Maritime archaeology in Australia developed as a response to shipwreck looting in Sydney with the wreck of the Dunbar, followed by the spectacular violation of Dutch East India Company and British colonial wrecks off the coast of Western Australia. Destruction of wreck sites and legal battles over artifact ownership brought about the national Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976, followed by State legislation either as separate acts (e. g., South Australia Historic Shipwrecks Act 1981) or incorporated into general heritage legislation.
Shipwrecks continue to be found, such as that of the convict ship Hive in 1835 in Jervis Bay (NSW). However, the online Australian National Historic Shipwreck Database, set up in 1988 by AIMA and now federally run, now contains well over 6500 wrecks, approaching some 98% of those known. This is supplemented by online lists from State maritime heritage agencies, which give location maps, maintained by Department of the Environment and Heritage. Amateur diving enthusiasm ensures that dive heritage trails get continuing support around Australia and beyond: maritime research themes have also expanded well beyond wreck excavation.
The research potential of wreck cargoes, often tightly dated with detailed records, to provide information about consumer demands as well as intercolonial trade routes, risks, and practices across half the known world is now being realized. The Sydney Cove, wrecked in the Bass Strait with ceramics from Canton in 1797 and the wooden casks on board the William Salthouse wrecked in 1841 bound for Melbourne, have opened up this field. The investigation of the manufacture and stowage of the 36 casks (containing flour, salted provisions, nails, and various liquids) is one example of such archaeological enquiry. The scholarly publication of the Eglinton cargo adds background to what colonists wanted for their mansions in 1852.
There are wider questions to be asked of the wrecks themselves. What can be learned about eighteenth to nineteenth century preparation of vessels for these long voyages of exploration and survey? At any given time, what shipboard conditions did immigrants to Australia have to endure? More specifically what can be learned from the scanty remains of HMS Sirius, flagship of the first fleet, wrecked off Norfolk Island in 1789, or from the more numerous artifacts of the HMS Pandora wrecked in 1791 after involvement with the Bounty mutineers. Maritime research has also moved on-shore, where investigation extends to shore bases of fishing and pearling in the north, also the archaeology of shore-whaling and sealing, now the subject of a well-funded collaborative research project in southern Australia and New Zealand. Centered in Flinders University, it is studying the physical remains of social behavior in remote locations as well as whaling industry technology and economics. Shipwreck survivor camps are a new area of investigation, offering the potential for archaeological insights into group behavior in such extreme conditions. A surviving example, well-known from historical texts, is the Sydney Cove camp on Preservation Island described by Strachan. Another is that from the French whaler Perseverant (1841).
World History
