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glasses
he says
"Though the people knew in general that Captain Kidd was hanged
and the crime was piracy
yet there were scarce any even at the time who were acquainted with his life or actions
that could account his turning into a pirate."
So even Charles Johnson thought Captain Kidd probably got a bad rap in 1724.
So, where's that take us. Well, that's the story that I wish Zack were here to tell and
instead we'll go to what we're going to talk - what our research is showing us.
This is the island of
Catalina -
off the southeast corner of the Dominican Republic.
Catalina Island - we know that Captain Kidd put the vessel there - just a little
crook
area - the lee of the island.
He placed the vessel there in 1699.
and went back to New York. He left it in the hands of a Henry Bolton, a merchant
and the merchant testified at Captain Kidd's trial
that he took the vessel and moved it into the river -
a nearby river
sailed the vessel into the river and for about a month he tried to so-call protect
the vessel,
but Bolton was pretty much described as pretty much a scoundral himself.
And then he started taking things off the ship. He'd left 14 young boys and
3 old men is what Kidd testified.
It was in the river. Many things were taken off undoubtedly the gold and the silver was
taken off the vessel. There was cotton on board and there was sugar on board, and there was muslin,
so things that Kidd
could not take back from San Antonio to New York.
Then the ship was set afire
and with the prevailing winds the ship ended up,
we summize, going back to Catalina
in this little crook on the winward side of the island
which is not where you would leave a ship
but that's where Captain Kidd's Quedagh Merchant, we feel, ultimately landed.
Well the vessel itself,
as it burned, we know it was burning. There's a dutch
testimony that these Dutch sailors said they watched it burn for 6 hours.
As it drifted,
you would lose the upper rigging of the vessel.
The deployed cannons - we know that Captain Kidd had
maybe as many as 54 cannons.
That was not only his French, his English, cannons initially
but those cannons he captured from the Quedagh Merchant.
Now some cannons were given away and some
there's 2 or 4 he gave to a pirate Culliford which was brought up in his trial and there's
conflicting testimony.
But let's just say that we have 50 some possible cannons.
At the site though all the deployed cannons, those that would be in position to fire,
were not there.
That's the first thing I note at the shipwreck site. This is a site of a
ship loaded with cannons but no deployed cannons.
Now that makes sense in the river area. You could very easily remove these cannons
of the upper gun decks.
Take off anything of value that you could take away from the vessel
but then ultimately
set it out adrift on fire. Those cannons in the hold, the leaky hold,
just weren't pulled out.
So what happens over time? We note the cargo. This being the bow.
This being the stern of the ship.
The cargo holds are here and there.
Imagine that drawing I had earlier where you lower these cannons down in the 2 cargo holds
and when the ship deteriorates what you end up with
is a stacked set of cannons in the bow area and a stacked set of the cannons mid-ship
and a few loose cannons have tumbled but virtually no wood
or timbers and
we were quite impressed by the fact that was just
none of the evidence we would expect to find
when a pristine shipwreck
that would be in the sandy bottom but this is a really hardpan area so we
have lots of waves crashing in that hurricane we showed you and the waves coming in
so the wood's all gone and the question is where are the spikes and the nails
and the drift pins and all the things, the gungeons and pintels [sp?] and
the items we would look for as archaeologists.
Well what we find is they're not really on the site or they may be buried.
We produced our site plan again of the various items.
Shallow water - I'm talking the top brain coral on this site is in a foot and a half of water.
When you go up on the boat you can look down and see the cannons -
quite remarkable.
But what we know has happened is these things have been washed away into the deeper water
or we found sand pockets
and caverns into the iron shore that's eaten through with the wave action.
So on our last trip in December
with Dean Goodman and others and the graduate students
we went in and started looking in December
to check out these other areas where there might be artifactual material.
Here's a photograph that Nicole took.
I think it's the only one you're going to get credit for, Nicole.
Going through this iron shore wall that has been eaten out by the wave action and popping
up inside
Catalina Island
with no overhead environment and what we find is sand pockets.
So I like to think of this as kind of a washing machine. All the artifacts and sand
and things go into the holes,
get stirred around inside, but they can't really get back out of the holes
and they get deposited inside.
Very quickly with a little bit of hand fanning we started finding ballast stones
and indicative items from this shipwreck.
Now we're talking really a 30 minute investigation.
But we're going to concentrate our work coming up, not only measuring the cannons
looking at the site, recovering
two cannons of different lengths
from opposite ends,
we're also want to look inside the area of theese sand pockets to investigate
the possibility which we think will be artifactual material.
We also want to know,
as a
long-time diver and a preservation person - marine protected area specialist,
on our first dive there, Francis and I were diving and when we go under water we find
our own anchor line
going right through here and wrapping right down through all the nice corals
and we ended up having difficulty with our
own anchor with an automatic hoist we got rid of the lead, they just put it in gear
and hoisted up
the anchor and pulled away the corals so another mission
is to work with our
marine protected areas and geology people. We have a marine biologist student here
one or two.
Then we're going to go in and put in a buouy system to protect the area, delineate it as a reserve
first, put the boundaries which I believe are 300 meters, Francis?
300 meters along the shoreline incorporating the shore
out the 300 meters which will get us into 600 feet of water.
We're going to make that into an underwater reserve
for scientific study.
Put the mooring systems in, the markers on this.
Then we're going to turn this into, after our research
into a preserve open for snorklers and divers or just stay on the shore and just watch the
site -
the interpretive sites on shore.
So we need to also respect the biology. This is one of the
denvral gyral [sp?] corals that are beautiful coral stands
that was knocked over, and I'm kind of placing it back up here.
So those of you that work with us on marine biology - we alredy got some restoration work
to do
to put these corals and reglue them back in position.
It's important for science that we don't tear up the biology of the site,
investigating the archaeology.
Very pristine area - denvral gyrals [sp?], cylindris [sp?] corals
achraporeal [sp?] chorals which are now endangered species in the Florida keys.
I was amazed at the amount of corals and marine life on this site.
It's going to be a pristine location for a marine protected area and for tourism -
not only for Captain Kidd and the history but for the fact that it's also got biological resources.
And also more importantly we feel
that there's terrestrial in underwater components to this.
So the plan is to go back to the Dominican Republic starting in March.
We're going to be - we've talked with, had meetings with the Museum of Dominican man,
the ONPCS. We've met with
the Wass [sp?] University, one of the oldest in the America's and Dean Goodman will say more about this.
I met with the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Culture.
So we're going to the government agencies that are responsible for the land
under water,
the archaeological and biological components,
with the idea being that we're going to make a park.
This will be a series. This will be our third under water marine protected area in Dominican
Republic.
We'll have the involvement of, right now we've got students from the individualized majors
program,
overseas studies endorsement, geological science students will be with us.
In the past I see
people like Bill Jones from SPEA's been with us there. Bill Roof I think is here
with
biology, tropical biology program. Earl and Claudia will be going with this.
With Cathy's list of
16 more units we hope it will increase the involvment of more units
in the college and, of course, in the School of
Health, Physical Education, and Recreation were expanding out to get more involvement
much beyond Captain Kidd.
With that I'll let Dean Goodman
make a few remarks on -
where we're going for the future.
[applause]
Again, I'm going to keep my remarks brief because you're going to want
to see some of the artifacts that are here
and they're displayed. Where are they displayed, Charlie?
Good question -
right outside the back door. Okay, they'll be right out the back door.
I'm just going to take a couple of minutes. First off, I want to thank
[inaudible]
Thank you. At a university that's land-locked, it's rather amazing
that we're doing underwater archeology
and that's really a testament, a testimony to the kinds of things
that IU is known for.
As a Dean of a school I just want to make sure we're involved in excellent work.
One of the things I spoke to Charlie about when he talked to me initially about
the Captain Kidd site and
investing in this
was what other things could we do
that would develop
important and good relations with the Dominican Republic.
And I suggested, because part of our mission is health and wellness,
that it would be important for us to meet
with key influential people.
With Jeff Conrad's help we not only met with Francis but I met with the Rector or
the President of the university,
senior people at the university. It's the university of [inaudible]