Three Sisters (1874–1899): A Tasmanian Built, Double-Planked Ketch Wrecked in the Intertidal Zone

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Transient legacies of the past: Historical Archaeology in the Intertidal Zone", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Recent archaeological fieldwork in Lipson Cove, South Australia, recorded the small intertidal shipwreck of the ketch Three Sisters. Preliminary investigations demonstrate that the vessel, built in Hobart, Tasmania in 1874, had a double layer of hull planking and was constructed with wood from all over the Australian colonies. Shipwrecks, like Three Sisters, 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 methods of recording this intertidal site, the preliminary results of the Three Sisters shipwreck study, and its significance to the overall study of Australian colonial shipbuilding.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Transient legacies of the past: Historical Archaeology in the Intertidal Zone   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow