Shipwreck of Colonial Making: The preliminary study of a Tasmanian-built ship wrecked in Victorian waters (1841-1853)

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Contextualizing Maritime Archaeology in Australasia" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Recent archaeological fieldwork in Port Phillip, Victoria, identified a small shipwreck site near the Rye Jetty as that of the schooner Barbara. Preliminary investigations demonstrate that the vessel, built in northern Tasmania in 1841, had a deep-drafted hull with a double layer of hull planking, was sheathed with a Muntz-like metal, and was constructed with wood from all over the Australian colonies. Shipwrecks, like Barbara, provide the most direct and substantial remains of Australia’s first major colonial manufacturing industry: shipbuilding. Most early Australian-built vessels were small coastal traders about which little is known, as typically they were unregistered and unrecorded. Nevertheless, they were vital for the establishment and expansion of settlements throughout the newly founded colonies and have the potential to reveal valuable information otherwise unavailable. This paper discusses the preliminary results of the Barbara shipwreck study and its significance to the overall study of Australian shipbuilding.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Contextualizing Maritime Archaeology in Australasia   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology