century and early 20th century recognized agriculture a great influx of sediment to the river. during the war of 1812, chesapeake was undefended. the british had free reign to come into the bay and come ashore. loot plantations, villages, twhak they watake what they wanted to also punish the american citizens. joshua barney was a revolutionary war naval war hero. he had proposed to build a flying flotilla of barges that would be able to defend the coast during the day, and intercept the british landing parties and then at night, the british fleet. and he was given permission and funds to do this. he was put under the department of navy since joshua barney had been retired and is no longer in

seniority within the navy he was made a commodore of this whole flow fill la. part of the navy, also separate from the navy. and on his first war job with the flow fill tilla. he ran into superior british ships who chased him up the patuxent river. he fought battles. at one point bottled up in saint leonard's creek and was able to fight his way out but he couldn't find his way into the bay. forced to come further and further up river. british following him, forces building until the point that he got so far up river he could not get any further up river and it was apparent that british could capture his ships. so he was ordered by the secretary of the navy to abandon his ships, and when the british tried to take them to set them on fire he exploded them with gun powder, which he did effectively, and at this point

we are now where the british guide came up river, that they can see the mast of barney's flotilla and soon afterwards saw the ships on fire and heard the explosions from the powdered kegs that were set. they went further up river and found the fleet except for one vessel that the fuse went off. they were able to capture this vessel and bring it down river with them. there's also a series of merchant vessels that moved up river whip the flotilla to avoid cap chirp from the british and also scuttled or the british themselves set them on fire and destroyed them. so the river was certainly deeper during that time period, but we also know it got very shallow up river where the flotilla was scuttled. they were taken up river as far as they could possibly go. there was some thought about trying to take them over land to the south river, but it was decided that would be futile because the british in turn

would bottle them up in the south river. but they were gone so far up river that the deeper draft vessels, the scorpion, they were left as far up as they could go, and even the more shallow draft barges, gun boats, could only go up river in single file with only a few feet of water. that buoy we see up there mark, the wreck. >> okay. >> well, we're over the site of the shipwreck that we think could be the "uss scorpion." the flag ship of the barney flotilla. the bow is toward the bank just beyond the tree that has been sawn off. cut off. and the stern comes out into the channel a little more toward the red buoy you see over here. the ship is 75 feet long, 20 feet wide. it is still principally decked throughout most of the wreck. the bow and most of the ship seems to be in relatively good condition, considering it was

scuttled with an explosive charge and possibly burned. the stern shows some damage, possibly from the blowing out of the scuttling charge. i'm the head of the underwater archaeology branch at naval and history command. we manage navy shipwrecks from continental navy, well, up through world war ii and then the korean war. i have worked on civil war shipwrecks, cumberland, and florida, down in hampton roads near norfolk, virginia. perhaps the most significant wreck i've worked on is the confederate submarine h.l. hundley, and i was in charge of the excavation and recovery that of that submarine. we found a crew of eight men. they were still inside the submarine, dealing with forensic analysis and identification and facial reconstruction of those individuals. with the navy shipwrecks, we've worked on everything from the d-day shipwrecks off normandy beaches to a scuttled

revolutionary war fleet up in penobscot river in maine. we're involved in the commemoration of the war of 1812, and we proposed to relocate and excavate the shipwreck site because it was probably one of the best known and best preserved of the navy's war of 1812 vessels. >> so you dive in the water here yourself. what is it like to dive in the water that looks pretty hard to see through? >> like diving in pea soup. the visibility is not very good at all. the best it ever gets is a foot or two. it's, you know -- and it's hard to -- it is hard to measure and read tapes and work. you almost have to work by braille, by feel and touch. but you can get used to it. if you're a underwater archaeologist and you've worked in black water, then you do get used to, you know, maneuvering around when you have very limited visibility and also you can, you know, determine what you are working on and what you

are feeling by touch. so your other senses kind of improve with time when you have low visibility. however, in the visibility here, even though it looks pretty bad, we have had at time, up to a foot or two. so we have been able to take some video of the wreck site as well and to see a little bit of what we're doing at times. anyway, this is what we proposed to do in 2013 in commemoration of the war of 1812. it's to look at this shipwreck, which is really a time capsule from this time period, in 1814. we know that when the ship was scuttled, most of the supplies, personal possessions of the crew and the officers were still on board. you know, barney took us -- joshua barney took about 400 sailors to help, you know, evacuate washington, burn the washington navy yard because they knew the british were probably coming toward washington, and eventually meet the british at the battle of

bladensburg. a small contingency of 100 men were left to scuttle these ships and all supplies were left on board of them. once they were scuttled and after the british left, we know that salvagers came back from both the u.s. navy and private salvage, took come of the cannon off and some of the iron ball last. ballast. we also know that the things that were spoiled, personal possessions, food stores and stuff was left. barney himself pursued getting his sailors reimbursed for the loss of personal possessions. really what we expect to see from this is some of the foods, food stores that the sailors ate, the provisions, also we know that we found some surgeons' equipment, medical supplies, surgical scalpels, scissors and such. we expect there to be the personal effects of the crew which will help tell something about ethnicity, about who they were, what their economic status was.

one such artifact is a grog cup with the initials c.w. on it, believe the to belong to an african-american sailor named caesar wentworth. there were a number of african-american sailors serving in the flotilla. we also expect to see some of the weapons, if not the cannons that were recovered, and probably the shot, you know, for the guns and from that we'll be able to determine what sized guns they would have had on board. the ships were principally armed with a cannon, a long gun and a shorter carronade for lobbing heavier shells into the enemy ships. they are very effective close-range weapons, which is what barney hoped to do in fight the british was to get in close enough where he could maneuver his ships with long sweeps or oars and around the british who couldn't effectively move, and hammer at them with his long guns and carronades.

and we expect there to be quite a number of interesting objects. these will be presumably well preserved because of the water here in the patuxent river. everything has been below four or five foot of mud and in an anaerobic or oxygen-free environment. it's like being put in a deep freeze for many, many years although it's not that cold, things were preserved well. the site was originally discovered in the late 1970s, early 1980s by don shomette and ralph eshelman. a large turret shell on the site. it has history that suggested have had seen and exposed in low water and fished over them. anyway, they proceeded to do a little call around the site, and do excavations on the site and found very significant art fagts. medical supplies, surgical equipment.

weapons, too. small arms and a large chest, wooden chest with marking, initials on it from a company from baltimore that supplied y o provisions and equipment to the flow fill la. flotil flotilla. they are pretty certain that this was indeed one of the flotilla vessels, and they believed it was the "uss scorpion," which is the flagship -- joshua barney's flag ship. particularly because of the medical and surgical supplies, thinking that the surgeon would be on the "scorpion." we came back in preparation for doing a major excavation in commemoration of 2010 and 2011, relocating the site and doing a series of test excavations. the artifacts that had been recovered from date, both from the recent excavations and the earlier excavations are kept at the washington navy yard in the underwater archaeology, archaeology and conservation laboratory. things recently recovered are in need in conservation, are being preserved there.

>> my name is george schwartz, and i'm an underwater archaeologist and conservator. the site was originally discovered in 1979, and it was -- it was excavated in the early 1980s by another group. and they recovered a large number of artifacts. basically what they did is they discovered the site, they mapped it and they recovered about 180 artifacts, and they were found to be in very good state of preservation. but they were conserved and put on display at a museum in maryland to commemorate barney's test fleet flotilla. what we have here, a collection of artifacts recovered in 2010 and 2011. right now they are all in storage solutions because essentially what we need to do is keep the artifacts wet because if they dry out in an uncontrolled manner, they can deteriorate and essentially fall apart. so we have organic material, metal materials. sometimes a combination of both.

of ceramics and glass. each one is in its own particular solution so that it's well preserved until treatment can take place. treatment can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple years, depending on the artifact and how corroded it is, how -- what the material is and how much damage has already been done to it. so this is a pharmaceutical vial that was recovered from the site, and you can see that it's intact still, but it has some corrosion on the inside. this artifact has not been conserved. it's in a storage solution right now, but this could have held some type of medicine. some of the -- some of the vials that were recovered in the past actually still had a cork in it. so in those cases you can sample and try and figure out what was actually inside of it. this one did not have a cork. but we did take some samples to try and test and see if there was residual substance in the bottom.

the next artifact i want to show you, still unconserved, scissors. these are surgical scissors also from the hold of the vessel. this is in a storage solution of sodium hydroxide essentially to prevent any further corrosion until conservation is complete. what we see here, is a very well preserved scissors. you can see the details. it has a lot of diagnostic features in there. what we're trying to do is clean the surface so that we can possibly figure out who the manufacturer was. you can see the screws and other components are still in very good shape, and there is another example of a pair that has been conserved that we can take a look at. because there was the burial environment was anaerobic, not a lot of oxygen, not a lot of microbial impact because of the sand that covered up the objects. and so because of this, and because of the fact that this is in brackish water,

so there aren't as any chlorides or salts that can damage the artifacts that we'll find in other shipwrecks and marine environments, all of these kind of factors combine to preserve these artifacts, and so the idea mere is, here is, number one, to desalinate the artifacts and try to remove any remaining chloride because those can damage the artifact by drawing and crystallizing and essentially damaging the integrity of the metal. preserve it, put it on display, study it and have it for the long term. the next artifact we have in the storage solution is this stoneware jug, and it's in very good shape, as you can see. it's complete. and it actually still has a cork in it. so, again, we can take samples, try and determine if there is residual substance at the bottom of the container, and then what we'll do is treat the stoneware jug and the cork individually and, again, try and -- the idea is to save as

much information as we can from the actual artifact. various kind of diagnostic features that might indicate who manufactured the artifact or where it came from, that all helps in sort of unraveling the story of where they got these materials. this is actually a leather shoe. this is not contemporary. it's not early 19th century. it was something that is intrusive. it got into the -- into the site later in the century. but right now, it's in a storage solution of glycerin and formaldehyde and ethanol to essentially preserve it until it can be fully conserved. even though it's not from the early 19th century, we've recovered it, it's still an historical artifact and we're going to treat it as such and preserve it. so we may find other items from later in the century.

this is pretty typical of an archaeological site. >> tell us what you felt down there? >> powder planks, a frame or two and i know that thing you were talking about, looks like a "y" that comes up with a cap across it, and then just at the stem itself there's a ring. a ring. kind of like an upside down teardrop, and it has a curved form in it all the way up and down, like you can lay in a rope. >> so that is made out of iron? >> yes. a couple iron fasteners this way and a couple going in straight up and down. >> this is -- these are, again, in a different storage solution. because as you can see here, you have a combination of both wood and metal, and can you see there's some encrustation on the metal. this is essentially caused by the chemical reaction of the metal and the water, and it sort of adhered to the surface of the wood as well. so this has to be treated

individually so that you're preserving both the wood and the metal. this is a rigging element so this would have attached to the side of the vessel and you would have attached the rigging element, the lines and the such, to the strap. and this is -- this is a piece of wood. a structure of the ship. it -- we're not exactly sure where it came from. what part of the ship it is. we know exactly where it was found, but not what part of the ship it was. it was disarticulated, so you have an iron fastener going through the wood, and this is a typical type of fastener that we've recorded on the vessel. this is a pretty well preserved piece of wood. it will be conserved again individually. and this is an example of another intrusive object, or an object that may be from the time period, but it was -- it's a

mandible, probably from a horse or a donkey or something, and it's -- it was recovered right outside of the site but in the burial, in the sediment layers of the ship itself, so, again, recovered, documented, and will be conserved. so there's another storage of the lab, and there are other larger art fagts we're going to go take a look at out in the warehouse. this warehouse is part of the curator branch. it is where a lot of the larger artifacts from decommissioned ships are brought and are processed, and then they are inventoried and then sent off to another place where they are actually curated. but this is our x-ray and storage room. some artifacts in here as well. again, a lot of these larger

artifacts are kept wet and in an appropriate storage solution. so the artifacts i'm pulling out now is a -- probably -- it's called a boom kin, and this is -- this was found on the starboard side of the vessel. it's fairly complete. it's -- you can see the wood is in very good shape, and it also has an iron shiv at the end. this was attached to the side of the vessel, at the bow, likely used to haul in the anchor and tie off the anchor and also to secure the rigging. and so this was actually still attached to the side of the -- at the bow, the starboard side. >> yeah. well, this is something we usually don't recover in shipwrecks. you know, there's some debate between a couple of us whether

it's a spreader for some of the rigging or whether it's a cap head. i think it's a cap head, which would have been used to help in raising and lowering the anchor and keeping the anchor away from the side of the ship. for 2013 build a steel discover dam around the site and pump the water out and move the sediment and conduct the excavation as if it was a dry excavation on land. we can have more control with the archaeology by doing that. it also presents us the opportunity to bring the public out to the site, but can see the ongoing excavation in progress and ask questions and help with the whole interpretation of the war of 1812 and make the american public more aware to have war of 1812 and the naval action that was part of that war. i might mention this is only the second dry dam that's been done

for an archaeological site in united states. the previous example was in texas of the 17th century french exemployeer la salle, the vessel labelle. this is only the second time this has been done. one of her partners is the state of maryland state highway administration. they do these dams all the time. they do them for bridge repair. there's some innovative engineering going into the project. state high administration's been in the lead with that. we think that we will be able to put the steel coffer dam around the site, have six months to excavate the site. rebury the wreck and take all the information and data back for conservation and for research and write up and hopefully have things for exhibit during 2014. while the commemoration is still going on. we think with our partners

national parks and planning is they're going to assist in bringing people out to the site so that we can have regular tourists in business to the site. we explain what's going on and what's being found and of course it will be changing almost daily with the excavation more and more of the wreck exposed. >> this is pretty narrow this section. eventually it will really start narrowing down another mile or so. >> we don't plan to extract the ship to recover a ship wreck. we can do that. but to con verve it is a very long drawn out process that can take decades. it can also be a very extensive process as well, too. our plans are to document, recover the artifacts that can be put on exhibit or studied and interpreted to thoroughly map and document the ship wreck to do some disassembly. we'll have to remove the deck to get into parts of the ship wreck. we'll have to remove some

interior planks to map the frames of the shape of the ship. our plan is to do as little damage to the hull as possible and do what's necessary to get a good thorough recording of it. >> so these were -- when these were recovered in the early '80s, they were take on the a conservation laboratory in maryland and they were documented and conserved and then they were put on display. so you see a wide range of materials here from the ceramics. there are some apothecary bowls and a dinner plate and a bowl. this is actually a grog cup from one of the sailors. it's believed to be from bush of the african-american sailors. caesar wentworth. you can see the c.w. that's inscribed on the side of the grog cup. we don't have any smoking gun

evidence it's a scorpion, all the clues put together sort of indicate it very well could be. then you have this dental tool. it was used to pull teeth. and then you have pieces of clay pipes. another pair of surgical scissors. why is it important from your perspective to preserve this boat under the muddy water here? why does it matter? >> part of our mission with naval history heritage command is the tradition of the sailors and american public as well. this 200-year commemoration is a perfect time to do that. and to call attention to a war that is in some ways a forgotten war that falls between the american revolution and the american civil war which people are more aware of than the war of 1812. 1812 is one of the most important wars for the nation and for the navy as well.

it showed we were free of influence from great britain. we came out of the conflict as the clear winners of that. and it also showed that united states needed a strong navy as well as a strong army that it could defend its coast without a strong going. without sea going ships. previously during the jefferson administration the concept had been to have a small navy, small army and not get engaged in european wars. this was, you know, although it was -- it certainly showed that this philosophy was not able to defend the american coast, the chesapeake bay from a superior naval force such as that of great britain. >> some of these things you can't learn from archival records. a lot of stuff that's written

down many the historical record are main events, major people throughout history. but you don't always write down the simple things about how daily life was aboard an early 19th century naval vessel for example. we can learn about the horrors of dentistry, for example, by looking at that dental tool and imagine having a tooth pulled by something like that. is surgical scissors. they have different types of scissors for different types of applications. the grog cup. it's a very -- it says a lot about what they went through every day having -- they may have had a grog ration that they had once per day. there's a lot we can learn about ship construction that we don't already know. there's a lot about naval heritage that you can learn from recovering artifacts conducting analysis and publishing, seminating information and the more knowledge there is and can

be shared that's better for humanity in general. >> and positive they could be transported over land to the south river and gain and escape into the bay and be saved. however the bridge we're coming up so fast behind them they didn't have to effect that plan. they were eventually scuttled. we only found one vessel it could be the rest of the flotilla is elsewhere now under the land or the shoreline that you see now. you can watch this or other american artifact programs at any time by visiting our website cspan.org/history. and watch american artifacts every sunday at 8:00 a.m., 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern on

c-span3. this is c-span3 with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week and every weekend 48 hours of people and events telling the american story on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. you can join in the conversation on social media sites. kenya, indonesia, hawaii, kansas, chicago, and washington. this weekend on book tv follow david maraniss on his journey walking in a president's footprints. sunday starting at 6:00 p.m. eastern a video record of his traveling. then live at 7:30, he takes your calls and questions. also this weekend on afterwards conservative commentator jonah goldberg blames liberals for an ongoing war on ideas using the tir nee of cliches. >> american politics have been distorted by the last century by the idea that the further you move away from the left the closer you get to bad thins.

a bad word is fascist, another one is racist, homophobic. the best working definition of a fascist is a conservative who's winning in an argument. >> that's sunday night at 9:00 on book tv this weekend on c-span2. >> watergate was not a caper. it was about a fum intent by president of the united states to misuse and abuse the constitution, obstruct justice, and more than anything to try and undermine the very electoral process. >> it's been 40 years since the watergate break in. >> if you really look at it, they rigged or tampered with everyone's vote. by saying this was not just something done to have fun or it was not just dirty tricks. it was a strategic plan aimed