Title: “Guns and Ships”: the history and archaeology of the Battle of Yorktown on the river, with new approaches

Abstract: The Battle of Yorktown turned York River into an environment rife with maritime material culture that has been subject to disturbance since the end of the battle in October 1781 to the present day. Many attempts to collect said material culture have produced only fractured representations of what remains in the river. From 1934 to 1935, The Mariners’ Museum and the National Park Service conducted a salvage operation in the York River to collect material from wrecks dated to the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. Much of that material remains on display today, with limited archaeological context. Subsequent work by Virginia’s underwater program in the 1980s aimed to produce a much more comprehensive archaeological study by largely focusing on one vessel, Betsy. Join Assistant State Underwater Archaeologist Jill Schuler as she talks about the evolution of British shipping during the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Yorktown, and the long history of archaeology in the York River, with a special focus on how she approaches collections with varying archaeological contexts.  

Bio: Jill Schuler became Assistant State Underwater Archaeologist for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in 2022. In 2023 she defended her thesis, “‘Guns and Ships and so the Balance Shifts’: Using Artifact Patterning to Contextualize a Salvaged Assemblage Dated to the Battle of Yorktown, 1781.” She graduated with her MA from the Maritime Studies program at East Carolina University. In addition to her work in Virginia, Jill also works for the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission as the research historian for the Tale of Two Ships project, researching and publicizing the famed pirate ship Queen Anne’s Revenge’s previous life as the French slave ship La Concorde. She is also a board member of the North Carolina Maritime History Council and associate editor of their peer-reviewed journal, Tributaries.