THE LORD SANDWICH ex ENDEAVOUR: Frequently Asked Questions

© RIMAP 2019

2019 Introduction

In the very first days of its work, RIMAP developed a scientific research design to guide its archaeological study of the British transport fleet scuttled in Newport's Outer Harbor. Over the years the research design has been expanded with the new information gleaned from archaeological fieldwork and archival materials, especially RIMAP's 1999 discovery that the Lord Sandwich transport had been Capt. Cook's Endeavour Bark. RIMAP has completed preliminary histories of these ships for the National Park Service and the US Navy, details of which are found in various RIMAP reports and publications, including a summary of this information in the graphic research Matrix.

RIMAP's archaeological studies of Newport's Outer Harbor began in 1993 with RIMAP's first remote sensing survey there. By chance that initial survey located targets that later proved to be the group of vessels that included the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®. However, it took RIMAP another 25 years to find the archival evidence and complete the archaeological tasks to identify which of those sites might be that iconic ship.

Depending on available funds, RIMAP has followed its established research design, and with its growing cadre of trained volunteers, RIMAP has found 10 of the 13 ships in that fleet, mapped their remains, and conducted early test excavations. Those excavations determined that these 18th-century sites could be artifact rich (thus triggering the need for an artifact management facility before a major excavation can take place). At the same time, further historical studies assembled more information about each ship, and this historical information continues to provide the research questions that guide the archaeological research.

This essay of Frequently Asked Questions was first posted on an early RIMAP website. The validity of RIMAP's research design is supported by the fact that the FAQ has needed very few updates from its earliest version. What may be the most important part of the FAQ (and what is often overlooked by the media) are the cautions about the interpretation of each question and its answer.

It is clear that one artifact, site feature, or condition will not be enough to identify a particular archaeological site as any particular vessel known to have been lost in Newport's Outer Harbor. The best practice will be to find a combination of artifacts, site features, and conditions associated with an archaeological site that are consistent with the known history of a specific vessel, and that no other archaeological site has that combination.

Original Introduction:

For the identification of the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®, there is a greater likelihood that more materials associated with the ship's later use in Rhode Island as the Lord Sandwich will have survived in the archaeological record of a Newport shipwreck, than will have survived from the time of James Cook and his earlier voyage in the Endeavour. Since the Lord Sandwich had been the Endeavour, when RIMAP proves that the Lord Sandwich still exists in Newport Harbor, then RIMAP also proves to have found the Endeavour.

The following is a sample of the kinds of questions RIMAP might address to determine if a particular site could be that storied vessel. It gives a general answer to each question, but more importantly, it also gives some warnings about what those answers might mean and alternate interpretations of the questions.

General Questions about the Transports

This section describes how RIMAP is going about sorting out the different transports that still exist in Newport Harbor, without reference to which one might be the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®.

QUESTION 1: How many transports were there?

ANSWER: We know the names of 13 transports that were scuttled during the Siege of Newport in 1778 and that there were other British transports in Newport at the time that were not sunk, or that were scuttled elsewhere.

CAUTION: RIMAP created a first Matrix of ship names and historical details about each of these vessels, based on historical documents that suggested which ships were in the 1778 fleet. Further archival research has replaced two of those names, and now RIMAP knows the general area of Newport Harbor where each group of ships was sent to be scuttled. This suggests that further archival research will reveal even more useful details.

QUESTION 2: Will RIMAP be able to find all 13 (or more) transports?

ANSWER: Given the history of Newport Harbor, it is not likely that all of the transports have survived the past 240+ years.

CAUTION 1: Parts of Newport Harbor have been dredged and the footprint of Goat Island has been dramatically changed since Colonial times. Early concerns that these engineering and development activities might have disturbed or destroyed some of the transports have now been mostly discounted, but there is still the possibility that modern intrusions have damaged or disturbed the sites.

CAUTION 2: Divers from the early 20th century US Navy training program located on Goat Island found and destroyed two historic vessels nearby. From limited newspaper descriptions, it appears that at least one of these vessels had been a British transport, and its loss may explain why RIMAP found fewer archaeological sites in that location than the research design predicted.

CAUTION 3: Newport Harbor has always been an active anchorage for ships (including parts that are now mooring fields), and the anchors, chains, and other ground tackle of the ships there could have disturbed or destroyed sites. RIMAP has mapped one 18th-century site near an active 19th-century anchorage that may have been disturbed in just that manner.

CAUTION 4: In the 19th- and early 20th-centuries the Navy's Torpedo Station on Goat Island used the Outer Harbor to test its products on derelict vessels bought for the purpose. The debris from these test vessels was left in the harbor, and still to be found are the remains other vessels known to have been lost there. Some of this later material may be historically important, and RIMAP has spent a lot of time sorting it out to locate the 18th-century transport sites.

CAUTION 5: RIMAP has also found the lost Navy torpedoes near the transport sites. This is a reminder that ordnance could be a safety issue for RIMAP teams conducting local fieldwork, and not just in Newport Harbor.

QUESTION 3: How many transports has RIMAP studied?

ANSWER: RIMAP has found and mapped 10 sites that appear to be from the 13 transports known to have been scuttled in Newport's Outer Harbor. The first two sites studied were mapped and RIMAP also conducted test excavations and trenches to determine their sub-silt structures. The preliminary study of RI 2125 suggested that it is one of the smaller vessels, although more complete excavation will be required to confirm that assumption. RIMAP's study of the second site, RI 2119, indicated that it might be in the right size range to be the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®, but later archival work proved that it is in the wrong location. Nevertheless, it also deserves more complete study.

RIMAP has completed eight more pre-disturbance site maps of potential 18th-century sites, all of which appear to be of varying sizes, but further excavations were tabled until the creation of a proper artifact management facility. All of this early work was done by RIMAP volunteers under the direction of its professional archaeologists, and intermittently included staff members of the Australian National Maritime Museum.

CAUTION:Given the subtle nature of the 18th-century sites and the difficulty to find them, RIMAP can not yet say with certainty that it has found all of the transports that still exist in Newport's Outer Harbor.

QUESTION 4: Are there other vessels lost in Newport that could confuse the study of the transports?

ANSWER: There were certainly other vessels sunk in Newport's Outer Harbor in the 18th century, some of which played a part in the American Revolution. See also Questions 2.

CAUTION 1: RIMAP must not confuse sites that might be other vessels from the same period with sites that might be the transports.

CAUTION 2: And of course all the later ship losses (and trash) further confuse the study. See also Question 2.

QUESTION 5: How can we determine if a particular vessel is from the proper period?

ANSWER: The date of a shipwreck site can be determined by its condition, its associated artifacts, and the ship's materials and construction details. After more than 200+ years, the exposed portions of a wooden ship and its organic artifacts have deteriorated and disappeared in Rhode Island's salt water environment. What is left behind is a pile of ballast stone that sometimes stands shallowly proud from the bottom. Those stones and the silt that cover the site create an anaerobic environment (no oxygen), so the wooden structure and organic artifacts beneath are protected as long as the silt is not disturbed. Ships that have been lost for only 100 years have not deteriorated to the same extent.

CAUTION 1: The rates at which a wooden ship decomposes may vary, depending on local conditions. Certainly there appears to be more left of the transport sites located in areas where there is greater silt deposition than where there is only a thin layer of silt covering the bedrock.

CAUTION 2: The dates of artifacts found on a site will indicate the latest date at which the ship might have been lost, but there may be portable artifacts on the surface of a site that comes from modern trash. For instance, one of the transports is a double site, with a modern barge sitting on one side. Also, diving collectors have scavenged the visible historic artifacts (and even dug) some of the sites before RIMAP's work began. The loss of these artifacts may mean that particularly important diagnostic pieces that could identify a shipwreck are now missing.

CAUTION 3: Some wooden ship construction methods have been very conservative, and traditional methods are still used in some modern shipyards. It is sometimes difficult to determine the difference between and 18th-century construction detail and something from the 19th century.

QUESTION 6: Is there historical information about each ship that will be helpful to sort out the transport sites?

ANSWER: Yes. In addition to ship's construction details, the RIMAP research design includes which troops (British, American, and Hessians) were carried on board many of the transports, where the ships sailed, and their pre-transport uses. If there are artifacts on a site related to a specific regiment known to have been on a ship, then that artifact can suggest the ship's identity.

CAUTION: One artifact relating to a regiment can only suggest a ship's identification, since that artifact could have come from a visitor, or be stolen or strayed. A more confirming situation would come from a collection of artifacts that all point to the same troops on board. It is also important not to overlook the possibility that multiple transports shared features that might be diagnostic, and some of the vessels in the scuttled fleet were victuallers, not transports, so the artifacts that might identify them may be different.

QUESTION 7: What do we see when we look at a transport site?

ANSWER: See the various RIMAP site maps of the transports elsewhere on this website. The remains of Rhode Island Revolutionary War shipwrecks are typically limited to the following materials: Above the ballast stones are the inorganic artifacts and structure that fall onto the ballast as the wooden ship settles onto the bottom and its organic materials disintegrate. Some transport sites have exposed ship timbers, and they will continue to deteriorate. Below the ballast RIMAP finds the greatest potential to study the ship because the portion beneath the ballast is protected by stones. As the site becomes covered with silt, the silt not only helps to prevent erosion of the site, but it also reduces the presence of oxygen. Once the oxygen is used up (no more rot or rust), the site will eventually reach equilibrium and the organic artifacts and structures embedded in the silt and ballast will not deteriorate further. After more than 200 years Rhode Island's Revolutionary War shipwrecks have reached equilibrium, and the silt and ballast protect the historic remains beneath. As long as the silt is not disturbed and the equilibrium is maintained, the site should remain intact indefinitely.

CAUTION 1: RIMAP hopes to find structural features or artifacts that will prove the identity of a particular ship. It is a matter of chance that something survives the natural deterioration process as the shipwreck reaches equilibrium.

CAUTION 2: Digging through an underwater site disturbs the site's equilibrium by re-introducing oxygen and re-starting the deterioration process. This process will continue until the site reaches a new equilibrium. Underwater archaeologists recognize that excavating a site, even under the most controlled of scientific conditions, will also disturb that site's equilibrium and begin the deterioration process anew. Therefore archaeologists do not excavate unless there is a good reason to do so. That is also why other divers who dig to collect artifacts are doing more damage to a site than just removing potentially diagnostic materials. They are also reintroducing oxygen and restarting the deterioration process.

QUESTION 8: Is there information about ship construction that would be helpful to sort out the transport sites?

ANSWER: We know where many of the vessels were built (multiple locations in England and in North America, possibly Germany or Holland), but the early histories are not known for some of them.

CAUTION 1: Construction techniques apparently were not be very different between America and Britain during colonial times because the American colonies were essentially British. However, there may be some differences in the materials used, and a study of all the transports in Rhode Island will provide a database to investigate these differences.

CAUTION 2: Because the Royal Navy made meticulous drawings of the Endeavour before her voyage, we know more about her than for most of the other commercial vessels of the late 18th century. This was enough information for modern marine architects to create designs for replicas, and for untold numbers of model makers to build copies of the Endeavour. A study of all the transports in Rhode Island might provide a database to investigate further the construction details that might be consistent in these vessels, as well as identify regional variations.

CAUTION 3: Recent archival work has determined that two of the transports, the Mayflower and Yowart, were built at Whitehaven in Cumberland on the west coast of England. That is directly across from Whitby on the east coast of Yorkshire where the Earl of Pembroke collier was built at Whitby. Since the two Whitehaven vessels were scuttled in the same group as the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®, there is the potential for an important study to compare the similarities and variations of those two ship construction traditions.

QUESTION 9: Were all the transports the same size?

ANSWER: We know the tonnage of most of the 13 transports. Tonnage is a measurement of the ship's interior volume for carrying cargo, and it was determined in the 18th century by a complex equation using a set of the ship's measurements. Tonnage is only partially related to overall length of an archaeological site, but given how much the Newport transports have deteriorated, length may be the only measurement readily available to determine a vessel's tonnage without detailed excavations of each site.

CAUTION: RIMAP has detailed measurements only for the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® because they were taken before Cook went around the world. That surplus of knowledge may skew an understanding of the other vessels.

QUESTION 10: Is the ballast left behind on a shipwreck site diagnostic of American and British vessels?

ANSWER: RIMAP has been sampling the ballast on the transport sites, including bits of coal. So far, their analysis is inconclusive.

CAUTION: Ships frequently dumped and took on ballast, from wherever they needed to do so. It is possible that an American vessel could have picked up British ballast from where it had been previously dumped by another ship. We also know that the transports carried coal from London, and that they frequently picked up more coal and ballast in North America, especially the mines at Nova Scotia. Ballast, on its own, will probably not be diagnostic of a ship's identity, but might be an important confirming feature.

Specific Questions Relating to the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®

This section describes how RIMAP hopes to identify the _Lord Sandwich_exEndeavour® from among all the transports that still exist in Newport harbor. The first task is to assemble information about the Endeavour, how she was built, repaired, and used on her journey around the world with Capt. James Cook. The interest in the Endeavour has must not skew the archaeological research design because information about how the Lord Sandwich transport was repaired and then used on her station in North America may be more significant for the identification of that vessel.

QUESTION 1: What is known about how the Endeavour was built?

ANSWER: The Endeavour was first built in Whitby as the collier Earl of Pembroke. As the Endeavour was taken out of the collier service into the Royal Navy, she was surveyed and her lines were taken, including her keel length. There are also contemporary sketches of what she looked like and a great deal of later graphic material that is of uneven credibility. This material does not reflect the changes from her later uses as a transport.

See also the essay on this website about how the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® came to Rhode Island.

CAUTION 1: There was enough information to build the Endeavour replica in the 1980s, but some marine architects disagreed about the construction details.

CAUTION 2: It is unknown if any of the repairs made to the Endeavour in the Endeavour River in Australia or at the Dutch shipyard in Batavia (now Jakarta) will still be evident in the archaeological site.

CAUTION 3: It is unknown what sorts of repairs or changes were made to the Endeavour while it was used as a Royal Navy store ship sailing to the Falkland Islands.

CAUTION 4: When the Endeavour was sold to a private owner, it is unknown if there were repairs or changes made before she sailed to Archangel.

CAUTION 5: It is known from archival sources that repairs had to be made before the Endeavour was accepted into the transport service, but the details of those repairs and changes have not yet been found.

CAUTION 6: And it is unknown what sorts of repairs or changes were made to accommodate her use as a transport in Rhode Island or as a prison ship in Newport Harbor.

QUESTION 2: Is there a simple measurement that is a good place to start?

ANSWER: Since we know Endeavour's length, and if an archaeological site has an intact keel that is much shorter or longer than that measurement, then we can eliminate that site from consideration as the Endeavour.

CAUTION 1: Keel length must be used with caution as an indication of tonnage. For instance, a long narrow vessel may measure to a similar tonnage as a shorter but more beamy one.

CAUTION 2: Unfortunately, the ends of some of the Newport sites are so badly eroded that measuring keel length without excavation may be difficult.

CAUTION 3: The assumption that a keel could not be replaced in the 18th century is not accurate based on contemporary ship-building technology, but whether a ship would deserve such attention is another question.

QUESTION 3: How do the transports under study measure up?

ANSWER: To date, RIMAP dive teams have created site maps of 10 sites, and of the five sites found in the Limited Study Area north of Goat Island, the overall lengths of their exposed structures vary widely. However, in 2018 RIMAP determined that two sites could be good candidates based on observed or predicted keel lengths, and based on what is visible without excavation, one site (RI 2394) was identified as the most likely to be the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®.

CAUTION 1: In RIMAP's earliest studies, RI 2119 appeared to be a promising candidate to be the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®. However, RIMAP's overall research design was to find all of the sites that still exist before concentrating on any one site, and it was the right decision not to focus on RI 2119 because later archival work indicated that she was in the wrong location to be the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®. However, RIMAP's early work on RI 2119 was useful, especially the test excavations, because they proved these sites could be artifact rich.

CAUTION 2: Most of the transports were smaller vessels than the naval ships of the period. Although large Royal Navy vessels sometimes visited Narragansett Bay, the frigates stationed there (and lost in 1778) were only 5th and 6th rates. That is why the Royal Navy vessels were ordered to self-destruct in 1778 when the French fleet of much larger war ships threatened them.

CAUTION 3: The Grand Duke of Russia transport was about the size of a 6th rate frigate, but the other transports, including the Lord Sandwich were much smaller, about the size of most of the non-rated Royal Navy vessels assigned to Rhode Island. The Continental Navy ships and local privateers lost in Rhode Island were also small. Because there are so few large sailing ships left in active service today, modern ideas exaggerate the sizes of these historic sailing vessels, especially the war ships stationed in Rhode Island. However, ships have been described as the most complex of man's inventions, and although they can be a challenge to document and understand, Rhode Island is lucky to have such a wide variety to study and protect.

CAUTION 4: Now that RIMAP has identified the Limited Study Area where the five ships were scuttled together that included the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®, the details of each site can be compared to the historical materials about each ship, and RIMAP can predict which site is most likely to be Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®. According to the documentary evidence, three of these ships were smaller than the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® and they can be eliminated from contention. However, there were multiple ships in the transport fleet with the same name, and this was the case of the Peggy, the fifth ship scuttled in the Limited Study Area. If this fifth ship is the smaller one of the same name, then it can be be eliminated as the potential Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®. However, if the fifth ship is the larger of the same name, it will be about the same size as the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® and that means there may be two archeological sites of the similar size in the Limited Study Area.

Further archival work into the histories of the vessels with the same name should help to sort out their identities, but RIMAP's preliminary site maps have determined that one site in the Limited Study Area appears to be the largest and it has the longest overall length of exposed structure. Although a second site is close in size, in 2018 RIMAP selected RI 2374 for future intense study.

CAUTION 5: The largest site that is visible now may not be the largest site that is hidden beneath the silt. Only further investigation, including excavation, may determine which is truly the largest vessel.

QUESTION 4: What about the wood used to build the transports?

ANSWER: RIMAP has taken wood samples of some of the timbers for identification on both RI 2119, RI 2125, and RI 2374. Most of the timbers have been oak, which is consistent with the expectations of 18th-century ship-building.

CAUTION 1: It is difficult to distinguish between oak grown in North America from that grown in Britain. The presence of other woods in the major timbers (such as an elm keel) may be suggestive that we might have the located the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®, but that is diagnostic only if there had been only one ship in the fleet with an elm keel. This is an example of why so much information about the Endeavour skews the interpretation of the other ships in the fleet, about which fewer details are known.

CAUTION 2: Now that RIMAP's Matrix includes two vessels built at Whitehaven in Cumberland (across from Whitby in Yorkshire), it is necessary to understand where Whitehaven and Whitby would have sourced the materials to build their ships.

QUESTION 5: Are there other construction details that will allow us to identify the Endeavour Bark?

ANSWER: Again, the original survey of the vessel before Cook joined the Endeavour gives a great deal of information about how that particular ship was built when she was taken into the Royal Navy. Therefore, RIMAP will look for detailed timber measurements that might be consistent with those of the original survey and lines.

CAUTION: As long as the historical materials support the presumption that the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® was the largest in the group of five ships scuttled in the Limited Study Area, those measurement will stand scrutiny. However, if there had been another ship in that group of a size similar to the Endeavour, then it will be more complex to determine which site is which of the two ships.

QUESTION 6: The Endeavour was adapted in preparation for her trip around the world with Capt. Cook. Could evidence of those adaptations be diagnostic to suggest that we have found the Endeavour

ANSWER: These adaptations for the circumnavigation may be more useful as diagnostic tools than her original construction features as a collier. The Endeavour had some interesting changes made to accommodate the crew on such a long journey, some of which were requested by the aristocratic supercargo, Joseph Banks. Banks was a wealthy young man with an interest in natural science. He funded the scientific portion of the voyage, including his staff of scientists, artists, servants, dogs, and equipment.

It is interesting to note that Banks also planned to accompany Cook on the second voyage in the Resolution. Unfortunately, Banks required changes to the Resolution that made the ship such a bad sailer that Cook ordered the changes removed, and Banks went off on an expedition to Iceland, instead. This story tells us that it was quite common for a ship to incur major changes to accommodate a current purpose, and with later changes in that purpose, the ship was changed again. These changes may be a source of confusion in what archaeologists see in that ship's remains.

CAUTION: The changes to the Endeavour may also have been obliterated by later uses of the vessel as a transport and prison ship, but RIMAP will be vigilant to find subtle evidence of them.

QUESTION 7: Could the repairs made after the Endeavour was damaged on the Great Barrier Reef off Australia be used to identify a specific Newport shipwreck?

ANSWER: We know that the crew went ashore during the repair at the Great Barrier Reef to collect local wood for fuel, but the ship's carpenter apparently used wood carried on board to make a temporary repair of the hull. A more substantial repair was made later at the Dutch East India Company at Batavia.

CAUTION 1: The ship's carpenter also took wood from New Zealand, but it is unknown if it could have been used for a temporary repair. In any case, green wood would not have been appropriate for permanent use.

CAUTION 2: We also need to know more about the materials that would have been used in the Dutch East India Company's shipyard. It is possible that those exotic repairs were also obliterated when the ship was repaired at London before she was taken into the transport service.

QUESTION 8: What other evidence might exist in an archaeological site that dates from the circumnavigation with Capt. Cook?

ANSWER: The Endeavour's crew collected local foods and wood for fuel, and the scientists collected biological samples. It is possible that scraps of exotic wood or other material indigenous to Australia and the South Pacific (such as pollen or micro fauna) could have found their way into crevices of the vessel. RIMAP has been sampling apparently undisturbed areas of the silt for appropriate analyses.

CAUTION 1: It is also possible that this material was removed when the Endeavour was repaired in preparation for her use as a Royal Navy store ship, or when it was repaired as the Lord Sandwich and taken into the transport service.

CAUTION 2: There were a number of other vessels on the Newport station that had been East Indiamen and the possibility exists that such exotic materials could have been transferred from them, as well. These were the transport Grand Duke of Russia (lost in Newport's Outer Harbor), and the Alarm Galley(lost a few days earlier in the Sakonnet River). The 20-gun Vigilant arrived at Newport two days before participating in the Battle of Rhode Island, and she had been the former Empress of Russia, and by her size, she was apparently also an East Indiaman.

CAUTION 2: For nearly 200 years it was thought that La Liberte, the vessel abandoned in Newport in 1793, had been the Endeavour. We now know that La Liberte was probably the Cook's Resolution, which means that the artifacts in private hands and museum collections that came from this ship are mis-labeled. The La Liberte ex Endeavour identification has been accepted for so long that it is so entrenched in past literature, but it is important to remember that these earlier artifacts may be used for contemporary comparisons, but not as diagnostic materials for the identification of the transport Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®.

QUESTION 9: How was the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® adapted for the transport service?

ANSWER: We do know that many of the transports were prepared to carry equipment, horses, artillery, and large numbers of troops. We have no specific information about how the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® was changed, but we do know that she was in such poor condition when first offered to the transport service that she failed survey and had to be repaired before she could be accepted.

CAUTION: Although we don't yet know exactly what those repairs had been, it is certain that they would have corrected some of the damage and disintegration arising from her long service in the Royal Navy, especially from her voyages in the southern hemisphere (first with Cook and then to the Falklands carrying naval supplies). It is as yet unknown if any of her original adaptations for Cook's voyage were retained after her refit as a transport.

QUESTION 10: What do we know about the Lord Sandwich and her service as a transport?

ANSWER: RIMAP knows which troops were on board during the Atlantic crossing, and which troops were carried from New York to occupy Rhode Island in 1776. RIMAP also knows which local political prisoners were kept on board in 1777, and artifactual evidence of these troops and individuals on a Newport shipwreck site could help to confirm its identity.

CAUTION 1: RIMAP's research design assumes that the Lord Sandwich would have been in particularly poor condition because of her history of long voyages in the southern hemisphere, and that may explain why she was used as a stationary prison ship. Although there is evidence that she made short sails in Narragansett Bay, there is no evidence yet that she had been included in the fleets that went to Long Island to collect wood for fuel. More archival research is needed to answer these questions, especially the discovery of the ships' logs and the regular government reports about the ships' activities from Royal Navy officers serving as the transport managers.

CAUTION 2: As noted in the general discussion above, a cluster of artifacts from a particular regiment carried on board will be stronger evidence than a single artifact in making the connection between the troops aboard a single vessel and that vessel's identity.

QUESTION 11: Is there something unusual about how the Lord Sandwich transport was used in Newport?

ANSWER: We know that the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® was used intermittently as a prison ship while she was in Newport, and we have the names of some of the American prisoners who were kept on board in 1777. Some of these prisoners were quite prominent in Newport at the time, and it is possible that there may be artifactual evidence of their presence left behind on the site.

CAUTION 1: We know that the Rachel and Mary was also used as a prison ship in Newport, and it is possible that at times some of the same prisoners were kept on her as well. However, archival evidence found recently indicates that the Rachel and Mary was scuttled in the group of 4 vessels west of Goat Island and RIMAP has made pre-disturbance site maps of what appear to be 3 of these sites. If the Rachel and Mary was not the vessel destroyed by the Navy divers-in-training in the early 20th century, she may still exist.

CAUTION 2: The cruel treatment of American prisoners on Royal Navy vessels has been exaggerated, based on the experience of prisoners on the Jersey in New York Harbor. Captured Continental Army or Navy personnel were treated as prisoners of war, awaiting exchange, but the local Newport supporters of the Patriot cause were held on board only during the times of threat. The list of prisoners on board the Lord Sandwich comes from the 1777 failed campaign by General Spencer to oust the British from Rhode Island. As soon as that threat was over, those prisoners were released.

CAUTION 3: The claim that the Patriots were gentler with their prisoners is foolish.

CAUTION 4: The most severe incidents of rape, murder, and other violence occurred not between British and Patriot forces who were controlled by strict rules related to prisoner treatment and the engagements of war, but between locals serving with the British. These were called "refugee" troops, and they often attacked former neighbors (and even family), probably from pre-existing conflicts and feuds.

SUMMARY

The RIMAP original research process was to find all of the transports that still exist in Newport Harbor, to study each site in turn, and to determine how closely each site fits the histories of the known transports. By 2017 RIMAP had found and mapped 10 potential transport sites, and at the same time had discovered documentary evidence that allowed the the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour® study to be limited to the area where the group of five ships had been scuttled together.

All of the ships in the transport fleet deserve detailed studies, but now the detailed work to identify which site is which ship from among the five in the Limited Study Area has begun.

Many individual volunteers and institutional partners have donated their time, expertise, finances, and passion to bring RIMAP's projects to their current level of success. If you want to help RIMAP's work, and especially if your are interested in RIMAP's study of the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®, please contact us.