Military shipwreck sites in the French Caribbean (End of 17th-Beginning of 19th Century)

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Military Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean: Studies of Colonialism, Globalization, and Multicultural Communities" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The West Indies were considered for a long period as the battlefield of Europe. This situation included a maritime geostrategy characterized by the presence of squadrons and the development of defensive sites like forts, ports and numerous batteries. Effectively, war occurred also on the seas and most of the battles which occurred in the Lesser Antilles were supported by naval forces. This paper assesses the impact of war on maritime losses and the potential of war as a source for underwater archaeology by presenting historical records of losses in the West Indies and shipwreck sites resulting from war paper will focus on site location, type and identification. In spite of the danger of war, it is interesting to see that military ships were susceptible to other risks and factors combining natural hazard and human error.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Military Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean: Studies of Colonialism, Globalization, and Multicultural Communities   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 519