Month: October 2017

Photo courtesy Dr. Jennifer McKinnon, ECU Program in Maritime Studies

People always say this, but I really was honored to be invited to speak to the alumni, faculty, and especially current graduate students in the Program in Maritime Studies, from which I graduated myself, 19 years ago. The two professors who taught my maritime history surveys back in ’96 and ’97 were both in the audience. Neither of them fell asleep or chided me afterwards. I’ll take that.

We were there to celebrate 35 years of this unique program, of which I’m proud to be an alumnus. My remarks were intended as an endorsement of the founders’ vision, based on my own experience doing maritime history at the professional level. Dr. Still and Dr. Watts were absolutely right; we can’t advance maritime historical scholarship without an inter-disciplinary toolkit based on training in history, archaeology, anthropology, and material culture.

I met some cool new people and re-connected with some cool old people (and some that aren’t quite old, but working on it–like me).

If you’d like to know more about the Program in Maritime Studies at East Carolina, click here to explore.

Happy 35th to a bunch of hard-working, hard-playing pirates.

“It’ ain’t Club Med…” –Dr. Brad Rodgers, Director

We had a great turnout Sunday evening (10/22/17) at The Lyceum in Alexandria for “The Ship IS the Treasure: Why Alexandria’s Eighteenth-Century Ship is Important,” an invited talk I gave for the City of Alexandria and the Friends of Alexandria Archaeology to help raise funds for the conservation and preservation of the unusually-well-preserved hull remains found at the construction site of the new Hotel Indigo on the city’s waterfront in January of last year.

My role was to explain to folks why the study of these remains is important for our ongoing attempt to understand ordinary merchant ship technology in our world in this period–a subject swimming in murkier waters than even some maritime historians realize. Judging by the questions we discussed afterward, and the obvious interest of the audience, I’m confident that those who were there will spread the word and support for this project will grow.

If you’d like to follow the progress of the conservation, you can do that via the site created by the conservators at Texas A&M University here. If you’d like to consider supporting the project, please visit Save Our Ship to find out more and make your contribution.

If you’d like to contact me about an invited talk, please see the Contact page for my e-mail address. And thanks for visiting!