Harvard Archaeologist Rescues Last of the Clippers

A team of archaeologists led by a Harvard faculty member sailed to the Falkland Islands earlier this month to salvage what was left of the only known surviving clipper ship, discovered in a harbor by accident eight years ago.

"[The Snow Squall] is the only surviving example of an American-built clipper ship," said E. Fred Yalouris '71, the project's director and an associate in historic archaeology with the Peabody museum.

It has taken five years and more than $500,000 to recover the ship, which had been at the bottom of Stanley Harbor since 1864, said Yalouris, who is also the associate director of Harvard's summer school.

"We don't really know a lot about how clipper ships are built. So, when we get a real ship...we can learn a lot," Peabody Professor of American Archaeology Stephen Williams said.

"The whole science of maritime archaeology is only 25 years old," he said.

"People who have written about clippers in the past. . . have had to make guesses at how the ship was built, [for example,] what kind of wood and fastenings were used. Now, we are discovering that the educated guesses that were made are wrong," he said.

The adventure started in 1979, when photographer Nicholas B. Dean '57, who was working for the National Maritime Museum at the time, discovered the ship "by dumb luck." A local historian in the Falklands mentioned to Dean, who is from Maine, that there was a Maine-built ship in the shallow water under a harbor dock, Dean said.

In 1982, Dean returned to the Argentinian islands with Yalouris, who became interested in the project. The pair, avoiding combat in the area from the Falkland war by 10 days, returned to the U.S. to recruit a team of archaeologists to help them raise the ship from under 10 feet of water.

Five trips have been made to the islands by the team since, during which many excavation dives were made. The ship, however, has not weathered its years in the deep well, Dean said.

Aside from a grant from the National Trust for Historical Preservation, the money for the operation was raised entirely from private donations, according to Dean.

The group, one third of whom were associated with Harvard, removed a 35-foot portion of the bow and, earlier this month, returned it to South Portland, Maine, near the original port where the Snow Squall was built in 1851, Yalouris said.

As this was the last recovery mission, the goal now is to preserve what has been found, he said.

Other artifacts on the ship included a capstand used to hoist anchors, rigging blocks, bottles and shoes, said Archaeological Conservation Laboratory director Betty L. Seifert, one of the dozen to go to the Falklands.

The recovered part of the ship's bow will be preserved and put on display at the Spring Point Marine Museum in South Portland, Maine, Seifert said.

It will take several years to complete the preservation and artifact cataloguing process, she added.

Clippers, which were called the "greyhounds of the sea," were the fastest ships of their day. The Sea Squall set a record by sailing from New York to Rio de Janeiro in 28 days.

"This kind of historic archaeology is a very recent field. Many people say, `That's not archaeology, that's yesterday afternoon,'" Williams said.