A little-known battlefield from the American War of Independence lies in Arnold’s Bay in Panton, Vermont. In October of the 1776 campaign season, British troops made their way south from Fort St. Jean in a last attempt for the year to defeat the American fleet on Lake Champlain. The warring fleets met at Valcour Bay on October 11^th and the overall skirmish ended at Arnold’s Bay on October 13^th. This paper explores the battlefield site on land and in-water, where General Benedict Arnold burned five vessels to prevent their capture and escaped with his remaining soldiers by land to Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga. This ongoing archaeological investigation conducted by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum was funded by the American Battlefield Protection Program. The Museum worked in collaboration with Stockbridge-Munsee Community, Abenaki leaders, and partnered with the Advanced Metal Detecting for the Archaeologist (AMDA) group.

In the fall of 2022 archaeologists from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum began the exploration of the abandonment site of the flag ship of the colonial naval fleet on Lake Champlain in 1776, the Row Galley Congress. Test excavations in 2022 revealed that substaintially more of the wreck was present at the site than previously suspected. Excavation and documentation of the hull remains continued through the summer of 2023 and this paper will present the intial findings of the project and discuss the design and construction of this poorly understood vessel class.

Since 2016, the Fort Saint-Jean Museum has been involved in an underwater archeological project on its riverfront to document its submerged cultural heritage. The first phase of the project (2016-2018) led to the discovery of two new archeological sites and the monitoring of a third which had previously been identified. One of these sites was confirmed to be a shipwreck in 2018. Its architectural features led to an identification as a late 18^th century or early 19^th century shipwreck, placing it at the core of historical events at the fort Saint-Jean during the 1775 and 1812 events.

In 2021, a short monitoring campaign investigated the site, and helped to identify the changing underwater conditions and how this affected the site. In September 2023, the second phase of the project was launched with an excavation of the shipwreck. This paper will focus on the 2023 results and updated hypothesis.

The schooner Royal Savage played a pivotal role as the flagship of Benedict Arnold’s squadron in the American Continental Army’s defense of Lake Champlain against the British during the American Revolution. Misfortune led to her sinking during the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776, and the wreck was left undisturbed for over 150 years until, in 1935, her remains were rediscovered and salvaged for exhibit in a museum that never materialized. Instead, the hull was disassembled and passed undocumented through several owners before being returned to the U.S. Navy in 2015. Currently a disarticulated assemblage of timbers, the remains have been documented and studied to better understand the design and use of the schooner. This presentation covers the ship’s sinking, recovery, and the current documentation and interpretation effort - a joint Navy-Texas A&M University research project which includes the development of two scale ship models based on archaeological research.

Between 2014 and 2016 four steamboat wrecks sunk near one another off Shelburne Point in Lake Champlain underwent surveys and preliminary recording. Comparison of archaeological and historical data allowed identification of the four. The historical evidence included a remarkable series of stereopticon images taken of the steamer graveyard in the mid-1860s showing the location and extent of the wrecks. This presentation will review the stereo photos and highlight their contributions to our archaeological analysis of the site.

Lake Champlain is the repository of a considerable number of submerged cultural resources and shipwrecks representing over twelve thousand years of human occupation in the region. While archaeologists have collated a substantial amount of data on the vessels, the histories of many have yet to be fully understood. Hildegarde is a case study of a vessel with a complete historic background from its launch in 1876 to its abandonment in 1937. This paper will explore the systemic context of the vessel with a focus on its uselife through lateral cycling during its pre-depositional context. The post-depositional context will also be explored when the vessel was abandoned in the Pine Street Barge Canal Breakwater Ship Graveyard along the shore of Burlington, Vermont. Cultural and non-cultural site formation processes will be discussed along with potential correlations between ship abandonment and trends in maritime commerce, economics, population, and technological trends.