At the 12th Conference on Underwater Archaeology (“The Challenge Before Us”, 1981), I delivered a paper entitled, "Nautical Archaeology: Coming of Age, But Facing an Identity Crisis.” The primary purpose of the paper, presented at a terrestrial session, was to promote underwater archaeology among our terrestrial colleagues. I also hoped the paper would provide inspiration and guidance to the underwater community. The paper concluded with a series of very basic goals for future research and resource management. In this paper, I offer reflections on my half-century of involvement in the field, then review our progress on those early goals and on topics I hadn’t covered before. I also suggest new goals for the future.

Forty and fifty years ago the social structure of what was to become a recognized specialization of underwater research in the context of archaeology and anthropology was very different from today. A review of education, publication, study sites, study questions, gender, race, legal issues, geographical distributions, technology, and other topics show contrast.

Back then, underwater sites were considered a jumbled mass of broken artifacts with no provenience and no way to excavate them in an orderly manner; National Register site boundaries for a port city were drawn at the water’s edge; survey was done by dragging a scuba diver behind a boat; and objectives for search were Atlantis and gold from Spanish galleons.

Change has taken place and for the most part for the better. In the future, underwater activities can be better integrated with the encompassing fields of anthropology and archaeology.

This presentation looks back to the 1981 article, "Nautical Archaeology: Coming of Age, But Facing an Identity Crisis," penned by John Broadwater and both presented at the 12th Conference on Underwater Archaeology and included in its proceedings. That paper described the discipline 20 years into its formal development and posited a number of steps to see its growth. Whether or not these have been met, are still relevant, or have evolved in a completely different way, is considered from the perspective of one State Historic Preservation Office(SHPO), albeit one that has has had a maritime archaeology program for more than 35 of the ensuing 40 years. The relationship of the SHPO to other government agencies, academia, the private sector, and the general public, especially in light of constantly shifting circumstances and sometimes dramatic challenges, is also considered.

The Smithsonian has engaged in underwater archaeology and its forebears since the 1950s, starting with Dr. Mendel Peterson’s explorations of multiple Caribbean shipwrecks. In the mid-1970s, the Smithsonian and US Navy recovered propulsion machinery from the early propeller steamboat Indiana (1848) in Lake Superior. Expeditions resumed in the early 1990s back to Lake Superior to more fully document the Indiana wreck, followed by expeditions to Hanalei Bay, Kauai to locate, survey and excavate the wreck of Ha’aheo ‘o Hawai‘i(ex-Cleopatra’s Barge), the Royal Yacht of Hawaiian King Kamehameha II. During this period, the Smithsonian repatriated ca. 5,000 artifacts from Peterson’s Bermuda wreck research to the Bermuda National Museum. Permission to survey for an American slaveship that wrecked with human cargo on a Middle Passage voyage off the coast of Cuba was requested but not permitted. The Smithsonian continues to repatriate accessioned artifacts from various wrecksites around the world.