A Geospatial and Statistical Analysis of North Carolina’s First World War Naval Battlescape

Summary

Although the United States was late to enter into the First World War, the waters of the nation became a battlefield by the summer of 1918. Ships operating along North Carolina’s coast recurrently fell victim to the unrestricted U-boat campaign. This paper presents a historical and archaeological study of compiled records of all vessels, infrastructure, civilians, and combatants lost, damaged, or attacked in war-related incidents. This study employs Geographical Information System (GIS) software in order to render a digitized projection of the battlescape. The overall objective presented is to analyze a collected historical dataset and interpret the points of conflict between combatants off the coast of North Carolina, and to assess geospatial and temporal trends. The central question pursued is, "what does the geospatial and statistical analysis of trends regarding WW1-era infrastructure, combatants, and noncombatants inform us about the naval battlescape off the coast of North Carolina?"

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions) 2018   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 267