Recovery To Curation by Geoff Chapman

The perception of a modern day salvor or treasure hunter has been portrayed as a hapless band of marauders, pillaging the cultural resources of our maritime heritage. The reality is something entirely different. Years of hands on experience and experimentation has evolved into an archaeological and environmentally sensitive procedure that creates a massive amount of data on each artifact recovered.

Working with the appropriate agencies of government, today's salvors prepare an environmental assessment of the areas to be worked to insure that environmentally sensitive areas are avoided. Once permits have been issued detailing the types of equipment that can be used, the modern day salvor travels to the site to begin non intrusive electronic survey's to locate possible cultural deposits. When a potential site has been located, the salvage vessel is secured using a three or four point mooring system and it's location plotted using DGPS satellite positioning systems.

Once secured, depending on the bottom conditions, a determination of methodologies to be used is calculated. For the purposes of this example we are going to use a hard packed sand and mud as the revenant bottom features. To effectively remove overburden, a prop wash deflector or "Mail Box" is utilized. This simple devise that redirects prop wash through a 90 degree angle tube was invented by Mel Fisher and has proven to be extremely effective. This devise is used by several coastal state governments and independent marine archaeologists as well.

After the area has been dusted, divers using metal detectors survey the area for possible metallic anomalies or visually locate cultural materials that have been uncovered. Using the circle search approach, divers do a through search and survey of the dusted area. Once an anomaly is located, a four inch airlift is used to excavate the remaining over burden and expose the cultural deposit. Again for the purposes of this example we will use the three pewter spoons recently discovered on the artifact trail of the Atocha.

Upon bringing the artifacts to the search vessel, they are immediately tagged and logged into the "Daily Field Note and Activity Log." Each artifact is numbered and the area, latitude, longitude, bottom terrain features, water depth, quantity and description are recorded. The artifacts are then placed in secure storage in fresh or salt water depending of the type of materials recovered for transport to the conservation facilities.

Immediately upon returning to port the artifacts are checked in by a conservator and entered into the computer artifact data base. Each artifact is then photographed, measured, and weighed and an individual tracking sheet is created for each artifact. Once this process has been completed, an artifact curation and stabilization process is determined. In the case of the pewter spoons, Anodic Stripping and Cathodic Stripping are employed to stabilize the spoons to insure proper conservation. These processes had to be reversed every hour for the next forty eight hours. Once stabilized, the artifacts are again photographed and all treatments logged onto the artifact tracking data base.

Artifacts recovered from a wreck such as the Atocha are under the jurisdiction of the Federal District Courts sitting in Admiralty. The salvor acts as substitute custodian for the U.S. Marshals office until the annual adjudication of title and a salvage award is granted by the district court to the salvor. The salvor must submit to the district court complete records of all recoveries for the year and present the actual artifacts to the court for inspection prior to adjudication. After adjudication of title, the process of creating a "Certificate of Authenticity" for each artifact is undertaken. This process insures that each artifact will be, once again, certified as having come from the specific wreck or wreck site identified by the Federal District Court and it's authenticity protected for all time.

Far from marauding rogues, professional salvors spend countless hours and tremendous amounts of money to insure the integrity of each and every artifact recovered from a shipwreck site. It is these very artifacts that fill maritime museums around the world and provide the basis for the foundation of preserving the majority of our unique maritime heritage, and guarding this heritage for all future generations to learn from and enjoy.