Shipwreck Weekend is an annual open house hosted by the Nautical Archaeology Program (NAP) during the spring semester (sometimes during Texas A&M’s Family Weekend in April). It is a student-run event in which all NAP laboratories are open to the public.
History
Shipwreck Weekend began in the late1990s as a public outreach initiative spearheaded by Barto Arnold, former State Marine Archaeologist at the Texas Historical Commission (THC), and Director of the Denbigh project. The Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 requires states to provide the public with appropriate levels of access to historic shipwrecks in state waters. However, Texas has strict regulations protecting its pre-1900 shipwrecks, so Shipwreck Weekend provided an opportunity for the public to learn about shipwrecks in Texas and around the world without posing any threat to material culture.
Events
A typical Shipwreck Weekend includes open access to the various laboratories (Old World, New World, Ship Reconstruction, Conservation Research) of the Nautical Archaeology Program and the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation. The offices of the non-profit Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) are also accessible and home to a book sale featuring reduced prices on nautical titles published by Texas A&M University Press. Visitors learn more about shipwreck archaeology though kid-friendly exhibits and activities that may include 3D scanning, mini excavations, scavenger hunts, breathing from a SCUBA tank, and building ship models. Each year, an invited guest gives a public lecture about their own current research or fieldwork.
Some of the many previous Shipwreck Weekend Speakers include:
- 2025 – Tamara Thomsen (Wisconsin Historical Society) – Great Lakes Archaeology
- 2024 – Jennifer McKinnon (East Carolina University) – Battlefield Archaeology in the Pacific
- 2023 – Pat Turner (Southampton University) – Digital Shipwreck Reconstruction
- 2020 – John Hale (University of Louisville) – Tracing the Fate of Empires: Roman and Islamic Shipwrecks at Caesarea Maritima, Israel
- 2019 – Charles Dagneau (Parks Canada) – The Archaeology of the Ill-Fated 1845 Franklin Expedition in Search of a North-West Passage
- 2018 – Kimberly Kenyon (North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources) – Queen Anne’s Revenge Project
- 2017 –Cemal Pulak, Christopher Dobbs, Fred Hocker, and John Bruseth – The Ships that Changed History Symposium
- 2015 – William Murray (University of South Florida) – Reconstructing Ancient Mediterranean Warships
- 2012 – Benjamin Rennison (Clemson Conservation Research Laboratory) – H.L. Hunley
- 2011 – Cheryl Ward (Coastal Carolina University)– Building Pharoah’s Ship: Cedar, Incense, and Sailing the Great Green
