opinion. and that's part of what the war of 1812 did. it said women can serve the nation by bearing children for the nation, by adding to rising families of free men, and men can serve the nation in many ways, including by taking up arms but also by raising families, by breaking new farms and settling the land. that's a real service to the nation. so part of what e war of 1812 does is tell people your aspirations for your family, your desire to have a farm and to raise a family of children, this is what serves the american nation. that's an idea that existed certainly back to jefferson's time with the louisiana purchase, but it's something that really gets cemented in the public mind and it says everyone who starts a farm, everyone who raises a family, male or female, new immigrant or native-born person and even black or white, everyone can be a patriot and the only people who were left out of this actually were indians.

>> nicole eustace. the book is "1812, war and the passions of patriotism." we want to thank you for joining us on american history tv. >> thank you so much for having me. thanks. you're watching american history tv which you can see every weekend here on c-span 3. this july 4th we're highlighting the war of 1812 bicentennial, taking an in-depth look at the causes and course of the little-known war that bolstered america's international credibility, fostered a new sense of patriotism and gave us our national anthem. we continue now with american artifacts. >> each week, american history tv's american artifacts visits historic places to learn the story of the united states through objects. in 1812, joshua barney proposed creating a flotilla of american barges to defend the chesapeake bay area against british ships. in august 1814, commodore barney

was forced to destroy and sink his fleet of about 15 vessels in maryland to prevent their capture. single vessel, the suspected flagship "scorpion" was discovered in 1979 under the river mud and partially excavated. now underwater archaeologist robert neeland of the history and heritage command is leading a team to further study the wreck. american history tv traveled up the river with mr. neeland to learn about the project and visited the navy's underwater archaeology lab in the washington navy yard, where artifacts from the ship are studied. >> this flows into the chesapeake bay. we're going to be going just up river of the highway 4 bridge, and highway 4 is actually the very end of pennsylvania avenue, the same pennsylvania avenue that runs from d.c. and ends right at the river.

the "scorpion" or the wreck believed to be the "scorpion" is one or two miles up river from that bridge. so we're about 30 minutes from washington, d.c., about 20, 25 minutes from annapolis and probably 40 minutes from baltimore. the 1814 the river was deeper, perhaps wider as well. there's been a lot of sedimentation from agricultural runoff since 1814. at this time during the early 19th century, 18th century, sea-going vessels were able to come fairly far up river. sedimentation prevented that in 18th century and 19th century and early 20th century, mechanized agriculture, there was a great influx of sediment into the river. during the war of 1812 the chesapeake was pretty much undefended. the british had free rein to come into the bay and come ashore, loot plantations, villages, take what they wanted

as well to, you know, to also punish the american citizens. joshua barney, a revolutionary naval war hero, proposed to build a flying flotilla of barges that would be able to defend the coast during the day, intercept the british landing parties and then at night, harry the british fleet. he was given permission and funds to do this. these were put under the department of the navy, since joshua barney had been retired and was no longer in seniority within the navy, he was made a commodore of this whole flotilla. it was somewhat part of the navy but also separate from the navy. on his first voyage out with his flotilla, this was 15, 16, 17 ships, he ran into superior british ships who chased him up the river. he fought some retreating battles. at one point he was bottled up

in st. leonard's creek and then was able to fight his way out but he couldn't fight his way into the bay. he was forced to come further and further up river, retreating. the british following him, their forces building to the point that he got so far up river, he could not get any further up river. it was apparent that the 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, explode them with gun powder which he did effectively, and it was at this point where we are now when the british came up river that they could see the mast of barney's flotilla, but very soon afterwards they saw that the ships were on fire and heard the explosions from the powder kegs that were set. they went further on up river and found the fleet entirely scuttled except for one vessel that the fuse went out on and

they were able to capture this vessel and bring it down river with them. there was also a series of merchant vessels that had moved up river with barney's flotilla to try to avoid capture from the british and these were also either scuttled or the british themselves set them on fire and destroyed them. the river was certainly deeper during that time period but we know it got very shallow up river where the flotilla was scuttled because 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 would bottle them up in the south river. they were gone so far up river that the deeper draft vessels, "s "scorpion" and the supply ship were left as far up as they could go and shallow draft vessels could only go up river in single file in only a few

feet of water. the buoy we see up there marks the wreck. we're over the site of the shipwreck. we think it could be the "uss scorpion" the flagship of the barney flotilla. the bow is toward the bank, just beyond the tree that's been cut off, and the stern comes out into the channel a little more towards the red buoy you see over here. the ship is 75 feet long, 25 feet wide, it is still principally decked throughout much 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. we manage the navy's ship wrecks from continental navy up through world war ii and even korean

war. i have also worked on civil war ship wrecks near norfolk, virginia. perhaps the most significant wreck i worked on is "h.l. hunley" which i was in charge of excavation and recovery of that submarine. we found a crew of eight men that were still inside the submarine dealing with the forensics analysis and the identification and facial reconstruction of those individuals. but with the navy ship wrecks we worked on everything from the d-day ship wrecks off normandy beaches to a scuttled revolutionary war fleet up in the penobscot river in maine. we were involved in the commemoration of the war of 1812 and we proposed to relocate and excavate the ship wreck 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's it like diving in this water that looks pretty hard to see through? >> kind of like diving in pea soup. the visibility is not very good at all. the best we ever get to is a foot or two. it's hard -- it is hard to measure and read tapes and to work, since you almost have to work by braille, by feel or by touch, but you can get used to it. if you're an underwater archaeologist, you worked in black water, you do get used to, you know, maneuvering around when you have very limited visibility and also, you can determine what you're working on and what you're feeling by touch. so your other senses kind of improve with time when you have low visibility. however, the visibility here, even though it looks pretty bad, we have had at times, you know, up to a foot or two and 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.

this is what we propose to do in 2013 in commemoration of the war of 1812 is to look at this shipwreck and 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. barney took us, joshua barney took about 400 sailors to help evacuate washington, burn the washington navy yard because they knew the british were probably coming toward washington and eventually meet the british. they left a small contingent of about 100 men with this fleet of 15 ships to scuttle those, and all the supplies, all the equipment was left on board of them. once they were scuttled and after the british left, we know that salvage came back, took some of the cannon off and some of the iron ballast. we also know as far as the

things that were spoiled, personal possessions, food store and stuff, was left, barney himself actually pursued getting his sailors reimbursed for the loss of their personal possessions. so really what we expect to see from this is, you know, 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 was a grog cup with the initial c.w. on it believed to belong to an african-american sailor, caesar wentworth. there were a number of african-american sailors serving in the flotilla. we also expect to see some of the weapons, not the cannons, those were recovered, and probably the shot for the guns and from that, we'll be able to

determine what size guns they would have had on board. the ships were principally armed with a cannon, a long gun and a shorter cannonade for lobbing heavier shells into enemy ships. they were very effective close-range weapons which is what barney hoped to do in fighting the british was to get in close enough where he could maneuver with his ships with long sweeps or ores and around the british they would be in shallow water and could not very effectively move, then hammer at him with his long gun and caronades. potentially boarding, too. we expect there to be quite a number of interesting objects. these will be presumably well preserved because of the waters here in the 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 the deep freeze, although it's not very cold, for many, many years, things are preserved well. the state was originally

discovered in the late 1970s, early 1980s. they named it the turtle shell wreck. it was oral histories that suggested some of the vessels were here from people who had seen them exposed in low water and fished over them. anyway, they proceeded to build a wind coffer dam around the site and do excavations on the site. they found very significant artifacts. they found some medical supplies, surgical equipment. they found some weapons as well, too, such as small arms. they also found a large chest, wooden chest with the markings and the initials on it from a company that -- from baltimore that had supplied provisions and equipment to the flotilla. they're pretty certain this was indeed one of the flotilla vessels and they believed it was the "uss scorpion" which was the flagship, commodore joshua barney's flagship, principally because of the medical and

surgical supplies, thinking the surgeon would have been aboard the "scorpion." we came back in preparation for doing a major excavation during the commemoration in 2010 and 2011, relocating the site, doing some series of test excavations. the artifacts that had been recovered to 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 or in need of conservation are being preserved there. >> my name is george schwartz. i'm an underwater archaeologist for the naval history and heritage command. the site was originally discovered in 1979 and 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 the museum in maryland to commemorate barney's flotilla. what we have here are a collection of artifacts that were recovered in 2010 and 2011. right now, they're 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 materials, metal materials, sometimes a combination of both, we have ceramics and glass. each one is in its own particular solution so 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, 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. you can see it's intact still but has some corrosion on the inside so this artifact has not been con served. it's in storage solution right now. but this could have held some type of medicine. some of the vials that were recovered in the past still had a cork in it. in those cases you can sample and try to figure out what was actually inside of it. this one did not have a cork. 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 is still unconserved scissors. these are surgical scissors also from the hold of the vessel. this is in a storage solution essentially to prevent further corrosion until conservation is complete. what you 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 but you can see the screws and other components are still in very good shape and there's another example of a pair that has been conserved that we can take a look at. because there was -- the burial environment was anaerobic, there wasn't a lot of oxygen, there wasn't a lot of microbial attack because of the sand that covered up the artifacts. because of this and because of the fact this is in brackish water so there aren't things that can attack the artifacts, all of these things combined to preserve these artifacts. so the idea here is number one to to desalinate the artifacts and remove chloride because those can damage the artifact by drying, crystallizing and

damaging the integrity of the metal. preserve it so we can put it on display and study it and have it for the long term. the next artifact that we have in storage solution is this sto stoneware jug. 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, we can try and determine if there's any residual substance at the bottom of the container and then what jug and cork individually and again, try and -- the idea is to save as much information as we can on the actual artifact and if there are any kind of diagnostic features that might indicate who manufactured the artifacts or where they 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 from -- it's not

contemporary, not early 19th century. it was something that is intrusive. it got into the site later in the century but right now, it's in a storage solution of glycerin and formaldehyde and ethanol essentially to preserve it until it can be fully conserved. even though this isn't from early 19th century, we recovered it, it's still an historical artifact and we're going to treat it as such and conserve it. so we may find more artifacts like this from later in the century. it's just pretty typical in an archeological site. >> so tell us about what you felt down there. >> outer planks. a frame or two. i know that thing you were talking about, it looks like a 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 like you could 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 metal. you can see there is some crusting on the metal. this is essentially caused by the chemical reaction of the metal in the water and it is sort of adhered to the surface of the wood as well. this has to be treated individually so you're preserving both the wood and the metal. this is a reading element, so this would have attached to the side of the vessel and you would have attached reading elements, lines and such to the strap. this is a piece of wood, structure of the ship. we're not exactly sure where it came from, what part of the ship

it is. we know 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 fastener we recorded on the vessel, and this is pretty well preserved piece of wood and it will be preserved again individually. this is an example of another intrusive object or object that may be from the time period, but it is a mandible, probably from a horse or donkey or something and it was recovered right outside of the site and in the burial, in the sediment layers of the ship itself. again, recovered, documented, and it will be conserved. there is another storage area of the lab, and there are artifacts and larger water logged artifacts we'll take a look at

out in the warehouse. this warehouse of the part of the curator branch, where a lot of the larger artifact from decommissioned ships are brought and processed and then they're inventoried and they're sent off to another place where they're actually cureateed. this is the x-ray and storage room and we have artifacted in here as well. a lot of the larger artifacts have to be kept wet in an appropriate storage solution, so the artifact that i am pulling out now is probably called a boomkin, and this was found on the star bird side of the

vessel. it is fairly complete. as you can see, the wood is in very good shape, and it also has an iron shift at the end and this was attached to the side of the vessel at the bow, and it was likely used to help haul in the anchor and tie off the anchor and also to secure the rig rigging. this was still attached to the star bird side of the bow. >> this is something you usually don't recover in ship wrecks. debating between a couple of us whether it is a spreading for the rigging or a katia which would have been used to help in raising and lowering an anchor and keeping the anchor away from the side of the ship. >> our plans are for 2013 to build a steel correr dam and

remove sediment and conduct as if it was a dry excavation on land. we can have more control with the archeology and it also presents us the opportunity to bring the public out to the site and let them see on going excavation in progress and ask questions and help with the whole interpretation of the war of 1812 and help to perhaps make the american public more aware of the war of 1812 and the naval action that was part of that war. i might mention, too, this is only the second dry coffer dam done for an archaeological site in the united states. the previous example was that done in texas in matagorda bay of the 17th century flench explorer la salle and the vessel la belle. this is only the second time anything like this has been done. one of our partners is the state of maryland, state highway administration. they do coffer dams all the time. however, they don't normally do them for archaeological

projects. they do them for bridge repair and abutments and there is innovative engineering going into the project. state highway administration has been in the lead with that as well, but we think that we will be able to put the steel coffer dam around the site, have six months to excavate the site, remove the steel coffer dam, rebury the wreck and take all of the information and data back for conservation and for research and for write up and hopefully have things for exhibit during 2014 while the commemoration is still going on. we also think with our partners maryland national capital parts and planning that they're going to assist in bringing people out to the site so that we can have regular tours and visits to the site and explaining what's going on and what's being found and of course it will be changing almost daily with the excavation and more and more of the wreck exposed. >> this is pretty narrow up here, this section. eventually it will really start

narrowing down in another mile or so. >> we don't plan to extract the ship to recover a ship wreck and we can do that but to conserve it is a very long and drawn out process that can take decades and also be a very expensive 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 disaassembly we'll have to remove the deck to get into parts of the ship wreck and remove interior planks to get to the frames to map the shape of the ship, so our plan is a little damage to the hull as possible but to do what's necessary to get a good thorough recording of it. >> when these were recovered in the early '80s, most of them recovered them, they were taken to 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 and apothcary bowls and a dinner plate and a bowl. this is actually a tin grog cup from one of the sailors and it is believed to be from one of the african-american sailors, caesar wendthworth, and you can see the c.w. inscribed on the side of the grog cup. we don't have any smoking gun evidence that this is scorpion, but all the clues put together indicate that it very well could be. then you have this dental tool. it was used to pull teeth. then you have pieces of clay pipes, another pair of surgical scissors. >> why is it important from your

perspective to preserve this boat under this muddy water here? what does it matter? >> well, part of our mission with naval history and heritage is the education of both the navy, the sailors, and american public as well. this 200-year commemoration is a perfect time to do that and call attention to in some ways is to many a forgotten war and falls between the american revolution and the american civil war both of which people i think are more aware of than the war of 1812, but 1812 is one of the most important with wars for the nation and for the navy as well, too, and certainly showed that we were free of influence from great britain and came out of the conflict as the clear winners of that, and it also showed that the united states needed a strong navy as well as a strong army, that it couldn't defend its coast without a strong navy, without sea going

ships, blue water ships. previously during the jefferson administration the concept had been to have a very small navy, small army, and not get engaged in european wars and this was although it was probably a cost savings in some way, it certainly showed that this philosophy was not able to defend the american coast, the chesapeake bay, from superior naval force such as that of great britain. >> some of these things you can't learn just from archival records. a lot of the stuff that's written down in the historical record is the 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. the surca