Presentation on British Naval Shipwrecks

Description

The Gulf Coast State College Anthropology Club and the Bay Anthropological Society present “Trading America: Contextualizing British Royal Naval Shipwrecks in Florida and Jamaica During the American Revolutionary War.” The presentation will be led by Andrew J. Van Slyke, lecturer and maritime archaeologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. After graduating with an associate in arts from Gulf Coast State College in 2014, Van Slyke earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in historical archaeology from the University of West Florida. He worked for more than five years with the U.S. National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center, leading underwater surveys and dive operations in more than a dozen national parks in search of shipwrecks and submerged history. More recently, his work has taken him to Jamaica, where he co-directs the Maritime Legacy Project, leading the search for Christopher Columbus’ last two ships, which were marooned and lost in St. Ann’s Bay in 1504. His team has also identified the wreck of Horatio Nelson’s first command, HMS Hinchinbrook. In this presentation, Van Slyke will discuss how shipwrecks can reveal how Britain gambled the Caribbean against its thirteen rebelling colonies – and nearly lost both.