In 1781, five years before
Lynchburg became a town along the banks of the James River, this bottle came to
rest at the bottom of the York River as a kind of sunken treasure from the
American Revolution. The original ledger of the Lynchburg Historical Society
(predecessor of today’s Lynchburg Museum System) offers us these clues to create
a kind of map for following the story of our 18th century treasure:
identified as a rum bottle taken from a British ship sunk at Yorktown, raised
after 154 years by the government, and credited to the Mariner’s Museum in
Newport News, VA. With these clues, we began to try to track this bottle’s
course from a British vessel in the Yorktown harbor to our collection in
Lynchburg.
Cornwallis’ Doomed Fleet:
The British Situation at Yorktown (1781)
Lord Cornwallis, commander
of British forces in the South, had hopes of decisively crushing the rebel war
effort in Virginia, a significant colony in terms of size, economics, and
influence. In August 1781, Cornwallis occupied Yorktown, having his troops
fortify on land while he anchored his fleet of 5 warships, approximately 50
transports and armed merchantmen, as well as numerous captured vessels and
other small craft in the harbor. Marching his troops south to confront
Cornwallis at Yorktown, General Washington requested aid from French Admiral de
Grasse, who sailed his fleet of nearly 30 warships to the Chesapeake Bay in
late August. Although Yorktown had seemed to offer strategic promise for the
British, this Virginia port ultimately became a trap that would compel the greatly
outmatched Cornwallis to send many of his vessels to the river bottom (1).
Throughout September and
into October, Sir Henry Clinton kept assuring Cornwallis that he would receive
reinforcements, but the situation at Yorktown became increasingly more
desperate. Cornwallis scuttled about 12 of his ships to obstruct a French
landing and employed other vessels as fire ships, trying to repel the French. On
October 9, the American and French forces began their siege on Yorktown, which
opened with heavy assaults on British vessels in the harbor. As the Americans
and French made gains on land and sea, the British began destroying their
equipment and ships rather than allow them to aid the advancing enemy. On October
19, 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his forces, which constituted one third
of all British troops in North America. When he surrendered, almost his entire
fleet of more than 55 vessels lay sunken in the York River (2).
Buried Treasure from the
Revolution: Underwater Recovery Efforts
After the British surrender
at Yorktown, the French recovered some of the sunken material. However, most of
Cornwallis’ fleet remained largely untouched until the 20th century.
First, in 1934-1935, the Mariners' Museum and Colonial National Historical Park
recovered many objects, including ship timber, cannon, tools, and bottles.
According to our ledger, this bottle spent over 150 years in the York River
before being pulled from the wreckage during this first salvage effort. See several images of the 1930s recovery effort in the Mariners' Museum Image Collection. Many
years spent in the river water account for how a green bottle could acquire
this marbled appearance. To see other glass bottles recovered in 1934, check out this image of 18th century bottles in the Mariners' Museum collection. This
early recovery effort predated the development of modern scuba technology, and unfortunately,
it did not yield precise information the location of each shipwreck and where
artifacts were recovered. Nearly 40 years would pass before researchers
revisited the York River to carefully document the sunken fleet and its
contents (3).
In the 1970s, renewed
interest in the sunken British fleet helped the area between Yorktown and
Gloucester Point to become Virginia’s first underwater historic site and to be
recognized by the National Register of Historic Places. Utilizing remote-sensing
investigations and bottom searches, the Yorktown Shipwreck Archaeological
Project located nine shipwrecks from the Battle of Yorktown within the National
Register boundaries (4). Among these
vessels was the British brig Betsy,
which helped transport provisions and men and served as a “floating factory” on
which the British could begin to build fortifications before delivering them to
land (5).
As a kind of cross between tales
of Indiana Jones archaeology and of sunken treasure from a high seas adventure,
the story of Cornwallis’ sunken fleet told by this small glass bottle offers us
fascinating insight into America’s past and the efforts made to study and
preserve it.
- John D. Broadwater, “Naval Battlefields as Cultural Landscapes: The Siege of Yorktown,” in The Historical Archaeology of Military Sites: Method and Topic, ed. Clarence R. Geier, Lawrence E. Babits, and Douglas D. Scott (College Station: Texas A&M, 2010), 181; Jim Eccleston, "Events Leading to the Siege of Yorktown," National Parks Service: Yorktown Battlefield (1993), http://www.nps.gov/york/historyculture/eventstoyorktown.htm (accessed 9 August 2013).
- Broadwater, 181-2; Jim Eccleston, "Chronology of the Siege of Yorktown," National Parks Service: Yorktown Battlefield (1993), http://www.nps.gov/york/historyculture/siegetimeline.htm (accessed 9 August 2013).
- John F. Blair, Jamestown, Williamsburg, Yorktown: The Official Guide to America’s Historic Triangle (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2007), 192; Broadwater, 183; "The Mariners' Museum Opens Sea Glass: Pieces from the Collection, http://www.marinersmuseum.org/visitor-information/mariners-museum-opens-sea-glass-pieces-collection (accessed 9 August 2013).
- Broadwater, 183.
- Broadwater, 185.
