(upbeat music) (projector clicking) - Have you ever wondered where the television signal you're watching is coming from?

♪ I love to go a wanderin' (projector clicking) ♪ along the mountain track - Welcome to True North.

(upbeat music) (mysterious music) - Good evening and welcome to Mainewatch (upbeat music) (projector clicking) Welcome to From the Vault, a celebration of 60 years of Maine Public Television.

In August of 1779, the American Navy suffered its worst defeat until Pearl Harbor when an armada of 44 ships was trapped by the British Navy as they try to flee up the Penobscot River resulting in the loss of all the vessels.

On this episode we look at two old shows that focus on the disastrous Penobscot Expedition.

First, we go to 1980 for "Penobscot: The Battle No One Ever Heard Of".

This program explains the event through a reenactment that took place in Castine in 1979.

That program also looks at how the reenactment came together with participants from the US and Canada.

The narrative is provided by a man recounting the events to his grandson.

He was a notable Navy veteran himself, Captain John Kenneday, or Captain Jack, as he was known had retired to Castine, but was once the commander of the naval destroyer the USS Ellis in 1940 and was a respected member of the local casting area involved in many civic organizations.

Then we go to 1978 for "Sealog: Defense", which documents the underwater archeology efforts to find the ships, in particular the privateer Defense.

Now let's start our look at Maine's role in the revolution by going back to 1980 for "Penobscot: The Battle No One Ever Heard Of".

(electronic music) (tense music) (gun firing) - Well, it all happened right here, Aaron, but you won't read about it in your history book.

Not many Americans even know about it for that reason and those that do, don't like to talk about it much.

They figure it's best forgot.

- How come?

- Well, people don't like to hear about their country's defeats, even though there were heroes on both sides, the company Marines stormed the Heights back here in the face of hot fire.

Drove the British back.

Tough climb and a hard fight with heavy losses on both sides.

(gun firing) - [Narrator] Actually, the story starts long before the Penobscot Expedition of 1779.

Back in 1630, Castine Maine was known as the magic, big reduced settlement.

The Plymouth company built a small fortified trading post to handle its growing fur business in the Northeast.

The community was soon after taken over by the French and then recaptured by the British.

Finally in 1674, even the Dutch held an outpost for a while.

After being abandoned by the British in 1744, the peninsula was uninhabited until 1760 when disgruntled colonials fled their British rulers in New England.

Castine was then known as the Bagadoo Settlement.

It was around this time that the British became interested in Penobscot Bay and the Bagadoo Peninsula, as a strategic point to build a Fort, which would secure the new province they wanted to call New Ireland.

For this project the British assigned ships and men from the 74th Argyll Highlanders and the 82nd Hamilton Regiment from their Garrison in Halifax Nova Scotia.

It said that the men were green to battle but well disciplined.

Leading the expedition was General Francis McLean, the new British Commander of Halifax.

McLean, depended heavily on a Naval Officer, Captain Henry Moake for knowledge of the main coast.

By May 16th, 1779, the ships and men were ready to make sail for Bagadoos.

And at the end of the month, a frigate, the Blonde, the brig Hope, three sloops of war, and four or five transports sailed with 640 troops on board.

The staple food on board was hardtack.

And although the trip lasted less than two weeks, the men were glad to reach Bangadoos and the first chance at fresh food, it was June 12th.

After a few days of reconnaissance and after the British officers were convinced that the inhabitants would put up no resistance, General McLean took over the peninsula without a fight on June 17th.

- And they landed right along here where that cannon, with stores of supplies and dragged them up through the town here right through what is downtown Castine now.

People lived here didn't have much choice but to go along with 'em.

Some of them were Tories anyway, loyal to King George.

And they helped them clear the land and build their Fort up there on top of the hill.

They called it Fort George after King George the Third, who was king 200 years ago.

They began digging trenches and erecting these palpets.

Weren't near as high as they are now, 'cause they didn't have time.

They say a man could jump over them, carrying a musket in his hand - [Narrator] While this was going on, word had reached the General Court of Massachusetts in Boston that the British had taken Bagadoos.

The court ordered a fleet of 45 ships, 22 armed in 23 transports, to make for Bagadoos.

Some 2000 ill-equipped and poorly trained soldiers and volunteers were to be placed under the overall command of Commodore Dudley Saltonstall of New Haven.

General Solomon Lovell of Waymouth, was in command of the land forces.

Second in command was General Pegleg Wadsworth, grandfather of poet, Henry Wadworth Longfellow.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere was given command of 100 artillery men and the cannons that they would use.

On July 19th, the fleet wait anchor for Townsend, now known as Boothbay Harbor, where it was to pick up 1200 men.

However, when the ships arrived, General Lovell found far less than that number and ordered military guards to round up the missing men.

Some of whom were brought in at gunpoint.

Still nearly a third of the men were never found and many of those who were brought in were said to be old men, young boys, and even invalids.

The American fleet finally made for Penobscot Bay on July 24th, they reached a Bagadoos on the following day - Right off fair at outside Castine Harbor that the American freet anchor on July 25th, the day before the British warned by their spies that the Americans were coming had boarded their three ships in Nautilus North and Albany, right in here between us and Nautilus Island.

David Stern told us that their broad Scouts could play on any attackers.

Navy Commander Mart, was a very brave and able man, he fought his ships well.

- [Narrator] Fort George wasn't much more than a square pile of dirt about waist high on a man, but the British had enough soldiers and sailors to defend it.

The Americans attempted to land a force on Dyce's Head, but because of strong winds, the landing boats couldn't return for reinforcement and the charge was called off.

Finally on July 28th, the Americans landed along the Western shores of the peninsula, assisted by a party of Marines.

Despite very steep cliffs, some 200 feet high, the Americans battled their way up and sent the British into retreat.

A British Lieutenant, John Moore, who later became a general and died in Corona, distinguished himself by calling out to his retreating detachment, "Will the Hamilton men leave me, come back and behave like soldiers."

Many did return and they inflicted heavy losses on the Americans.

In all, some 100 Americans were killed or wounded.

And the British suffered 68 killed or wounded.

- See that rock there, that's called Trask's Rock named after an American fifer boy who sheltered behind it, tide was lower then, played his fife to encourage the Americans during their attack.

They say he never missed a note.

After the Americans landed, they chased the British back to Fort George and attacked the fort with musketry and cannon from all sides.

Their plan was to take the fort while their ships nullified the British ships in the Harbor, but that never happened.

- Why not?

Were the Americans boat sunk by the British?

- No, but the British had to withdraw their ships up into the Harbor when the Americans took Nautilus Island and placed cannon on it.

But they were still there.

- [Narrator] Commodore Saltonstall was said to have been out of his league in this campaign.

Instead of attacking the British line of defense in the Harbor with his far superior numbers, Saltonstall worried over potential losses to his fleet, which was in large part made up of privateers.

Saltonstall was quoted as saying, "I will not take my ship into that damned hole."

He and the privateer owners voted repeatedly against a Naval attack.

And since an attack could only take place after a unanimous vote or at the order of the overall commander, nothing was done.

While the Americans were debating their next move, Intelligence reached the British command in New York that Bagadoos was under siege by the Americans.

Sir George Collier decided to take on the Americans with seven men of war, the Raisonnable, the Blonde, the Greyhound, the Virginia, the Camilla, the Galatia, and the Autumn.

Meanwhile at Bagadoo, General Lovell and his officers tried for 15 days to move Saltonstall to act, either by loaning them his Marines to ensure the success of a land action or by taking on the British fleet in the Harbor.

Finally on August 13th, Saltonstall agreed to attack Captain Henry Moak's British ships, the plan being to take or destroy them while Lovell's forces made a final attack on Fort George.

Once the ships have been taken, American Marines could then join their land forces in the attack on the Fort.

- By the time Sawtonstall made up his mind to attack, he got the word that the relieving British ships five of them, big ships, were coming up Penobscot Bay and he called it off.

He ordered the men out from their positions around Fort George and other places on the peninsula to hurry back to board their ships.

That was Friday, August 13th.

- [Narrator] There was considerable confusion at this point, as the American ships picked up their men and arms and waited for orders.

Commodore Saltonstall apparently had his fleet form a line across Penobscott Bay as if he intended to engage the five British attackers.

The British ships headed straight into the line, which quickly crumbled and fell apart.

The American fleet tried to out distance the much smaller British fleet by sailing up the Penobscot River away from trouble.

The Americans wanted to regroup, plan an attack, and then escape the British, but due to calm seas and a fast ebb tide, the fleet got badly strung out up the river.

And one after another, each ship's captain decided to abandon, sink, or blow up his ship rather than hand it over to the British.

- Did Americans run because they were scared?

- Well, they ran at first because they thought they could get reorganized up the river, but you could say they were scared.

They were mostly privateers.

They weren't used to this kind of fighting.

It didn't seem to be anyone in command anymore.

And they figured it was best to save themselves, rather than wait up the river somewhere, not knowing if Saltonstall or Lovell or other commanders would ever show up.

You see, for the past several weeks, the various commanders and ship captains had been arguing among themselves about just what they were to do and nobody could agree.

And by that time, nobody had any confidence anymore, and nobody knew who was in command exactly.

- [Narrator } The route was so complete that not one American ship was able to escape Penobscot Bay.

Instead, the ships were grounded on the west side of the Penobscot River, for the most part.

And the Americans made their way back home through the forest.

It was said that this was the worst Naval defeat of the Revolutionary War.

And for that matter, of any armed American campaign up until Pearl Harbor, ships lay abandoned and ruined in a trail all the way up the river to Bangor.

Penobscot River became a graveyard of Revolutionary War ships.

A Committee of the General Assembly in Boston was assigned the task of determining why the Penobscot Expedition failed.

And they came up with the following: - [Man 1] What appears to be the principle reason of the failure.

- [Man 2] Want of proper spirit and energy on the part of the Commodore.

- [Man 1] What in the opinion of this committee was the occasion of the total destruction of our fleet.

- [Man 2] Principally the Commodore's not exerting himself at all at the time of the retreat in opposing the enemy's foremost ships in pursuit.

- [Narrator] In fact, Saltonstall had passed his unarmed transports on his upstream retreat, leaving them at the mercy of the pursuing British.

He could have ordered his forces to take a stand and allow the transports and most of the other armed vessels to retreat and regroup up the river.

But his apparent concern for his own ship, led to the downfall of all.

In all, 18 armed vessels and 24 supply ships were lost.

The campaign cost the Massachusetts treasury more than $8 million.

Saltonstall was court marshaled and cashiered from the service.

It's said that he was presented with a wooden sword, the highest form of insult for a fighting man.

- What happened to Paul Revere?

- Well, Colonel Rivere was courtmarshaled too.

He was accused of ignoring the commanding officer's orders during the retreat and trying to save his personal belongings.

But the court decided that everyone was so confused during the retreat, that they let him go.

They acquitted him.

He'd done a pretty good job fighting his artillery, too, adding guns on Nautilus Island and here on the Peninsula.

But Paul Revere's reputation suffered for a long time after that because of his activities in the battle and afterward.

But then a funny thing happened, Aaron, General Pegleg Wadsworth's grandson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem, we all know so well, "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere."

And that's how we remember Paul Revere.

- [Narrator] As for General's Lovell and Wadsworth, they were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Bagadoos and Fort George remained in British hands for another four and a half years till 1784, when under the terms of the treaty of Paris, the region was handed over to the Americans.

Many of the town's residents followed the departing British to Halifax.

Still others took apart their homes and shipped them by barge to St. Andrews Nova Scotia, now New Brunswick where one still stands.

The Marine attack on Bagadoos will always be a victory toward which Patriots can point with pride.

The American forces did in the space of just four short weeks organize, fund, man and embark on the largest Naval enterprise the new world had ever experienced or was to experience again for over 100 years.

But there is no question that the Penobscot Expedition was a great disaster for Revolutionary America.

And it may weigh heavily on the minds of those who think that their country can do no wrong.

But after 200 years, this embarrassing episode long ignored is rightfully taking its place alongside America's more glowing moments in history.

(orchestral music) The Reeenactment of Penobscot expedition is a story all on its own.

Imagine if you will, the logistics of gathering together hundreds of revolutionary war buffs and their families in at least four different locations over four different weekends during the summer of 1979.

This was 200 years after the original expedition.

And each weekend was picked to come as close as possible to the original month and day.

(orchestral music) June 16th, there was the muster at Searsport for the British forces who were going to take Castine.

Troops from all over New England and several states around the country marched down to the pier early that morning to board a small flotilla of sailboats for the trip across Pinobscott Bay to Castine.

(instrumental music) On reaching the other side of the bay, they formed ranks on the Castine dock, beside the Maine maritime Academy's training ship, the Maine, and then they paraded up through town as did the original invaders.

(instrumental music) On top of the hill at Fort George, they marched in review before their Commanding Officer, Dr. Neil MacLean, playing the role of his ancestor, General Francis McLean.

(instrumental music) Later after one of the confrontations with the American forces MacLean talked about the people who painstakingly design and put together their own costumes and weapons and then drive hundreds of miles for a few hours in the past.

- Most of us in this type of activity really enjoy it.

It gives us an opportunity to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life of 1979, the rat race, so to speak.

This is an advocation for us.

It gives us an opportunity to forget those stresses and strains and worries of the 20th century and just drift back to a more easy, more relaxed way of life.

And as you can see, there's a smile on every face here today.

We truly enjoy this.

- [Narrator] Apparently some of the outfits worn by the reenactors cost upwards of $1000.

A close look at the craftsmanship and tailoring explains why.

Concern for authenticity is so high, that one group reportedly buys its wool from the same British company that supplied the original units.

(instrumental music) The second phase of the Penobscot Expedition was the gathering of American forces at Boothbay Harbor known as Townson 200 years ago.

(instrumental music) Aside from the parades and reviews, many of the participants camped out in revolutionary war style campgrounds.

This was June 25th.

A month later on July 28th, both groups of reenacters gathered in Castine for the highlight of the summer, the Battle of Castine.

American forces sailed and rode from Castine Harbor around the peninsula to Wadsworth Cove where they landed and were met by their British adversaries.

The original landing took place on Dyce's Head, a cliff face, but reenacters decided that authenticity could be carried too far sometimes.

So the beach was chosen instead.

(gun firing) Firing black powder in handmade weapons is a dangerous pastime under any circumstance, but firing the weapons with others nearby was caused for stringent safety rules.

All weapons had to be inspected by the safety officers for each company.

And the troops had to listen to and obey their commanding officers to avoid wild and indiscriminate use of weapons.

The safeguards proved worthwhile.

There were no injuries from black powder explosions during any of the confrontations.

(machine engine revving) From the beach, the troops marched up to Fort George and the main attack in defense of the Fort from positions originally taken 200 years before.

(instrumental music) (gun firing) The forts high walls lent themselves to some dramatic play acting as attackers and defenders confronted each other.

(gun firing) At first glance, it looked like the reenactment was an event planned and carried out by males for males, but many women took part in the planning and role playing too.

History doesn't show that women were among the attackers, but some women designed and made their own period costumes to play the part of Castine residents who ultimately helped the British and Americans, depending on which side controlled their homes at the time.

(upbeat music) The final confrontation on August 11th was played out in the waters and on the shores of Bucksport, several miles up river from Castine, an area in which many of the American ships were scuttled 200 years earlier.

Needless to say, the scuttling on this day was symbolic and no lives were lost.

Of all the roles portrayed in the reenactment, the hardest shoes to fit were those of Commodore Dudley Saltonstall, the rebel commander from New Haven.

When newspaper editor Richard Saltonstall came on the scene, he readily agreed to play his court marshaled ancestor, but in his defense, Saltonstall the younger said Saltonstall the elder was no coward or incompetent.

He just behaved rather badly that summer two centuries ago.

There's an ongoing part to the Penobscot Expedition story.

It involves the group of people who have over the past few years, recovered bits and pieces of one of the scuttled American ships.

The Defense, one of the 42 vessels captured or destroyed in the sea battle, went down in Stockton Harbor, a cooperative effort between the Maine Maritime Academy, the Maine State Museum, and the Institute of Nautical Archeology.

This project has saved dozens of artifacts, such as Pewter spoons, glass bottles, wood pieces of various sizes and uses, and even a copper cauldron from the cook stove.

By taking measurements of such pieces as this wooden stem, which came from the bow of the Defense, scientists are reconstructing the ship to scale for eventual display in the Maine State Museum.

The work so far has shown that among other things, many of the main timbers in the powder magazine were partially cut through to ensure that when the ship's powder was ignited, the stern would blow out and the ship would sink quickly.

- [Woman] Throwing things up and forward also.

- The wreck itself I think, is very important.

There are two puzzles to solve, not only the puzzle of construction, as we know there's little known about private vessels, but the other puzzle to solve is what was life like on board.

And what we're trying to do also is to understand, I guess a little bit of the underside of American history, American history at sea to know what seamen ate, how they ate, what they ate out of, where they lived, where they birthed.

- [Narrator] The work being done on the Defense is very much like the reenactment of the Penobscot Expedition, in some ways.

From available materials and historical writings, both groups of people have been able to piece together the story of the Penobscot Expedition and make it come alive again 200 years after it became history.

(instrumental music) - [Announcer] A production of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

- [Narrator] In the spring of 1779, the British established an anti-privateering base on the rocky headland of Castine along the eastern shore of Penobscot Bay.

The American colonists reacted immediately by sending a 43 vessel fleet to route the British.

The command of the American effort was divided between naval and land forces, which resulted in not being able to organize a combined attack against the British garrison.

When the British reinforcements arrived, they drove the disorganized rebel fleet up the Panobscot River.

To prevent capture by the British, the American vessels were scuttled by their crews.

Among the ships lost in the Penobscot expedition was the American brig, Defense.

This 16 gun privateer was only one year old when sunk and her remains have been preserved in the mud of Stockton Harbor, creating an underwater time capsule.

(soft music) - In 1972, the Maine Maritime Academy and MIT's ocean engineering department, searching for a student project to teach them how to search for things underwater, decided to use a wreck, the Defense, which history professor Dean Mayhew was after us to look for.

So we put together a side-scan sonar unit, home built and rather crude, and went out to look for it.

After a couple of weeks of searching, we, with this unit, found a number of targets.

One of them turned out to be the cook stove on the Defense and the other two, cannons on the Defense.

- Well, in 1975, I was a field school student myself working with George Bass and the American Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Yasayata on a fourth century Roman wreck, and it was out of this experience that I came to Maine, I guess, to participate in this excavation as the representative of the American Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

This is the first wreck in North America, or in fact, the western hemisphere, that the American Institute had excavated, or had begun to excavate.

And for three years, we'd been working as a fantastically, I think, efficient team because we have, in a sense, a unique organization as far as underwater archaeology is concerned in America.

We have a consortium set up, you might say, with Maine Maritime Academy handling the logistical support, the Maine State Museum providing conservation facilities, not only at the museum of Augusta, but also on-site.

And the American Institute doing the actual archaeology.

Archaeology, particularly underwater archaeology, I think is a very eclectic discipline and it requires all sorts of talent and, in this expedition, I think we have a good example of a myriad of and a wide variety of talent, ranging from photographers, naval architects, archaeologists, artists, biologists who are conducting an ecological survey of the bottom conditions as to find out what happens when a wreck is excavated, what happens to the wreck, what happens to the bottom, is there a change in the amount of life there?

And indeed, we have seen a progressive change, a progressive increase in the amount of sea life on the wreck during the three years that we've been excavating.

The wreck itself, I think, is very important.

There are two puzzles to solve, not only the puzzle of construction, as we know, there's little known about private vessels, but the other puzzle to solve is what was life like on board?

And what we're trying to do also is to understand, I guess, a little bit of the underside of American history, of American history at sea, to know what seamen ate, how they ate, what they ate out of, where they lived, where they birthed.

We are just beginning to get clues to this, the cook stove itself is a very, very impressive piece of structure.

It's an enigma itself because it's so large, larger than most cook stoves which are recorded.

So it's a rather rare item.

(scientists talking quietly) Often, wrecks are described as time capsules, and I think that sometimes it's a dangerous term, except when one is writing a grant proposal possibly.

It's a dangerous term because many wrecks are not capsules.

The wrecks are spread out, the wreckage extends over a wide area, sometimes all you have is random timbers and a few ballast stones.

But on this, it is indeed a time capsule, and it's very, very intriguing to be able to begin to say, to relate the artifact to the user.

What will be even more intriguing is when we find a muster list of the vessel because a number of the artifacts have initials on them and if we can find, indeed, that the man who owned two pewter spoons with a WR on them, if we can find his name, or if we can find the name of the person whose initials are AD carved in the base of a mess kit, we add a human dimension to this vessel, and I think in most instances of ship wrecks, a certain degree of the human dimension is added, but here we have a fantastic opportunity to relate not only unnamed people to their work or to their place aboard the ship, but we also have this opportunity, hopefully, if the muster list is still extant, to go even further and say that a certain person by this name served on this vessel.

- In 1973 the Maine State Museum first became very actively involved in the project of recovering preservation of artifacts from the Defense.

We became involved primarily because of state antiquities legislation and this law provides that all of the artifacts that are found on or beneath state-controlled lands or under state-controlled waters are the property of the people of the state of Maine.

And it is the museum's responsibility to preserve these artifacts for the people of the state and to develop displays, which we'll be doing in the very near future.

- This laboratory is not only for the Defense project, although the Defense project has been the major emphasis of the lab, this laboratory in conjunction with the laboratory in the main building of the Maine State Museum is the regional center for the state of Maine and provides regional conservation services to Maine.

In addition to the archaeological objects from the Defense and archaeological objects from throughout the state, we will very shortly be doing fine art objects here and in conjunction with the other laboratory being made available to historical societies throughout the state.

All the artifacts in this case are from the ship, Defense, and we can go into somewhat more detail about their preservation and their meaning in terms of an object and archaeological objects.

- [Stephen] As we're dealing with artifacts that have been recovered from a shipwreck, we deal primarily in terms of materials and material sciences.

- [Kenneth] For instance, the ceramic materials.

Some ceramics need desalinization, or the removal of salts, and other ceramics don't.

This small mug here is a low-fire mug and needed desalinization.

We believe in desalinating all the metals as a matter of course.

The pewter spoon handle with the initials adds what we think is the human dimension that Dave Switzer was talking about.

We're finding an enormous amount of bone, bone artifacts as well as just bones from the ship's stores that were up in the forward end of the boat.

We have here a handle from a knife that's also engraved with initials and the preservation process that we have worked out here is an adaptation of work that's been done in other parts of the world, but none exactly this way.

The metallic artifacts sometimes can yield more from their internal structure than from their obvious value.

The lead artifacts are very interesting.

This is an absolutely unique artifact of an apron that went over the breech end of the cannon to keep out the salt water from the hole where you'd touch the gun off itself.

There are very few others that exist, they're soft metal lead, they must have been melted down for scrap in cannon balls, they would have been easy to throw away.

We're very fortunate to have this one artifact still extant.

The microscope that I'm using here can be used in conservation to ascertain certain details or hidden facts about artifacts at times and we have used it to great success along with some help from industry in deciphering problems that we've come across in the artifacts from the Defense.

This particular sample is from the small buckle here.

By using the metallurgical microscope, we were able to find out that the buckle was originally made in two parts that were sandwiched together.

Scientific investigation is an important part of conservation.

Scientific investigation is an initial step in the treatment of many objects.

The conservator can learn from his investigation of the artifact clues or information that will assist him or her in the preservation and conservation of artifacts.

- We have two major problems diving on this particular site.

The first being the cold water, it's about an average of seven degrees Centigrade, or about 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

This we overcome by suiting the divers in heavy wetsuits and letting them stay underwater for only about 50 minutes.

We don't have a decompression problem here, so 50 minutes is perfectly acceptable.

After that, the divers would become too cold to work efficiently.

(scientists talk quietly) A lot of the work they're doing is fairly delicate work and fingers start cramping up and people are more interested in how cold they are then in the archaeological work that they're doing.

The second problem is lack of visibility.

On a really good day, we might have six foot visibility as the archaeologists proceed down into the water.

But upon reaching the bottom, which is only about 15, 20 feet deep here, they stir up the silt, light, silty mud that covers the wreck, and the visibility goes down to just a few inches, maybe three or four inches, and sometimes zero visibility.

This we overcome by experience and learning to function completely by feel.

Basically when the divers enter the water, they have to go over to some floats, which are attached to three different places on the wreck, and they go down the line, get to the wreck, and then move along oftentimes by feel to the site, the particular area they wanna work in, and start to work.

If they get off the wreck, by chance, generally they cannot find it again even though they may be only a couple feet away and they have to surface and go back to the floats and then go down the lines again.

Once on the bottom and working in this cold water with almost zero visibility, the divers are trying to excavate the ship, bringing the mud away from the wreck itself.

We do this with air lifts, they're four inch diameter PVC pipes in which we pump air.

As the air rises, it expands and accelerates and sucks water up with it.

The diver on the bottom end of that is excavating through the mud with his hands, letting the silt, the mud, sieve through his hands so he makes sure no artifacts or pieces of wood go up with it, and then lets the mud go up the air lift.

On the surface, it's sieved out, in case he did miss anything.

Once an artifact has been found or once the excavator has gotten to a part of the ship, measurements are taken, usually three measurements to get a good location in three dimensions.

Also sketches are made, and notes are taken about orientation of the ship, a part or the artifact.

This all will be used in the lab or office later in the winter, when we have time, to make a three dimension plan of the wreck itself, the ship, all the artifacts, just exactly where they were found, and their orientation, the relationship between these can tell an awful lot, give us a lot of history.

No one single piece alone means very much, but as they come together, they begin to tell us a story of how the vessel was built.

For instance, the piece that we brought up today, which was a part of the stem, with that, we hope to find some other pieces that are down there, and we'll bring these up, and if they fit together, the boat holes line up and the shapes line up, we should be able to tell how that stem is put together.

And as each of these little pieces fits together, we will eventually get a set of plans for the vessel and should know very, very closely how she was built and the design of her and the shape of her.

And we feel, right now, that she is a fairly sharp, fairly fast vessel, and fairly nice form, and it's very, very exciting from a naval architectural point of view to be working on.

- It is a structural timber, but from some part of the bow area, the stem, and that looks like it's starved in, but I think it's a little too soon to tell what it really is and it's also eroded.

- [Stephen] This is perhaps the most important and unique artifact that has been recovered to date from the wreck of the Defense.

This is the copper cauldron that was part of the internal portion of the cook stove and as it was brought up this year, or last summer, since then we've done a lot of conservation work on it.

The structure is very interesting, it is riveted fastened on the sides and at the base, and on the inside, there's a support, an additional support of iron that runs down along this axis and this provided a tremendous amount of additional conservation work for us because we had two different metals that had to be treated at the same time.

- The conservation that we've done to date primarily is removing the soluble salts from it that get into the metal while it's underwater.

We've also done some scientific investigation with the help of an industrial firm, Kennecott Copper, we did an analysis of the copper sheet and found that it was very heavily worked almost pure copper.

The heavy working is an interesting facet of this artifact because it means that the copper cauldron wasn't just sort of thrown together, some artisan or some artist worked on it for a long time and the next conservation step that we'll do is to remove the patent or corrosion material and try and find the maker's mark on the copper cauldron.

- In addition to the copper insert, there's an enormous amount of brick that's being recovered from the site and we hope that by the end of this field season to have most of this brick recovered.

Everything is being carefully maintained and we're going to be treating the bricks also so that we can reconstruct the entire artifact, the copper cauldron and the brick together in a museum display before too long.

In preservation, we use a freeze-drying technology for both the leather artifacts and the bone artifacts and also the wood artifacts and the wood constitutes a major portion of the material recovered from this wooden ship.

This freeze dried chamber was provided by National Endowment for the Arts and is a very sophisticated piece of equipment that's coming into regular use in food processing and general science industry.

We've found it very helpful to us for a number of reasons.

- [Kenneth] This is a process not normally used throughout the world, although centered in the Scandinavian countries.

There is no other freeze-drying technology for waterlogged wood in North America, ongoing right now.

And for that reason, we haven't been able to call upon our professional colleagues as we have in other areas.

And we've had to do our own legwork, so to speak, and we are within one month of the end of our final test to find out whether freeze-drying will work in our instance or not and if it does, the backlog of work that we've had for several years will be completely treated within another year because the freeze-drying technique for wood only takes about three months.

(scientists talking quietly) - [David Wyman] People ask, "Who's doing all this work?

Who's doing the excavation?"

And indeed, the excavation is being done by field school students.

We have 10 field school students this year coming from all over the United States, various colleges and universities ranging from people's home, as far away as California, Texas, Philadelphia.

People whose academic interests are varied, ranging from anthropology to archaeology to history.

People who are very, very interested in underwater work, not necessarily always archaeology, but want to utilize this experience to possibly enhance their own academic background.

This is school, partly, for students in Nordic archaeology or history and these people oftentimes are not experienced, they've just learned how to dive.

So we pair them up with more experienced people so that the more experienced people can show them how to do things first.

And then after a short while, let the new people try out, try their hand at excavating and measuring and sketching, and sometimes even accompanying the bosses, the photographers, as they make their close-in wide angle photographic runs.

They learn, they try it out, and always under the watchful eye or the feeling hand, when the visibility goes down, of more experienced people so that they learn properly and the information is gotten correctly.

We deal mostly with, I should say always with, people in the field of archaeology, history, because they're more aware of the problems involved in taking the measurements correctly and making proper sketches and handling the artifacts and the ship correctly, very gently mostly.

Because they know what's going on, they know what has to be done, and they have an inner desire to do it, they're not just doing it because they were told to do it.

Normally, we use two divers.

They go down in a buddy team for safety.

The close working quarters of working in the hull only allow one person, usually, to work, and the other person has to watch or, in poor visibility, feel the other working.

This is generally done for safety.

Also, as a check on the newer divers to make sure that they are doing things properly.

- [David Switzer] When we look for field school students, we're not interesting in simply people who want to dive, they must be qualified, they must be certified, but we were looking for people who can put up with what becomes, after a while, a fairly monotonous routine.

We always laugh at about the third week that the field school lasts six weeks and that the third week was always a critical time because suddenly those 25 tanks that have to be offloaded from the boat and onto the truck and off to the filling station and back again, a certain aspect of the romance is gone.

But it's important to note that the success of this expedition in the past three years has been due to the fact that we have been fortunate to have people who have been very, very intense in their interest, who have worked hard, we log a lot of hours underwater, each year we seem to log more.

Just the other day I looked in the logbook and we had logged 16 person hours underwater, from we leave here at eight o'clock, get to the site at nine, and work until 4:30.

Dives are limited to about 40 minutes.

And so, the brunt of the excavation is done by field school students who pay to be slaves, I guess you might say.

- Okay, the project is important to Maine Maritime Academy from a couple of points of view.

One is we're interested in history, and we teach our students history, and this is a very important part of it.

In fact, this battle is one of the battles that is talked about in our history courses.

Also, we're teaching people about operating ships.

And the more they understand about how ships are built and the way that they developed and so on, the better able they will be to operate them.

And so, this project is giving some of our students an opportunity to study the ships more closely.

In fact, one of our field school students this summer is a Maine Maritime Academy student who is very interesting in naval architecture.

The Defense is a very important artifact from the point of view that she is one of only two that we know of presently that survived the American Revolutionary War.

The Philadelphia, which was a small gun boat, and not a very elaborately built vessel, survives, and then this one, which is quite a fine example of a privateer built during the Revolutionary War.

And from this, we should get some very detailed plans on how she's constructed and hopefully, in the future, we'll be able to build a replica to these plans.

(scientists talking quietly) - [Warren] This wreck is important, not only to the archaeologists and historians involved, but also to the people of Maine, to the people of Massachusetts, New England, and to Americans, I guess, in general.

It's part of our history, it's an important ship which covers many different aspects of history.

First it was built in Massachusetts during the revolution.

By studying its construction, we have a good idea of what some of the problems were for a shipwright and possibly, or probably, for any industry during the revolution.

Have a labor problem, which was shown that a lot of shortcuts were taken, a lot of labor-saving methods of construction were used, whereas expensive material was used to make up for the saving labor.

Also the ship was thrown together rather rapidly and this goes along with the theories that the privateers were constructed quickly, not to last for 20 or 30 years like a normal ship, but just to last for a few years because chances are she'd be wrecked in a storm, or captured, or blown up by the British.

We have the pride of Massachusetts in having made her.

We have the heritage of Maine and that the battle took place in Maine.

And many of the people living along the coast are descendants from people who were in the battle or were possibly even crewmen on the ship.

- Many people ask us, "How much does it cost?

Have you found any money?"

That's always a question, "Have you found any money?"

And we say no, and sometimes when we bring the artifacts ashore, they look in the tanks and bits of pieces of wood, and they say... (David tuts) You know, and go away across, and wonder what we're doing, and why it's important.

And I think it's important because it provides, I think we always should be interested in our past and archaeology is, in a sense, a part of history, it provides the solid base of history.

It provides more than simply the written word.

And I think it gives us an insight into our own past.

Certainly this particular naval engagement, if indeed a naval engagement is the proper word for the salt and stall defeat, or the Penobscot defeat.

This is something which is rarely spoken about in the textbooks, in history books, it's only since the bicentennial that there's been much interest in it.

It was the largest combined military and naval effort of the Revolutionary War on the American part.

It was a disaster and I think sometimes it's good to see the other side of our past because I think it gives us some perspective on the present.

And 200 years, it's not ancient, it's fairly close to us and I think we can relate to it and hopefully when the artifacts go on display, they won't be displayed simply as artifacts because an artifact, you know, a cannonball is a cannonball is a cannonball, and the display should be interpretive, so people get a feeling for not only the wreck itself but a feeling for the past.

- [Narrator] From the muddy bottom of a quiet cove in Maine's Penobscot Bay is coming new knowledge about our maritime heritage.

This information is being recorded and cataloged through the efforts of the dedicated conservators involved in the Defense project.

The artifacts lifted from their watery resting place are being restored using innovative methods in the field of archaeological conservation.

The work is not finished, the divers will return to the waters of Stockton Harbor.

Young archaeologists, anthropologists, historians will learn first-hand the techniques of underwater archaeology.

Conservators around the world will benefit from the new techniques invented and refined by the project staff.

And we will continue to learn about a way of life that, til now, has only been speculated upon.

(soft music)