Abstract
A shipwreck discovered in 2005 and subsequently studied in 2013 and 2017 is the remains of a copper-sheathed, early to mid-nineteenth-century sailing vessel. It appears to be of the type known as a “packet ship” that sank in the Gulf of Mexico in the area of Viosca Knoll sometime between 1830 and 1860. The site is a substantially intact, undisturbed wreck from a key period in the nineteenth-century development of the Gulf of Mexico. During this period, the Gulf became an important part of the American and global maritime economy, particularly in regard to the cotton and sugar trades from New Orleans and Mobile. The general commodities trade to those ports, and early to mid-nineteenth-century immigration by sea to the American Gulf especially linked the world to New Orleans.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the original teams that led the work on these wrecks our colleagues from BOEM, the University of Southern Mississippi, Fugro GeoSciences, C-Innovation, NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration, and the various team members from various agencies who participated as “doctors on call” for the telepresence mission to Wreck 15377, as well as colleagues who assisted with the on-site analysis, assessment and analysis of it. Amy Borgens of the Texas Historical Commission offered observations and an extensive archive of screen captures of the video feed from the dive that proved invaluable. We are particularly grateful to the team at BOEM, especially Scott Sorset, Doug Jones, Chris Horrell, and Melanie Damour, and now-retired friend and colleague Jack Irion, who read and commented on a draft of this article. The reanalysis we did on Wreck 15377 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 that wreck. We are also grateful to the Falklands Islands Receiver of Wreck, the Governor General and the Falkland Islands Museum for access to the surviving remains both in the water and stored on land from the last “above the surface” American packet ship, Charles Cooper, at Stanley. We also thank James Allan for his partnership in the survey for and probing of the packet Oxford, and for sharing his insights in the packet Arkansas.
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JD wrote the inital draft of the article; JI and MB reviewed, edited and made important additions to the manuscript.
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Jack Irion—Retired.
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Delgado, J.P., Irion, J. & Brennan, M.L. Wreck 15377: A Probable Immigrant and Cargo Packet of the Mid-Nineteenth Century in the Gulf of Mexico. J Mari Arch 18, 521–552 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-023-09373-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-023-09373-4