2019 Shipwreck Conference – Program

Welcome to the Second Santa Elena Conference sponsored by the Santa Elena Foundation, the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of South Carolina, Beaufort.  This one-day conference gathers together a group of eminent maritime historians and nautical archaeologists to share their understanding of seafaring ventures and shipwrecks from the sixteenth century, America’s Lost Century. In addition, the program will include a special recognition of the contributions by Dr. Eugene Lyon in illuminating the early maritime and colonial efforts at Santa Elena and in Spanish La Florida.

European expansion into the newly discovered Western Hemisphere during the sixteenth-century resulted in numerous shipwrecks–victims of accidents, carelessness, storms, warfare, scuttling, and myriad other hazards and perils.  In fact, scarcely two months after discovering and exploring the newly found island in the New World, Columbus lost his largest ship, the nao Santa Maria, on the north coast of the island of Hispaniola.  The Americas had claimed their first European shipwreck with many more to follow.

This symposium serves to provide an understanding of the various motives, efforts, and results of these early explorers, hunters, and colonizers through use of the historical and archaeological record.  Topics under discussion include an overview of the early ships and men associated with these seafaring voyages westward, colonial ventures, early whaling, transport of goods and products back to Europe, and competing claims between nations to control this new land, most notably at Santa Elena and along the southeastern U.S. coastline of La Florida.  The historians and underwater archaeologists on the program have devoted much of their careers to researching this oft forgotten but important phase in the evolution to our modern world.

Presenters include Carla Rahn Phillips, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Don Keith, Ships of Discovery; Paul Hoffman, Louisiana State University; Barto Arnold, Institute of Nautical Archaeology; Roger Smith, Florida Division of Historical Resources; John Bratten, University of West Florida; Corey Malcom, Mel Fisher Maritime Museum; Chuck Meide, St. Augustine Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program; Brad Loewen, Université de Montréal; Gordon Watts, Tidewater Atlantic Research, Inc; and James Spirek, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Registration and an admission fee are required to attend.

Shipwrecks of Amerca’s Lost Century, 5 April 2019