Breaking the Surface: 2018 Recovery of the Wooden Schooner Barge Adriatic

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Proposed improvements to Berth 1 at the Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding Yard in Sturgeon Bay will require removal of the remains of the self-unloading, wooden schooner barge Adriatic. What would become an iconic vessel type on the Great Lakes, the Adriatic, built in 1889, was converted into one of the earliest examples of a self-unloading schooner barge. The vessel spent the majority of its career hauling various materials to locations along Lake Michigan before it was abandoned adjacent to the shoreline at what would become the Fincantieri ship yard. After preliminary investigations and initial recovery of the self-unloading machinery during an ice plagued December 2016 season, maritime archaeologists with Panamerican Consultants Inc. returned in July of 2018 to oversee the recovery and documentation of the remainder of the 202ft long vessel as a mitigation component of projected adverse effects.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 498