 | |
| Formation | 2005 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Kenneth Stewart, Brenda Lanzendorf |
| Type | Nonprofit |
| Purpose | Maritime archaeology, focused on research of the Atlantic slave trade |
| Location |
|
| Website | divingwithapurpose |
Diving With a Purpose (DWP) is an American non-profit organization aimed at locating and documenting shipwrecks, predominantly those related to the Atlantic slave trade. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Diving With a Purpose was founded in 2005 by Kenneth Stewart (born 1944/45), [5] a retired copier repairman [6] with the Tennessee Aquatic Project and the National Association of Black Scuba Divers, and Brenda Lanzendorf (1958–2008), [7] a maritime archaeologist at Biscayne National Park. [2] They met during the filming of the 2004 documentary The Guerrero Project, a film chronicling efforts to locate the wreck of Spanish slave ship Guerrero, which are still ongoing, [1] although a likely candidate has since been discovered. [8] [9]
DWP was featured in 2020 television documentary series Enslaved, featuring DWP member Kramer Wimberley [10] , starring and produced by Samuel L. Jackson. [11] It is also the subject of a 2021 documentary titled Lessons from the Water: Diving with a Purpose by filmmaker Charles Todd. [12]
Roughly 300 divers have participated in Diving With a Purpose's maritime archaeology program since its foundation. The program includes one week of training and requires some prior experience, [1] [13] with the stated aim of training divers to become "able to assist in the historical documentation and preservation of artifacts and wreck sites". [14] An offshoot program directed at a younger audience entitled Youth Diving With a Purpose (YDWP) was introduced in 2011. [1] [15]
The group has been involved with the discovery or documentation of numerous [lower-alpha 1] shipwrecks, including the São José Paquete Africa [17] [18] and the Clotilda. [1] [19] Other activities of the organization have included the location and mapping of plane wrecks related to the Tuskegee Airmen in the Great Lakes. [20] [21] A memorial site in Port Huron, Michigan, was constructed in 2021. [22] [23]
Diving With a Purpose has worked or is working with groups and federal agencies including NOAA, [24] the National Park Service (NPS), [25] [26] the Society of Black Archaeologists, [27] [28] and the Slave Wrecks Project, a collaboration between DWP, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, the NPS, George Washington University, Iziko South African Museum, and the South African Heritage Resources Agency. [29]
Underwater archaeology is archaeology practiced underwater. As with all other branches of archaeology, it evolved from its roots in pre-history and in the classical era to include sites from the historical and industrial eras.
A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately three million shipwrecks worldwide as of January 1999, according to Angela Croome, a science writer and author who specialized in the history of underwater archaeology.
Wreck diving is recreational diving where the wreckage of ships, aircraft and other artificial structures are explored. The term is used mainly by recreational and technical divers. Professional divers, when diving on a shipwreck, generally refer to the specific task, such as salvage work, accident investigation or archaeological survey. Although most wreck dive sites are at shipwrecks, there is an increasing trend to scuttle retired ships to create artificial reef sites. Diving to crashed aircraft can also be considered wreck diving. The recreation of wreck diving makes no distinction as to how the vessel ended up on the bottom.
The Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) is a charity registered in England and Wales and in Scotland and is a company limited by guarantee.
Treasure hunting is the physical search for treasure. For example, treasure hunters try to find sunken shipwrecks and retrieve artifacts with market value. This industry is generally fueled by the market for antiquities. The practice of treasure-hunting can be controversial, as locations such as sunken wrecks or cultural sites may be protected by national or international law concerned with property ownership, marine salvage, sovereign or state vessels, commercial diving regulations, protection of cultural heritage and trade controls.
The archaeology of shipwrecks is the field of archaeology specialized most commonly in the study and exploration of shipwrecks. Its techniques combine those of archaeology with those of diving to become Underwater archaeology. However, shipwrecks are discovered on what have become terrestrial sites.
James Preston Delgado is a maritime archaeologist, historian, maritime preservation expert, author, television host, and explorer.
The Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom that provides protection for the wreckage of military aircraft and designated military vessels. The Act provides for two types of protection: protected places and controlled sites. Military aircraft are automatically protected, but vessels have to be specifically designated. The primary reason for designation is to protect as a 'war grave' the last resting place of British servicemen ; however, the Act does not require the loss of the vessel to have occurred during war.
David A. Bright was an American underwater explorer and diver. He was the president of the Nautical Research Group, which he founded in 2003, and an avid contributor to documentaries on shipwrecks.
The Lofthus is a Norwegian shipwreck near Boynton Beach, Florida, United States. Built in 1868 in Sunderland, England by T.R. Oswald, the 222-foot iron-hulled vessel was originally christened Cashmere and rigged as a three masted barque. She was painted with false gunports to ward off Sumatran and Javanese pirates. After a career in the East Indian trade Cashmere was sold to a Norwegian firm, renamed Lofthus, and used in the American trade. On February 4, 1898, the Lofthaus wrecked in a storm en route to Buenos Aires, Argentina from Pensacola, Florida. The crew of 16 men, as well as the ship's cat and dog were rescued by the passing vessel Three Friends, which was smuggling guns to Cuba. The ship, however, was declared a loss as it could not be removed from the shallow reef. The cargo, primarily lumber, was salvaged and brought ashore by locals and reportedly used to build homes in the Boynton Beach area.
MS Zenobia was a Swedish-built Challenger-class RO-RO ferry launched in 1979 that capsized and sank in the Mediterranean Sea, close to Larnaca, Cyprus, in June 1980 on her maiden voyage. She now rests on her port side in approximately 42 meters (138 ft) of water and was named by The Times, and many others, as one of the top ten wreck diving sites in the world.
Sinking ships for wreck diving sites is the practice of scuttling old ships to produce artificial reefs suitable for wreck diving, to benefit from commercial revenues from recreational diving of the shipwreck, or to produce a diver training site.
The SS Vienna was built in 1873 during the era when steamers were built with sail rigging. She had a 19 year career marked with maritime incidents including sinking when she was just 3 years old. She sank for her final time in fair weather in Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior after she received a mortal blow when she was inexplicably rammed by the steamer Nipigon. Although there were no deaths when the Vienna sank for the last time, more than 100 years later her wreck claimed the lives of 4 scuba divers, the most of all the wrecks in the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve that now protects her as part of an underwater museum. Her wreck was stripped of artifacts that resulted in the Michigan Department of Natural Resources seizing her artifacts in a raid on the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in 1992. Her artifacts are now on display in this museum as loan from the State of Michigan.
Captain Trevor Jackson is an Australian technical diver, shipwreck researcher, author and inventor. In 2002 he staged what became known as the "Centaur Dive", which subsequently led to the gazetted position of the sunken Hospital Ship AHS Centaur being questioned. Jackson is the inventor of the 'Sea Tiger' lost diver location system, and an author on the subject of wreck diving.
The Henry Chisholm was a wooden freighter that sank off the shore of Isle Royale in Lake Superior in 1898 and the remains are still on the lake bottom. The wreck was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
Guerrero was a Spanish slave ship that wrecked in 1827 on a reef near the Florida Keys with 561 Africans aboard. Forty-one of the Africans drowned in the wreck. Guerrero had been engaged in a battle with a British anti-slavery patrol ship, HMS Nimble, stationed on the northern approaches to Cuba. Nimble also ran onto the reef, but was refloated and returned to service. The two ships were attended by wreckers, who rescued the Spanish crew and surviving Africans from their ship and helped refloat Nimble. Spanish crew members hijacked two of the wrecking vessels and took almost 400 Africans to Cuba, where they were sold as slaves. Most of the remaining Africans were eventually returned to Africa.
The Society for Underwater Historical Research (SUHR) was an amateur maritime archaeology organisation operating in South Australia (SA). It was formed in 1974 by recreational scuba divers and other persons to pursue an interest in maritime archaeology and maritime history. The SUHR was renamed as the South Australian Archaeology Society in March 2012 as part of a plan to expand its activities beyond maritime archaeology to include other archaeological disciplines.
Save Ontario Shipwrecks (SOS) is a Provincial Heritage Organization in Ontario, Canada. SOS is a public charitable organization which operates through Local Chapter Committees supported by a Provincial Board of Directors and Provincial Executive.
This page lists major archaeological events of 2015.
Valerie Olson van Heest is an American author, explorer, and museum exhibit designer. She is co-founder of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association.