Salt Cay Round 3
In July we returned to Salt Cay for our third expedition. This time, we brought with us a group of nine students and filmmaker Peter Kelly who is currently making a documentary about our research in the Turks Islands. Together with our friends Richard and Elliott from Salt Cay Divers, we spent two weeks exploring and documenting archaeological sites on and around Salt Cay and neighboring islands.
This season, the focus was largely on documenting sites found last year. We finally managed to map and document the shipwreck site on Great Sand Cay. Located in a shallow bay on the windward side of the island, the site consists of wreckage scattered over a large area. The team documented numerous copper nails, iron bolts, and timbers. We think these are washed into the bay from the outer reef, where this ship originally wrecked. It is likely that some of the wreckage is located on the reef, but due to the heavy surf we were not able to investigate this further. Maybe we’ll get lucky next year.
Another site we started to investigate was located on Salt Cay’s northeastern tip. Last year, we discovered an anchor winch, hawse pipe, and several metal ribs on the beach. We documented these artifacts and conducted a snorkel survey in shallow water in order to locate more parts of the wreck. After extensive archival research, our student Kirby managed to identify the wreck and we now have a plan to investigate the submerged part of the site in more detail next season.
We also finished the survey of the anchorage area on Cotton Cay, where we mapped several additional artifacts. A small team, led by Joost, went into the interior of this uninhabited island in order to map terrestrial archaeological remains. In addition, we carried out a survey of the pre-Columbian site by the beach in order to determine its extent and integrity of archaeological remains. There is much more to do on Cotton Cay, but these investigations have already started to provide us with a clearer picture of human activities on the island over the past six centuries.
While we had many exciting days this season, the absolute highlight was a day at the HMS Endymion’s wreck site. This year, we had perfect conditions, with crystal clear water and no current for two dives. We managed to document the anchors, cannons, and several newly exposed small finds that were not noted previously. We also created another 3D model in order to document any changes to the site over the past few years. In addition, we started a survey of the surrounding area which houses another shipwreck from the early 20th century. We hope to return next year to start the documentation of this wreck and continue the investigation of Endymion.
In addition to all this exciting field research, we also had plenty of outreach activities with the local community. At the museum in Grand Turk, we organized a workshop for children so they could learn about archaeological field methods. On Salt Cay, we organized a trivia night and of course we gave a presentation on our research results on the last night. The people on Salt Cay were happy to see us and we were very glad to be back. It always feels like coming home and we hope to continue our research for years to come. A big thank you to everyone on Salt Cay for making this a great season, to Peter for all his efforts in creating the documentary, and to our students Kirby, Katherine, Hayden, Hailey, Brandy, Joe, Saydie, Cammryn, and Pete!
