-part fitted box with fasteners. All Baker compasses were housed in mahogany cases. The compass is marked with “D. Baker & Company—Boston” with a patent date “Nov 3, 1874–June 1, 1875” (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 410). The artifact has the serial number “3883” stamped on the side as well as on the gimbal ring. The Boston location is indicative of an earlier compass by Baker, as later ones were marked with a different location in Massachusetts (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 412). This provides a terminus post quem of 1875 for the wreck. Baker compasses of this type with serial numbers 2248, 2516 and 3874 were sold at auction by Bonham’s and Cowan’s in 2004 and 2006.

These small, portable compasses were the individual property of a captain or senior officer, and not placed in a binnacle, but often were deployed on a hatch cover; this instrument was found at the aft end of the outline of the trunk cabin’s coaming, suggesting either active use or stowage in that area close to the helm.

In conclusion, overall, the hull and the rigging suggest an identification of the vessel as c. 300–400 ton two-masted fishing schooner similar to or of the Fredonia type, likely built on the eastern seaboard and seasonally deployed to the Gulf for fishing as was common in the Gulf fishery in the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth century. The vessel was likely lost in that period, possibly as late as the 1920s, but before older schooners of this type were modified with the installation of small engines. Additional archaeological investigation will yield more information about the vessel’s characteristics and context.

The Green Lantern Wreck

The shipwreck site of Wreck 337, known as the Green Lantern Wreck, is the remains of a yellow metal-sheathed, late-nineteenth century sailing vessel, possibly a two-masted fishing schooner that sank in the Gulf of Mexico around or after 1910. The Green Lantern Wreck was discovered in 1996 with subsequent AUV and ROV documentation missions in 2004, 2009, and 2010 (Brooks et al. 2016). A starboard lamp among the artifacts on the site was stamped with the word “Estribor,” (“starboard” in Spanish), suggesting a Spanish or Latin American origin or ownership of at least the lantern and possibly for the ship. However, given the international nature of trade in the Gulf in the nineteenth century, it is entirely possible the lantern could be found on a vessel of any nationality. Because a starboard navigation lamp is always a green light, the wreck received the name of the Green Lantern Shipwreck from the archaeological team.

The Green Lantern Wreck lies in approximately 3000 ft (915 m) of water south-southwest of New Orleans. The extant remains of this ship consist of the outline of the vessel’s hull in the remaining yellow metal sheathing that covers the surviving external or outer hull planking, and with other surviving traces of wooden structure. Chain, cable, and other small artifacts lie in the immediate vicinity around the wreck as well as inside the bow section. The vessel’s orientation on the seabed runs nearly north to south with the bow pointing south-southeast. The bow and stern are identified by the intact stem and stern post.

Site Investigations

The Green Lantern Wreck was discovered by C&C Technologies and William & Associates while conducting a pipeline survey for BP Exploration Inc. in 1996 with a deep-tow AMS 120 Sonar Mapping System with 120 kHz side-scan sonar. C&C Technologies re-mapped the site in March 2004 during an archaeological, engineering, and hazard survey for GulfTerra Energy along a proposed pipeline route with the C-Surveyor I AUV (Brooks et al. 2016). GulfTerra then sponsored a follow-up ROV investigation later that year, which identified the site as the wreck of a yellow metal-sheathed wooden sailing vessel dating to the nineteenth century. This ROV dive observed the lantern on the wreck with the word “ESTRIBOR” on it. Two additional industry-sponsored ROV expeditions returned to the site in 2007 and 2010 as monitoring efforts during the installation of energy infrastructure in the area (Brooks et al. 2016).

The Green Lantern Wreck was one of a number of archaeological sites investigated during the Lophelia II: Reefs, Rigs, and Wrecks cruises. The site was initially intended for ROV dives in 2008, but poor visibility and strong bottom currents prevented the vehicle from visiting the wreck. The expedition returned in 2009 with better on-site conditions and conducted a 20-h dive on the site with the Jason II ROV from NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown. During this ROV dive, a visual reconnaissance survey was conducted followed by photomosaic imaging transects and detailed visual inspection of features of the wreck. Microbiological experiments were deployed near the site and a small number of artifacts were collected for diagnostic purposes. The photomosaic survey was conducted in 14 parallel track lines spaced 1 m apart at an ROV altitude of approximately 5 m. Artifacts collected were a small (15 cm diameter) bronze bell, wooden sheave, metal fork, ceramic dish, the starboard signal lantern, and a copper cap or plug. The artifacts underwent conservation at the University of West Florida’s conservation lab.

Archaeological Remains

The contiguous remains of the Green Lantern Wreck retain the overall shape and size of the vessel as constructed due to the survival of the hull shape in the form of the yellow metal sheathing that covered it (Fig. 16). The shipwreck remains measure 69 ft (21.0 m) with an overall beam of 23 ft (7 m). This indicates a 3:1 Length-to-Beam Ratio, which is in keeping with the documented rations for smaller, mid-to third quarter nineteenth-century sailing vessels, and third-quarter to late century schooners and fishing vessels. The form of the hull’s outline and rigging suggests it was a two-masted schooner.

The site is oriented nearly north to south with the bow pointing south-southeast. The wreck sits on an even keel with a vertical relief above the seabed of 3–5 ft (1–1.5 m). The yellow metal-sheathed perimeter of the hull contains some remnants of wood that has been preserved due to its proximity to the sheathing which acts as a biofouling agent to biological colonization and consumption of the wood. Some areas of the sheathing exhibit diagonal foiling or buckling, which has been observed on other deep-water wrecks, and may be due to compression of wood at depth (Brooks et al. 2016).

Exposed wooden frames that are preserved in proximity to the sheathing remnants indicate double framed construction. “The exposed frames, at what is believed to be the first and second futtock, have a room and space of 20 in (50 cm) [the room is approximately 11 in (29 cm) and the space is approximately 8 in (21 cm)]. The sided dimension of each frame in the pair is from 5.5 to 6 in (14 to 15 cm). The molded dimension could not be measured because of the angle of view and buildup of sediment between the frames” (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 458).

The remains of the stem, including the post and apron, stands about 9 ft (2.74 m) above the seabed, rising 7 ft (2.1 m) above the top of the yellow metal sheathing. Three bob-stay rods remain in place with bolts and nuts still in the lower lugs that attach to the bob-stay plates. There are three bob-stays fitted; these are inner, middle and cap bob-stays. The style of the stays is indicative of the late nineteenth century; Chapelle (1973, p. 352) notes a change from chain to turnbuckles after 1885 following the introduction of wire rope. Bob-stays by c. 1900 “may be either chain or solid iron bar, the latter being most commonly used in the later day ships” (Underhill 1946, p. 11). These were further described as being “round iron bar with jaws forged at either end. To receive the lug the lower jaws are formed on the forward edge of the stem member and drilled for the bob-stay bolts,” which ran to lugs on the cap bands on the bowsprit (Underhill 1946, p. 75) (Fig. 17).

The archaeological team from the 2009 investigation noted that “the two lower fittings have four-sided nuts and bolts fastening the hardware together, but the upper fitting has a six-sided nut and bolt, which may represent a repair… The gripe or cutwater piece is missing above the bobstays fittings, but two iron drift pins outline where the edge of the gripe would have been. The missing section may also be where the gripe transitioned into the head knee” (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 459). The size of the exposed drift bolts at the stem suggests the hypothesis of a head knee is correct. Draft marks are visible on the side of the stem and are the Roman numerals V and VI. These indicate, based on their position on the stem and the level of seabed sediment, that approximately 3 ft (1 m) of lower hull is buried.

Remains of the vessel’s rigging lie on the seabed around the wreck. The head rigging lies on the seabed forward of the bow and extend for about 28 ft (8.5 m) from the wreck, with the bow sprit cap 4 m from the stem. The bowsprit was wooden and has been consumed by marine organisms. The possible remains of the gammon irons for the bowsprit lie just forward of the stem.

It was noted in 2009 that rigging for a single mast is visible to the port side of the head rig. The visible portion of the mast rigging extends approximately 39.3 ft (12 m) from the hull. The furthest visible portion of the rigging includes the mast cap. This rigging runs across the windlass and back towards a mast rig lying on the hull at midship. The mast ring is located 15.4 ft (4.7 m) aft of the stem post. The distance from the mast cap to the mast ring is 49.2 ft (15 m). During the initial investigation of the site in 2004, a faint line of shell hash was noted running in a line from the mast cap towards the hull. That line of shell hash likely denoted the location where the mast was laying as it slowly disintegrated or was consumed by microbes and invertebrates (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 461) The placement of the mast ring indicates that it marks the position of the foremast; it is close to the bow.

The placement of the visible fittings and the layout of the wreck site define a deck plan that would have been defined first by a towing bit, which lies off the bow, the windlass, which was topped by a capstan, both forward of the foremast, a companionway that led below to a forecastle, the mainmast which is not readily visible archaeologically, but which would have been necessary as the vessel’s size is too large to be a single-masted sloop. The open expanse of the exposed hull suggests an after-hatch, and a probable cabin house (Fig. 18). There is no evidence of steering gear but the 2009 team suggested in its absence the vessel may been steered by a tiller; another possibility is a now consumed largely wood and rope rigged “gun tackle” steering mechanism as opposed to patent steering gear. The form and layout fit within the parameters of a fishing schooner of the late century. Below deck, the wreck would have been divided into three areas by two bulkheads, with a relatively large “fisherman’s forecastle” in which the crew berthed, cooked and ate, an amidships fish hold, and the stern cabin with lazarette for storage.

The bow area is defined by two features. The first is the windlass with a section of stud-link anchor chain wrapped around the starboard drum. The windlass is small, as would fit a vessel of the size of the wreck, and is suggestive of the pump brake windlass types used in coastal schooners and fishing vessels at that time. This style appeared in the mid to late nineteenth century (Fig. 19). The windlass type is a diagnostic factor that suggests a mid-to-late nineteenth century date for the vessel in terms of construction and outfitting.

The wreck’s assemblage has a third quarter-to-late nineteenth-century invention noted as early as 1855 for “economizing labor on board of ships,” a probable “Edson’s Patent Pump, a new invention for ship use… an ingenious machine, perfectly simple, and easily packed and kept in order” (Approved Inventions for Economizing Labor on Board of Ships, The Monthly Nautical Magazine, 2(2), pp. 161–162). Jacob Edson of Boston invented the diaphragm pump in 1855, and patented in July of that year as U.S. Patent No. 13254 for an “Improved Method of Operating Valves of Pumps.” He established a company to manufacture his pumps in Boston in 1859. The system was simple; pump log or pipe ran up from the bilges to the deck, and into a cast iron base in which the “standard” with its valves was set, and capped by the head and operated with a manual handle or ‘brake.’ The specific patent for the pump on the wreck is unknown as it is not visible, but it is definitely a diaphragm pump.

As the name implies, a diaphragm pump used a flexible rubber diaphragm that “took the place of the upper piston” of a common pump; the outer edge of the diaphragm “was attached to the body of the pump. The upper valve claque was positioned at the center of the diaphragm and linked to the brake by a piece called the ‘standard’” (Oertling 1996, pp. 76, 78). Edson’s patents were renewed in March 1878 and November 1880 (Oertling 1996, p. 78). An 1894 catalog depicts “Edson’s Pump with bottom suction, generally of iron pipe… more commonly used on ships and other places where it can be bolted and remain stationary… these pumps are well made, strong and durable,” and came in models No. 2 (2 ½ in. suction, No. 3, 3 in. suction, and No. 4, 4 ½ in. suction (Smith and Winchester 1890, p. 617). In addition to Edson’s patent, the “Loud Patent” large capacity diaphragm pump was a No. 1 2 ½ or a No. 2 3 in. diameter pump that could discharge a gallon and a half of water or three and a half gallons of water per her (Oertling 1996, p. 78). Diaphragm pumps, placed abaft the mainmast, where the pump on this wreck is located, replaced wooden log pumps in fishing schooners by the late nineteenth century (Chapelle 1973, pp. 573–582).

The stern post is visible with remains of the rudder which is oriented aft and set into place by a single (visible) pintle and gudgeon. A possible crutch was noted by the archaeological team during the 2009 investigation:

The structural component forward of the sternpost is notably more intact than other structural components of the stern (Figure 10-125). This piece may be metal or of a different wood type than the other parts of the hull, which has allowed it to survive longer. The exact function is not certain, but it can best be described as a crutch. The possible crutch stands approximately 12 in (30 cm) above the copper sheathing. It measures 33 in (84 cm) wide at its widest point and 5 in (12 cm) thick at the middle of the top surface. It is notched to fit around the forward edge of the sternpost and shaped to fit into the port and starboard sides where they begin to come together at the stern similar to a transom piece. (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 465)

This feature may be metal; a possible iron brace or strap is visible on the starboard side.

The lack of certain artifacts that should be expected with a shipwreck site—anchors, much of the rigging for the main mast, steering gear, and a galley stove raises the question of whether the wrecking process was prolonged, with the loss of the main mast and other fittings such as anchors or galley stove, which could have been lost to a heavy sweeping sea, or a capsizing, or been thrown overboard in an effort to keep the vessel afloat with seams opened.

The larger site beyond the perimeter of the hull includes a small amount of debris and artifacts including elements of the previously noted bowsprit and foremast rigging near the bow. There are also a variety of artifacts near the stern such as the starboard lantern, a wooden sheave, which might be related to a gun tackle steering mechanism (which utilized such fittings) and the bilge pump. In addition to scattered hull fasteners, rigging elements, and glass ware, which lies off the stern on the starboard side, there are a range of diagnostic artifacts that also speak to the age of the vessel and the fact that this was a small, working-class craft, and probably a fishing vessel given its similarities to the 7000-Foot Wreck.

Two navigational lamps are present on the site, with the previously mentioned starboard lamp which was recovered, and the port lamp, which remains on the site, 4.5 m from the location of the starboard lamp (Fig. 20). The starboard signal lamp, as previously noted, with the legend “estribor” for starboard written on the lamp door, was conserved and assessed by the University of West Florida. It is copper and, when conserved, had a small copper “broad arrow,” attached to it; this indicates that at one stage in its working life, it may have been the property of the British Royal Navy, which indicated crown property with the broad arrow. It also has “Miller’s patent” stamped into the metal; this may reflect one of the various patents issued to John C. Miller between 1889 through 1899.

Miller’s focus was center draft lamps air distributors (flame spreaders) and wick raising mechanisms. His patent for a wick-raiser for central-draft lamps, U.S. Patent 456334, for example, was issued on 21 July 1891. Miller founded the Miller Manufacturing Company of Torrington, which manufactured lamps, lanterns, bronzes, stove trimmings, mirror frames, and other items made of German silver, brass and steel from late 1897 through 1901. Miller assigned his patents to other foundries and manufacturers; these included the Meriden Brass Company of Connecticut and the Mathew and Willard Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut, with patents assigned to both between the previously noted span of 1889–1898, after which his patents were assigned to his own company.

The remainder of the artifacts visible on the site lie within the sheathed outline of the vessel. While few, these include a ceramic dish, a round sheet of glass that was probably an instrument such as a compass or chronometer, and a small bronze bell. The bell, unmarked, is 6 in. (15 cm) in diameter. There was no clapper found with the bell. Small bells such as this were used for watch-keeping (the organizational structure for working “shifts”) and were usually located on the foremast; a good example of the type is found on the National Historic Landmark, 1894-built schooner Ernestina, ex-Effie M. Morrissey. The location of the bell when found on the site was roughly amidships, 11.5 m from the bow and 9 m from the stern, and it was partially covered by debris and sediment (Figs. 21, 22).

A four-tine, 7 in. long alloy fork “composed primarily of copper, zinc, nickel, iron, and tin,” was recovered, conserved, and analyzed. “SIM…GEORGE H. ROGERS” is engraved on the back indicating it was made by the Simeon L. & George H. Rogers Co. The Simeon L. & George H. Rogers Co. began manufacturing silver flatware in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1901. The company was acquired by Wm. A. Rogers Limited in 1918 (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 467).

An ironstone dish, a 5.5 in. (14 cm) diameter plate was recovered from inside the hull on the aft starboard quarter. It bears the makers mark of Wood and Sons Ltd. on the underside. The mark consists of the Royal Arms with “IRONSTONE CHINA” above and “WOOD AND SON LTD, ENGLAND” below. Wood and Sons was established as an earthenware manufacturer in Burslem, England, in 1865. The company was incorporated in 1910 as Wood and Sons Ltd. and began using this maker’s maker at that time (Brooks et al. 2016, p. 468).

In conclusion, overall, the hull and the rigging suggest an identification of the vessel as c. 300–400 ton two-masted schooner, likely built in the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was lost in what may have been a violent sinking event after the earliest date for the most recent dateable artifact, the ironstone plate, which has a terminus post quem of 1910. It may have been American-built, as its form and probable layout are similar to other American eastern seaboard and Gulf fishing schooners, and while the “estribor” marking on the signal lantern could represent foreign ownership from a Latin country, such as Cuba, it could as a solitary artifact also represent a portable fixture picked up from a Latin port, or represent an American-registered vessel owned and operated by Spanish-speaking mariners.

It may have been regularly deployed in the Gulf, or it may have been seasonally deployed to the Gulf for fishing as was common in the Gulf fishery in the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth century. While of the fishing schooner Fredonia type, it may have been employed in another context at the time of its loss, as some schooners were also seasonally employed as cargo carrying vessels as small-freight carriers, or were no longer economically viable as a fishing vessel. The vessel was lost after 1910, possibly as late as the 1920s but before older schooners of this type were modified with the installation of small engines. The “estribor” raises the possibility of a Spanish-speaking crew, which could indicate either foreign ownership at the time of loss, or a Spanish-speaking crew sailing from a U.S. Gulf port. Additional archaeological investigation will yield more information about the vessel’s characteristics and context.

Archaeological investigations found that the Green Lantern Wreck, as represented by its lower hull and associated wreckage, is substantially intact as an archaeological site. The site has the potential to yield significant information on the vessel’s construction, its career, lost equipment or tools, and the environmental condition in which it now rests that governed its site formation processes. Information may also be learned from its bilges, which are intact on this wreck and buried beneath the sediment and are often a repository of evidence. In the case of this wreck, environmental DNA might be present, as might bone, which could indicate the catch for comparison with accounts and assessments of offshore fishing in the Gulf in this period. A similar study, undertaken in in the 1990s, examined the bones of 174 cod (Gadus morhua) recovered from a mid-eighteenth-century fishing schooner wreck off the coast of Nova Scotia (Carter and Kenchington 1985; Kenchington and Kenchington 1993).

Comparative Shallow-Water Sites in the Gulf Region

Three shallow water, likely fishing vessel wrecks of the nineteenth century have been archaeological studied—the Snapper Wreck, Hamilton’s Wreck, and the possible schooner Priscilla (Bucchino 2014). The Snapper Wreck was approximately 100 ft (30.5 m) long with a 21 ft (6.4 m) beam with a likely 10 ft (3 m) depth of hold. Wood analysis of the wreck’s timbers suggest southern U.S. timber—white oak and yellow pine, and it was fastened with wooden treenails and iron. Like the 7000-Foot shipwreck, a dominant feature of the Snapper Wreck is a “sharply angled stem and nearly straight stern, as well as the presence of bobstay straps near the bow of the vessel,” which allowed the archaeologist who led the documentation of the wreck, Jason Raupp, to distinguish this particular wreck as a Fredonia-type schooner (Bucchino 2014, p. 61). Also identified on the Snapper Wreck is the presence of a break, or “Great Beam,” in the main deck at the beginning of the main mast step.

The addition of a deck beam on top of the standard deck beam just forward of the main mast step allowed for a rise in the level of the deck from the main mast step and aft. This break in the deck created two decks: the main deck forward of the main mast step and a quarterdeck abaft of the main mast step. Francis W. Taylor, president of the Warren Fish Company from 1927 to 1959, also suggests that the only substantial difference between the Florida-built and New England-built vessels was the absence of a break in the deck that formed a quarter deck just forward of vessels’ mainmasts. This break was engineered on New England vessels to prevent storm-driven waves from washing away the helmsman and any cargo stored on the deck. Since the Gulf fisheries lacked this kind of turbulent North Atlantic weather, the breaks were left off of Florida vessels.

Although determining a vessel-specific identification (i.e., name) was not possible, structural elements, design features, and comparative data from the LMVUS [Annual List of Merchant Vessels of the United States] allude to the vessel’s former occupation and to the period in which it operated: which was likely the period between 1890 and 1935, “years that mark the height of the red snapper industry in Pensacola (Bucchino 2014, p. 64). Another probable fishing vessel of the period is Hamilton’s Wreck, a shallow-water site in Pensacola Bay off Magazine Point. There are scant remains, suggesting a pattern of stripping and burning to clear the wreck, probably after it wrecked in a hurricane. Like the Snapper wreck, the types of timber used to construct Hamilton’s Wreck, species like southern yellow pine, bald cypress, and live oak, may have originated in the southern United States, but New England shipyards imported these durable, southern species from the late nineteenth century onward (Bucchino 2014, p. 68).

The vessel was smaller than the Snapper Wreck, measurements taken during field investigations put the length of the vessel at 62.96 ft (19.2 m) from stem to stern. Without any other substantial evidence, the typical build and size of the wreck provide the best evidence of its original purpose. The 63–65 ft (19.8–21.0 m) length of Hamilton’s Wreck is average for all commercial fishing vessels home ported in Pensacola for the 1910 data year, though it could also fit in the average length range for New England-built vessels found in the 1900 data year. The depth of the vessel, greater than 6 ft (1.8 m), is also reminiscent of the averages for all fishing vessels in 1910, and potentially for New England-built vessels in 1900 (Bucchino 2014, p. 70).

It is impossible to say with certainty that Hamilton’s Wreck belonged to Pensacola’s commercial fishing fleet; the basic measurements of the ship’s architecture support this hypothesis. Identified fishing vessels similar in size to Hamilton’s Wreck were most popular in the LMVUS from 1900 to 1910, though many operated in the years after 1910 (Bucchino 2014, p. 71). Further evidence of the vessel’s use as a commercial vessel is seen in associated material culture. Kitchen wares did not belong to a single dinner set, but were, instead, a hodge-podge of whiteware, earthenware, and stoneware ceramics likely thrown together for utilitarian, rather than aesthetic, purposes. Based on the correlation of archaeological data from Hamilton’s Wreck with the LMVUS, Hamilton’s Wreck likely is what remains of a commercial fishing vessel from Pensacola. As such, Hamilton’s Wreck reflects the period of significant growth in Pensacola’s fishing industry history between 1900 and 1920 (Bucchino 2014, p. 72).

The third shipwreck is the alleged Priscilla, a fishing schooner belonging to Pensacola’s E.E. Saunders & Co. fish house, built in East Boothbay, Maine, in 1893 that was stranded and wrecked off Dog Island, Florida, following a storm in September 1914. Priscilla was 69.3 ft (21.1 m) long, 19.8 ft (6.0 m) in beam, and 8.9 ft (2.7 m) deep. Archaeological documentation could not confirm or deny the local identification of the wreck as Priscilla. However, like the other two wrecks, it had characteristics that supported a probable construction for and use as a fishing schooner. In summarizing these three shipwrecks, they all exhibit characteristics of the later years of commercial fishing: tight-bottomed hulls, longer lengths, and deeper holds. The wrecks also provide insight into additional features of commercial fishing vessels working from Pensacola.

The data from the shallow water wrecks are relevant to the 7000-Foot and Green Lantern shipwrecks, as they clearly fit within the pattern of fishing schooners operating in the Gulf at the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century as the expansion of the fishery, especially the opening of the new snapper banks, with prolonged voyages that spanned more than a few days, ranging even up to a month in duration. The New England-built fishing schooners were perfectly suited to this new aspect of the Gulf fishery, and they came to dominate the fishery, whether locally owned or seasonally worked and dispatched from the eastern seaboard. The 7000-Foot Wreck’s galley stove, in particular, points to another observation: as is evidenced by the material culture found in association with Hamilton’s Wreck, fishermen required significantly different accommodations to survive on these long trips. Food preparation, personal comfort, and entertainment were necessities for keeping the crew in good health (Bucchino 2014, p. 174). The 7000-Foot Wreck and the Green Lantern Wreck are also likely associated with the late century fishing trade, and possibly the red snapper fishery of the Gulf in that period, offering another key set of data for assessment.

Conclusions

The archaeology of fishing craft in and by itself has value in better understanding the vessels as a specific type of craft and as maritime macro-artifacts whose wrecks contain assemblages that speak to the activities and lives of those who worked and were possibly if not probably lost with them. Trades such as fishing were frequently, as noted, a domain in which both enslaved and free blacks were employed, and this was especially true in the Caribbean beginning in colonial times just as much as it was in the early American colonial and republican periods (Price 1966). This is an important aspect of Afro-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latino history and culture that deserves more attention, which has been the case in regard to whaling.

As should always be the case, as an anthropologically-derived field, we must focus on the people, especially those often not named or even mentioned except in passing in the historic record. This is especially true for those who, by necessity, must work on the sea, like those who have fished, and whose passing may be briefly mentioned and then forgotten other than by families. The references are often anonymous, apart from the name of the vessel, even when noted in print:

The fishing smacks Superior and Huron, were supposed to have been lost in the Bay of Mexico, and that all on board had perished. Several other vessels were supposed to have been lost, and the Thomas Salmond passed a quantity of staves in the vicinity of Florida Reef. Four vessels were seen in the Gulf, bottom upwards. (Alexandria Gazette, 27 September 1842, p. 2)

Key-West…Great fears are entertained for the safety of the crews of four fishing smacks, containing in all it is believed, some twenty persons of color and a white man, which left here early on Tuesday last for the black fish bank, about ten miles outside of the bar. The boats were seen late in the afternoon of the same day, in a heavy squall of wind and rain, by the hands of another smack, since which nothing has been heard of them. (Charleston Daily Courier, 13 June 1844, p. 2)

In looking at wrecks far out from shore, likely lost to the power of the ocean, it is difficult to imagine that any of those on board lived even if they made it off the vessel as it sank. A brief mention of a vessel gone missing, and only a family left to care and remember for the remainder of their lives mark those losses other than memorial plaques in churches, cenotaphs in graveyards, or the famous Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial to “They that go down to the sea in ships.”

In the ten-year period between 2011 and 2021, the number of ship losses worldwide totaled 892 vessels lost at sea; as much of the world’s trade moves by the ocean, the majority of those losses were cargo ships of various types, including general cargo, bulk carriers, container ships, Ro-Ros, and chemical and product tankers (n = 537). Next to general cargo ships (n = 357) the second largest loss of category of ship and trade were fishing vessels (n = 124) (Statista.com 2022). This is not a surprising statistic when examined closely; fishing is one of the oldest and longest lasting sources of food for humanity, and in the twenty-first century, fish is the source of 17% of the world’s edible meat (Costello et al. 2020). The size of the global fishing fleet is estimated to have grown from 1.7 to 3.7 million vessels between 1950 and 2015, reflecting the scope and scale of this maritime activity (Rousseau et al. 2019, pp. 122–138).

The U.S. Coast Guard, conducting a review of lost fishing vessels and crew fatalities between 1992 and 2007, found that losses in this most hazardous of maritime trades occurred when a vessel sank while traveling to or from port. Fishing vessels are probably one of the largest contributors to the archaeological record of human harvesting of the sea, and yet as a class of archaeological resource that is studied, they are not considered as “celebrity” or “big-name” types of shipwreck known to the public. When pressed, the name that likely comes to mind to the general public is the commercial fishing boat Andrea Gail, which was lost with all six of its crew in the so-called “Perfect Storm” of October 1991. That vessel and its crew gained posthumous fame due to a best-selling book by author Sebastian Junger and the 2000 film adaptation (Junger 1997).

It is also important to note that, beyond the maritime archaeological importance of such sites, there is another aspect that bears examination. The history of human resource exploitation as documented by archaeology is better represented on land as archaeologists assess the sites associated with mining, forestry, and mono-agriculture; the story and the archaeological legacy of human marine exploitation is less known. Notable exceptions include Kenchington and Kenchington (1993) and Raupp (2015).

Jeffrey Bolster, writing about the history of marine exploitation, made a valid point in a 2006 essay on environmental histories as it became readily apparent that global fisheries were in fact collapsing. Noting two then recent (2002) books that “signaled the maturation of American environmental history,” Bolster noted that the books were essentially silent on the oceans, save for a few scattered references to indigenous fishing, shad depletion, marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson, and the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, nor did they explain they covered “only terrestrial environmental history, and that complementary marine histories are waiting to be told. It is as if Nantucket’s whalers, Oregon’s Clatsop salmon fishers, conch harvesters in Key West, and the twentieth-century swordfish crew made famous by The Perfect Storm were not part of America’s human encounter with the natural world (Bolster 2006, p. 576).

While Bolster’s criticisms were leveled at an American-focused history, clearly the point is obvious on a global scale, and his article focuses on far more than American-centric examples. One can argue that the maritime archaeology of fishing craft and culture can also be the archaeology of marine exploitation and environmental consequences. If we are to bemoan the destruction of historic shipwrecks by deep sea trawling, we must also bemoan the unsustainable impacts on the marine environment and the extinction of species being overfished. In this, maritime archaeology can also play a role.

Change history

05 September 2024
This article was updated to correct a typographical error in the title from referring to three deep-water shipwrecks to two deep-water shipwrecks.
10 September 2024
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-024-09413-7
28 August 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-023-09378-z

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Acknowledgements

We thank our colleagues who assisted with the on-site analysis, assessment, and analysis of the 7000-Foot Wreck and the Green Lantern Wreck. We are grateful to the team at BOEM, especially Scott Sorset, Doug Jones, Chris Horrell, and Melanie Damour, and now retired friend and colleague Jack Irion. The reevaluation of the 7000-Foot Wreck and Green Lantern was completed as part of a BOEM-funded study of nineteenth-century shipwrecks in the Gulf, and is drawn from an historical context study and National Register of Historic Places nominations for those two wrecks. We are grateful to the teams and crews of Effie M. Morrissey and Lettie G. Howard for access to these historic vessels for detailed inspection and documentation in 1989–1991, which provided a hands-on, detailed real world sense of these types of vessels. The same holds true for the 1877-built Gulf schooner Governor Stone, and the oyster sloop Christeen.

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SEARCH, Inc., Washington, D.C., USA
James P. Delgado & Michael L. Brennan
Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN), Pensacola, USA
Nicole Bucchino Grinnan
Oceaneering International, Inc., Houston, USA
Robert A. Church
P&C Scientific, LLC., Landrum, USA
Daniel J. Warren

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James P. Delgado
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Nicole Bucchino Grinnan
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Michael L. Brennan
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Robert A. Church
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Daniel J. Warren
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JD was the primary author of the article with contributions from RC, DW, NG and MB.

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Correspondence to James P. Delgado.

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Delgado, J.P., Grinnan, N.B., Brennan, M.L. et al. Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico in the Nineteenth Century: An Historical Overview and the Likely Context of Two Deep-Water Shipwrecks. J Mari Arch 18, 553–589 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-023-09367-2

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Accepted: 21 July 2023
Published: 08 August 2023
Issue Date: September 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-023-09367-2

Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico in the Nineteenth Century: An Historical Overview and the Likely Context of Two Deep-Water Shipwrecks

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