Current Maritime Research in Saint Augustine, Florida

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Current Maritime Research in Saint Augustine, Florida," at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Founded by the Spanish on the northeast coast of Florida in 1565, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement and the oldest port in the United States. The year 2024 marked the 25th anniversary of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, or LAMP, which is the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum. Since its inception, LAMP has focused on discovering and documenting a wide variety of maritime archaeological resources in and around the nation’s oldest port. Current research includes an upcoming shipwreck survey of St. Augustine’s “back door,” the Matanzas Inlet; using geospatial and geomorphological analysis to aid the search for early Spanish shipwrecks offshore; underwater investigations along the waterfront of Fort Mose, America’s first free African-American settlement (1752-1763); and the investigation of a beached shipwreck believed to be Caroline Eddy, a lumber brigantine lost in 1880. This session summarizes these varied research projects.