“Sea Your History Weekend” at the St Augustine Lighthouse & Museum

“Sea Your History Weekend” at the St Augustine Lighthouse & Museum

Local Ties to American Revolutionary War, British Loyalists Highlighted During Sea Your History Weekend at Lighthouse Museum

Professor Richard James Bell from the University of Maryland will headline Sea Your History Weekend, September 20th and 21st at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum.

Although St. Augustine is most commonly known for its Spanish roots, the almost 450 year-old city has a storied British heritage as well. At the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum this weekend, Sept. 20th and 21st, the city’s British history will be highlighted through guided tours, demonstrations, shipwreck artifacts and a keynote speech from the University of Maryland’s Dr. Richard Bell.

“St. Augustine was occupied by the British during a very critical time in American history,” said Executive Director Kathy A. Fleming. “We have ties here to the American Revolutionary War through the shipwrecks of British Loyalists who came to St. Augustine seeking refuge after the war ended. Our archaeology team has done a lot of work to recover artifacts that tell this story, and we are excited to have Dr. Bell with us this weekend to shed more light on the lives of British Loyalists during that era.”

Dr. Bell, who received his PhD from Harvard University and his BA from the University of Cambridge, will be speaking at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday in the Keepers’ House gallery. His expertise on British Loyalists in colonial America will tie in with the underwater excavation of a 1782 shipwreck off St. Augustine’s coast. Lighthouse archaeologists have been studying this wreck since 2009, and believe it was one of 16 British Loyalist ships that ran aground trying to enter St. Augustine’s treacherous inlet on New Year’s Eve 1782.

Guests during Sea Your History Weekend can learn more about the archaeological and conservation work being carried out at the museum through guided Behind the Scenes and Lost Ships tours available on Saturday and Sunday. Both tours give visitors access to places not normally open to the public where they can see artifacts from this shipwreck. Tours are available every hour from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Conservationists will also be performing delicate artifact cleaning onsite between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. on both days. Guests are invited to get up close with history and see how these historic artifacts from the ocean floor are cleaned and preserved for future exhibitions. Many of the artifacts from this British Loyalist ship will be part of a new exhibit coming to the lighthouse in 2016.

On Sunday morning, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., the lighthouse boatworks will be alive with the sounds of wooden boatbuilding, a folk art practiced by volunteer craftsmen at the museum. Visitors can see how boards are steamed and fitted to carefully create a historically accurate boat like the Florida skipjack, one of three projects currently under way at the boatworks.

Sea Your History Weekends at the museum are funded in part by a grant from the St. Johns County Tourist Development Council. This is the fifth and final installment in the 2014 series.