A Historic Archaeological Resources Protection Plan and Geographic Information System for Shipwrecks in Georgia Waters Under the Jurisdiction of the United States Navy

Since the earliest European exploration in the sixteenth century coastal Georgia has been on the western margin of Atlantic navigation. As settlers spread along the coastal plain following the establishment of the Oglethorpe colony on the Savannah River in 1733, the ocean, sounds and rivers of the Georgia coast served as important avenues for exploration, settlement, transportation, trade and military operations. As a consequence of maritime and naval activities associated with over 270 years of development, the territorial waters of the State of Georgia have become a repository for hundreds of historically significant shipwrecks. Sixty-two of those shipwrecks have been identified and have been included in a database developed by the Naval Historical Center (NHC) and the Institute for International Maritime Research (I2MR). Those wrecks and derelicts are the remains of United States navy ships, Confederate navy vessels, prize vessels, derelicts and warships of foreign powers that fall under the management responsibility of the NHC. In order to more effectively manage those submerged cultural resources, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GDNR) contracted with 12 MR of Washington, North Carolina to develop a Historic Archaeological Resources Protection (HARP) Plan and Geographic Information System (GIS) based on vessels in Georgia waters included in the United States Navy Shipwreck Database Inventory. The HARP plan and GIS will provide GDNR and NHC with effective tools to protect and to manage those resources. The products of this research will provide a historical and cultural background for Georgia shipwrecks under the management authority of GDNR and NHC. The GIS will provide an expandable inventory of those historic and archaeological resources and identify priorities and methodologies for historical and archaeological research. Both the GIS and the HARP plan have been designed to locate and to assess submerged shipwreck resources that could be impacted by development and other activities. The Georgia shipwreck GIS provides an active geographically-based data storage and recovery program that can be updated and expanded to serve both present and future submerged cultural resource management activities of both agencies.