Brunswick Town Sonar Survey

In July 2021, we partnered with the NC Underwater Archaeology Branch to survey the submerged bottomlands adjacent to the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson Historic Site.

In the summer of 2021, I was part of a team from East Carolina University (ECU) that joined with the NC Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) to run a remote sensing survey in the Cape Fear River, North Carolina. The UAB had a newly acquired Edgetech 4125-SAR sonar, and wanted to get the system dialed in before taking it out to survey remote waterways in the state. Assistant State Archaeologist, Stephen Atkinson, had met during my time at the Queen Anne's Revenge (QAR) Conservation Lab and I knew the rest of the UAB team from our work on the QAR shipwreck site from 2013-2015. Stephen and I (both supreme archaeology nerds) were keen to get some kind of collaborative project going and this seemed like the best opportunity to make it happen. Since the UAB office was located just downriver from Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson Historic Site (BT/FA), we decided we could not only test out their equipment, but also get some research data as well!

With the large amount of historic maritime activity in the Cape Fear River, identified sonar features potentially represent significant, unknown historic sites associated with North Carolina history.

Research Potential

Brunswick Town was settled in 1726 and quickly became one of the preeminent port towns in the Carolina colony for the shipment of tar, pitch, and turpentine. In 1731, the colonial government designated the ports at Wilmington and Brunswick Town as the official customs district, Port Brunswick. The town became a hotspot for the Regulator movement with strong opposition to the British-imposed Stamp Act and was eventually burned by the British military during the American Revolution in 1776. The site remained abandoned until the American Civil War when the Confederate Army built Fort Anderson atop the ruins of the colonial settlement in 1861. After the fall of Wilmington, the site remained undeveloped until it was famously excavated by Stanley South in the 1960s. South’s findings at BT/FA paved the way for new insights into archaeological processualism and pattern recognition (citation). Dr. Charles Ewen from the ECU Anthropology Department picked up where South left off, leading annual field schools that continue to unearth valuable pieces of information at the historic site. While archaeological documentation of the terrestrial sites associated with the colonial town turned Civil War fort are better known, less is understood of the submerged cultural resources bordering the historic site.

Past efforts to locate submerged resources off Brunswick Town tended to focus on finding the lost Spanish privateer, La Fortuna, which famously exploded during a wartime raid on the port in 1748 (Manieri 1982). These investigations led to the 1985 discovery of a 4-pound cannon from the river that is possibly associated with the 130-ton privateer sloop, although historical sources suggest that the privateer was actually armed with 10 6-pound cannons and 12 swivel guns (Overton and Lawrence 1996:18). Another cannon dating to the late 17th or early 18th century was brought to the surface after dredging operations in the modern shipping channel accidentally found the gun in 2017. This cannon was identified as a 6-pounder of English manufacture. The discovery of these and other artifacts in close proximity to the BT/FA waterfront suggest that there is great potential for undiscovered sites beneath the murky waters of the Cape Fear River.

Preliminary research conducted by ECU/UAB personnel indicated several sites of interest in the survey area. In advance of extending the dredged shipping channel, a 2007 survey was conducted by Mid-Atlantic Technology and Environmental Research (Hall 2007). This survey noted the existence of ballast remains associated with two known pre-1750 wharf structures. Between these sites, another anomaly exhibited a multi-component magnetic signature with an associated sonar target that showed the remains of a 70-foot-long pile of round cobble ballast. A third target identified for future investigation consisted of two separate mounds 70 feet apart made of rough ballast or brick with a central circular feature approximately 18-feet in diameter. Each of these features were relocated during the 2021 survey. These previously identified sites formed the basis of demarcating the extent of the primary survey area. After imaging the primary survey area immediately adjacent to the historic site, our team also decided to gather more information regarding the shoreline next to Orton Plantation and Campbell Island upriver from BT/FA in addition to inspecting the remains of the Confederate ironclad CSS Raleigh located just downriver.

Also onboard were Dr. Mary Beth Fitts and Allyson Ropp from the Office of State Archaeology, who were interested in documenting changes to the BT/FA shoreline due to climate-related erosion. There are on-going shoreline stabilization measures installed at the historic site, and it is my hope to document what is currently exposed behind these wave attenuators before they do their thing and re-bury the shoreline, ultimately protecting the cultural material for future generations.

Due to time limitations, we were only able to run the sonar during this survey. The next step is to ground-truth observed features located during post-processing of the sonar data. This project is on-going and I hope to post again with more results as we dive on the identified targets...stay tuned!

Our survey is also mentioned by BTFA Site Manager Jim McKee in an article discussing a cannon accidentally dredged from the river that is thought to be from the Fortuna shipwreck.

References

Hall, Wes

2007 Archaeological Remote Sensing and Diving Survey of the Cape Fear River Channel Widener Adjacent Brunswick Town, Brunswick County, North Carolina. Report to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District, Wilmington, NC, from Mid-Atlantic Technology and Environmental Research, Castle Hayne, NC.

Manieri, Ray

1982 The Search for the Fortuna: An Exercise in Underwater Archaeology. In, Underwater Archaeology: The Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference on Underwater Archaeology, Calvin R. Cummings, editor, Fathom Eight Special Publication no. 4, San Marino, C.A.

Overton, Glenn C. and Richard W. Lawrence

1996 A Maritime History and Survey of the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear Rivers, Wilmington Harbor, North Carolina, Volume 2: Submerged Cultural Resources Survey. Report to Underwater Archaeology Unit, North Carolina Division of Archives and History, Kure Beach, N.C. and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District, Wilmington, N.C.