Lake Champlain’s Steamboat Phoenix II: Mixing New and Traditional Underwater Archaeological Methods for Reconstruction

Summary

Built in 1820, the passenger sidewheel steamboat Phoenix II ran the length of Lake Champlain for 17 years until the worn-out hull was retired in Shelburne Shipyard. With no known existing ship plans, the sole method of reconstructing the hull is through accurate measurements and documentation of the wreck itself. Since June 2014, archaeological divers from Texas A&M University used traditional recording tools including tape measures, rulers and digital levels to measure the submerged ship’s timbers, and recorded these measurements with pencil on mylar while underwater. The resulting data were compiled into comprehensive notes and plans, which were complemented and, in some cases, amended by detailed photogrammetric recording of the wreck in 2015 and 2016, and vice versa. Both new and traditional sets of data were used to reconstruct the steamboat hull as it might have looked in 1837 when it was retired in Shelburne Shipyard.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Application of Traditional and Innovative Documentation Techniques in Nautical Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 513