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A marine archeological research and recovery project that was set in motion in December 2004 - when bottle fragments, bricks, shards and pieces of clay smoking pipes were found washed up on Lewes Beach - is drawing to a close.
“As with any project, it has a beginning and an end,” said Dan Griffith, director of the Lewes Maritime Archaeological Project that for more than two years has worked to shed light on what began as a mystery and today leaves only a few unanswered questions. He said the project has been conducted as planned with the budget available. Most of what remains to be done should wrap up by mid-April.
Griffith and state archaeology colleagues, local volunteers, archaeological divers, maritime history researchers in the United States and Europe, and various other professionals and amateurs have worked on the project.
“We’re not walking away from it, it will be complete. We’ll finish the scope of what we intended to do and then we’ll be done. After that, there’s no project,” Griffith said Wednesday, March 7.
Last fall a London-based researcher using ship insurance records, determined the shipwreck is the Severn, a 200-ton British merchant cargo ship.
Records indicated that in early May 1774, Capt. James Hawthorn ran the Severn Shipwreck
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aground as a nor’easter raked the Cape Region. Hawthorn and his crew of 20 or so men made it to shore alive. But the vessel’s cargo – mineral water in bottles, grist mill wheels, hand-painted china, stoneware storage jars, and just about any item needed for daily life of the era – went to rest on the Delaware Bay’s sandy bottom for more than 200 years.
Griffith said the project recovered about 20 percent of the wreck site’s material. That means 80 percent of the ship’s load remains on the bottom of the bay. “We hit some pretty high-concentration areas but we know there are also areas adjacent to where we excavated. But the site itself is stable, it’s been on the bottom now for 232 years,” Griffith said.
He said the project met its artifact recovery and analysis plans within the $500,000 budget – $200,000 from the state and $300,000 from the federal government – available to do the work.
The amount doesn’t include about $110,000 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers paid in April 2005 to send archaeological divers down for a look at the source of the artifacts.
Initial theories on the origin of the artifacts were wide-ranging. Were they the remains of a lost Dutch whaling colony that had settled along the bay? Or was it a Colonial-era trash heap that had been stirred by a storm?
Dredging up history
It was the Army Corps’ Lewes Beach replenishment project of October 2004 that stirred up the mystery. A dredge working about 2,000 yards offshore in water about 15 feet deep near the mouth of the Roosevelt Inlet had been pumping sand from the bottom of the bay.
At some point, the cutting-head of the dredge drilled into cargo the vessel had carried and with the sand, pumped broken pieces of it to the beach.
By the end of November 2004, the corps’ operation had pumped about 160,000 cubic yards of sand – and unknown at the time – artifacts along a quarter-mile stretch of Lewes Beach.
A month later, just south of the inlet, beachcombers noticed objects – pieces of green and brown glass, fragments of pottery, a few military miniatures (toy soldiers) – at the surf line.
Griffith said during the project 1,100 square-feet of bay bottom were excavated at the wreck site, more than 45,000 artifacts have been conserved and cataloged, and an attempt to mend together artifact fragments recovered last October is under way.
Several objects – a storage jar, military miniatures, and gristmill wheels, were recovered intact. The origin of the gristmill wheels hasn’t been confirmed, but Griffith said they are probably from England. He said metallic objects are being conserved and cataloged by a specialist working under contract.
The London-based researcher will continue to work on the project for about month.
“We’ll hand all the data over to a consultant and we’ll prepare a report that will come out sometime in the summer,” Griffith said. He said the report would focus on artifacts recovered last fall.
Grant money has been set aside to develop a website that would contain images and information on the project and brochures and other printed material designed to inform the public about the project would also be developed.
No diving zone
The site remains off-limits to the public. “It’s state property and is protected under state law,” Griffith said. Boating, diving, anchoring or dredging at the site is illegal. Law enforcement officers monitor the site and anyone in violation of state law is subject to arrest, imprisonment, fines and the confiscation of boats, cars and equipment. Griffith said a cross-section of artifacts would be displayed on the second floor of the Zwaanendael Museum in a special maritime exhibit space created by the Division of Cultural and Historical Affairs.
He said there’s been tremendous public interest in the Severn story just as there was in 1984 when the H.M.B. DeBraak, a British warship that went down in 1798, was found in the Delaware Bay.
“One of the missions of this project for me has been not only to learn about the shipwreck from the artifacts and historical research, but equally important – if not more important – to share that,” Griffith said. He said he’s given as many 60 presentations on the Severn project to the public and archaeology professionals and he plans to continue doing that. Griffith said unlike Virginia and Maryland, Delaware does not provide regular and ongoing funding of archaeological projects. He said although such funding would be nice, shipwrecks in the Delaware Bay are stable – safe right where they rest.
Contact Henry Evans at hevans@capegazette.com
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