Red River Wreck Update: July 24

Getting Down to Work

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

Today was the first day the field school students were able to visit the wreck site as a group and begin work.

The field school participants are divided into two teams. Each consists of seven persons - the team leader, a graduate student, four crew members and one non-diving support person. The first team, under the direction of Dr. Annalies Corbin of the PAST Foundation (http://www.pastfoundation.org/), takes the morning shift, while the second, led by Dr. Laurel Breece of Long Beach City College (http://www.lbcc.cc.ca.us/) dives in the afternoon. While one group is actually diving, the members of the other group are responsible for writing up the notes from their last dive, processing any artifacts recovered, and finalizing their drawings that will later be added to the overall site plan.

Each team member got an individual tour of the wreck, both to familiarize the students with the site and to allow the team leaders to assess the individual students’ comfort level in working in the river. Although a number of the team members are experienced divers, the Red River presents special difficulties, with its low visibility and strong current.

For now, the field school students will be assigned in teams to document the stern section of the wreck, which lies downstream from the central machinery section with its distinctive flywheel. The stern hull section is, in some respects, not as complex as the area immediately around the flywheel, and is better suited to divers working to document their first shipwreck. The stern also should yield entirely new information on how these boats were constructed. The Red River Wreck is believed to have been built sometime in the mid-1830s, a period of rapid (and little understood) change in the development of the Western Rivers type. Steamboat builders learned by trial and error what were the most effective attributes for their craft, and made many modifications. Between about 1820 and 1850, the Western Rivers steamboat changed a great deal, and the Red River Wreck may tell us a lot about how that came about.

The team leaders reported that some of the field school students did better than others, but all walked away with a better appreciation of the complexities of the site, and the challenges any diver, whether novice or veteran, faces in such a location. Most students adapted to the diving conditions very well, and one wrote in her field journal that the only time she uncomfortable was when the crew van got stuck in traffic going back to camp at the end of the day.

The weather remained bright and clear, with the high temperature Tuesday around 100 degrees F.

This update is sponsored by the PAST Foundation and the Oklahoma Historical Society. It may be freely redistributed without modification for non-commercial purposes.

Field School Director Dr. Annalies Corbin discusses the organization of the field school.	Dr. Laurel Breece of Long Beach City College orients her team on the day's objectives.	A view of the wreck at low water.	A view of the wreck site from the back, looking upstream.