Thomas J. Oertling

The Denbigh Project: Test excavations at the wreck of an American Civil War blockade-runner

The wreck of the Denbigh , one of the most successful and famous blockade-runners of the American Civil War (1861-5), was located and recorded near Galveston in Texas in 1997. The vessel was built in 1860 as a coastal paddle steamer by Laird,Sons & Co.of Birkenhead (Merseyside, England), and incorporated all the latest features of design and technology. After three years as a passenger steamer on the Irish Sea the Denbigh sailed for Cuba, where she worked as a blockade-runner taking material to and from the Confederate South from early 1864 until her grounding and destruction by Union forces on 23-4 May 1865. This paper provides updated findings on the ships history and covers the 1999 test excavation phase of an underwater archaeology project to investigate the wreck. As a case-study in historical archaeology the Denbigh Project seeks to integrate documentary, pictorial and material evidence in a way which provides a model for future investigations of shipwrecks of the recent historic past.