The Wreck of the BarqueNorth Carolina, Bermuda, 1880: An Underwater Crime Scene?

Abstract

Archaeological and historical research in 1999–2001 on the loss of the 3-masted, iron barque “North Carolina” produced a series of anomalies and coincidences suggesting that the ship was sunk intentionally. The wreck lies along the southwest edge of Bermuda’s reef system. At first it appeared to be that of a fairly typical sail-propelled, iron-hulled cargo ship of a general type built in the United Kingdom during the late nineteenth century. The original research design for the “North Carolina” project sought to test how representative this shipwreck was as an example of that shipbuilding tradition. Archaeological surveys as well as published and archival accounts of the ship's loss, however, revealed discrepancies that were explored further. The project evolved into the investigation of a possible 120-year-old crime scene. The “North Carolina” offers a case study of how scientifically grounded archaeology applied with due regard for critical issues of cultural context can reveal systemic as well as proximate factors that affect past human behavior—including possible criminal behavior.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.