 Hi everyone, this is Dan O'Neill, the Executive Director of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. Before we get to our third Sunday presentation, I would like to thank the following businesses for sponsoring today's lecture. They made a vital investment in our museum, and their support is why we are able to bring you this lecture series at no charge. This month, we are pleased to welcome Susan Evans McClure, the Executive Director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. She will present, on the USS Spitfire, a revolutionary gunboat that sank in the aftermath of the Battle of Valcor Island. She will discuss the ship and the museum's efforts to preserve it. Hello, I would like to start today by recognizing that we are on the unceded land of the Abenaki people. The Abenaki have always been and continue to be a thriving indigenous culture in this region. We acknowledge the land and the people, and we are grateful for their generations of stewardship, past, present, and future. I'm Susan Evans McClure. I'm the Executive Director of Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, and I'm happy to be with you all to tell you a little bit more about the museum and about our efforts to preserve and share the revolutionary war gunboat Spitfire. Before we start, a little bit about Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. Here it is on your screen. It's always sunny. There's always a rainbow. It's never cold, and the winds never blow off the lake. We are a history, ecology, and archeology museum that connects people to our unique region with the goal of building a healthy future for Lake Champlain and for our community. We're located seven scenic miles outside of Regens, Vermont on the shores of Lake Champlain, and our team of archeologists, historians, boat builders, and educators lead programs, research, and museum exhibits both on site and for the past year, mainly online. Lake Champlain itself is about 120 miles long and centrally located between two states and two countries. The waterway has always been a central travel corridor, so there are lots of stories to tell. We are looking forward to being open for our 2021 season, outdoors only with masks on starting in May, and we will actually be free to visit in 2021 as we want to give back to our community and offer a place for people to connect with each other with our history and with our environment. So I hope to see all of you at the museum in 2021. And before I get started, I want to specifically thank my museum colleagues, Chris Sabic, Art Cohn, and Sherilyn Gilligan for their work on this project that I'm going to share with you all today. So why does one particular boat at the bottom of Lake Champlain mean so much to us and to our work? Let me take you back to the summer of 1776 on Lake Champlain. The Continental Congress had just issued the Declaration of Independence, and Benedict Arnold had been given their blessing to build a navy that could defend Lake Champlain from the British. He built the boats in what is now Whitehall, New York, and leading to their proud display of the birthplace of the U.S. Navy sign that you see in Whitehall today. So Benedict Arnold in 1776 led the building of eight 54-foot gondolas and four 72-foot galleys. The British general Guy Carlton was attempting to take back Fort Ticonderoga, or at least to take control of Lake Champlain. Whomever controlled Lake Champlain would be able to get to Albany, New York, get to the Hudson River, and then split the American colonies in half, effectively winning the war. Now on October 11th of 1776, Benedict Arnold's fleet of hastily built gondolas and galleys and stolen boats, manned by a ragtag group of largely untrained sailors, met with Carlton's British Navy in Velcro Bay, which is just near Platsburg, New York in Lake Champlain. Arnold's fleet was roundly trounced and captured. After almost six hours of fighting, cannon fire and snipers, Arnold's fleet was completely captured. And that's actually where things get more interesting. Guy Carlton ordered that the royal savage, one of Benedict Arnold's fleet, be burned. And between the flaming ship distraction, the fog, the cannon smoke, the echoes in the ears of all of the sailors from hearing nothing but explosions for six hours, Benedict Arnold made the pretty rash move to seek away. He lined up his boats bow to stern and rode away under cover of darkness. And when the British woke up, I weren't they surprised to see that their captors were gone. Carlton immediately ordered a pursuit and a battle ensued down the lake. Carlton knew that if he could get his men to Fort Ticonderoga, they would be fine. But despite his head start, the British caught up to the Americans and a second fight ensued near Split Rock Mountain. Some of the boats continued to Fort Ticonderoga, while Benedict Arnold ran the rest of the boats around in Ferris Bay, which is now called Arnold's Bay. And he lit them on fire to prevent the British from getting control of the ships. And in fact, our team in the museum is undertaking another research project this year, funded by the National Park Service and Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program, that will specifically examine Arnold's Bay and the surrounding land to learn more about this really interesting part of the story. We're hoping to determine exactly where the ships were scuttled in the bay. And people have been taking objects from that site almost since the day the ships were burned. Of course, what happens in that bay comes back to be a big part of Benedict Arnold's trees and story later in the war. When Arnold gave the orders to light the boats on fire, they were still full of cannon and gunpowder, so there were lots of explosions. And actually one injured sailor was still alive and left on the boat. And he was then killed when the boats exploded. There was a pretty gruesome account of the soldiers' body flying through the air. Arnold claimed later that it was a huge misunderstanding, wrote about how he never would have left a wounded man behind. But those who were against him after he committed treason said that they used this incident in Arnold's Bay as part of all of his bad character that led to what they called his inevitable treason. Anyway, Benedict Arnold, complicated guy with a fascinating story, who is a big part of this tale. So Benedict Arnold runs the boats around, lights them on fire. He and his men make their way to Fort Ticonderoga by land. And when Carlton and his men also made it to the fort, they realized they could not take the Fort Ticonderoga. It exists on a spot that the reason Fort Ticonderoga is where it is, it's really hard to capture, it's on high ground. So Guy Carlton realizes that they won't be able to take the fort. But then it's mid-October and things in the North Country are their bleak. There was snow on the mountains and Carlton decided that he was just going to wait out the winter. So he turns around and goes back to British North America to wait out the winter, but then everything changes by 1777. So Benedict Arnold lost the battle, but by delaying the British over the winter, he helps to win the war. And this was one of the many instances of Benedict Arnold's heroism before he becomes a traitor, which is of course what we all mainly know him for today. So Benedict Arnold's sunken fleet was out there in Lake Champlain after 1776 and people were looking for it. Boats and Arnold's Bay were taken out piecemeal by the end of the 19th century. And in the mid 1930s, Lorenzo Haglund raised the Philadelphia from Baltimore Bay. The Philadelphia being one of the gondolas in the fleet. The boat went on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in 1965 where it has remained ever since. And while Haglund was the one to find it, he certainly didn't do it alone. And like all good researchers, he had a benefactor. Haglund's work was funded by a man named J. Rupert Schalk. And interestingly, J. Rupert Schalk was the nephew of Jacob Rupert, who was both the founder of Jacob Rupert Brewery and the owner of the New York Yankees from 1913 to 1939. And for those of you who are Yankees fans, you will know that he was the owner when the team purchased Babe Ruth from Boston Red Sox, which at least in my divided household still is a point of contention. I am a New Yorker married to a Red Sox fan. So Rupert Schalk was an executive at the Jacob Rupert Brewery. And he both funded and participated in Haglund's efforts to raise the Philadelphia. So all of that is to say that the reason we have the Philadelphia on display at the Smithsonian is because of the American fondness for buying and drinking beer. So by 1952, all but one of the 15 boats in Benedict Arnold's fleet had been found. So what happened to the boats during the battle after the battle? Some of them returned to Fort Ticonderoga in 1776, the revenge crumble enterprise in New York. In the 1930s, Haglund found two boats at Valkor Island in Valkor Bay, the gunboat Philadelphia, which he took out of the water intact and the Schooner Royal Savage. Three of the boats were captured by the British during the battle. The Washington, Jersey and the Lee. And then other boats were burned in Ferris Bay, now called Arnold's Bay, including the Galley Congress and four more gunboats. But that still left one missing gunboat. So where was it? And how are we going to find it? So efforts continued past Haglund's discovery of the Philadelphia and the Royal Savage. And those efforts continued into the 90s as part of the work of Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. The team at Lake Champlain Maritime Museum was undertaking what was called the whole Lake Survey in the 90s to examine the entire bottom of Lake Champlain using sonar scanning. When it was discovered that zebra mussels had arrived in Lake Champlain, the museum started this ambitious 10-year project to map the bottom of the lake and document what it found, assuming that the zebra mussels would damage the underwater cultural resources. Fancy term for shipwrecks in the near future. So as the team scandal the lake bottom in June of 1997, they found what looked like a mast and a double-ended vessel. They sent divers down on the target to verify that it could be what they thought it might be. And indeed it was a gunboat with the mast at almost full height and still intact at the bottom of the lake. This is an image by an artist named Ernie Haas, who has been working with the museum to recreate some of the iconic images of Lake Champlain history, including the images of the Battle of Valcor Bay that you saw earlier. Ernie's work is really instrumental to understanding the past in our region. It really puts a picture on something that we can only read about in words and it's really helped generations of people understand and feel the importance of the history that happened right here. So that's what the boat looked like underwater. But it took yet more research to piece together which gunboat it actually was because it was clearly a gunboat. The study of history is really the study of primary sources that we piece together to learn what happened. We can only make determinations based on what the primary source tells us. But the more digging you do, the more you find. And with more focused research and the team uncovered a new document that was detailed that was actually called The Fate of the Fleet and it was written in 1776. So once they had access to that document called The Fate of the Fleet, which was actually a pretty amazing story of how it came to the museum. The museum had publicized that they found this gunboat and they were working to figure out what it was. And someone actually contacted the museum and said he happened to be an antiquarian book dealer. And he said, I have this document that's been in my family. It says The Fate of the Fleet and it says 1776 on Lake Champlain and names all the boats. Is this possibly helpful to you? And it definitely was because you can see, here's the document here, and you can see that it lists the names of the boats and what happened to them, including the Spitfire. And it says, for Spitfire, sunk at her anchor by the enemy. So they also went through and saw the names of the other boats that said they were sunk into Ferris Day and what happened to them. And they were able to piece together that the four boats that were in Ferris Day were the Connecticut, Providence, New Haven, and Boston were the names of the four gunboats in Ferris Bay. And then it was indeed the Spitfire that was left at the bottom of Lake Champlain. So this was a really exciting process of historical discovery, putting the pieces together, finding the primary sources, finding the objects and really solving a historical mystery. But with the identification and discovery of the boat by the late 90s, now what? So Lake Champlain Maritime Museum created the Spitfire Management Team and began doing inspection dives on the site almost annually and keeping tabs and monitoring threats to the boat ever since. Finding shipwrecks is actually the part that most people hear about. And in some ways, it's the easiest part of underwater archaeology. It's actually what to do about them and how to take care of them after you find them that gets complicated. And in fact, the Spitfire is extra complicated. Due to the Sunken Military Craft Act of 2004, it is, in fact, the law that if a ship is used by a government during a military engagement, it continues to be the property of that government. So in this case, the boat is the property of the US Navy because it was sailed by the Navy in a naval engagement. The boat is also technically in New York state, so New York state waters of Lake Champlain. And Lake Champlain Maritime Museum is in Vermont. So we have a multi-state research team working with a federal partner now because the boat is the property of the US Navy. So what we thought was just about discovering the boat then becomes even more complicated, figuring out what to do with it. So now that we know it's there, what do we do with it? And I always like to flip that question. And instead of asking, what do we do, I start with why should we do it? So why should we preserve the spitfire? Well, I believe that it all comes down to people. The Revolution I wore in the Champlain Valley was fought by real people. And it's only by learning more about these people and their decisions that we can begin to think about our own role as history makers in the world today. We don't know what we don't know about this boat. And we have a tremendous opportunity to learn about how people lived and what decisions they made in building these boats. So Philadelphia, out of the lake and on display at the Smithsonian was actually one of the first boats built in the fleet and the spitfire was one of the last. So this really is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the differences between those two boats and think about the individuals who were making these choices on the fly about how to build these boats, how to sail them. Also, there's objects on there that we don't know what's on there. We have an idea of what's on there but there might be new material that will show us something about the experience of living through this conflict. So if our why is about learning more about people and their decisions so that we can feel more connected to our own role as history makers, well then we get to the how. And that's exactly what we're exploring this year as we try to move forward on a plan for preserving and learning from the boat. The best practice in underwater cultural resource management always says that in situ preservation, so leaving it there is really the best way. Nothing that we as humans have created is better than cold, dark water for preserving wooden boats. But at the same time, we also need to look at potential threats. And for the Spitfire, those are invasive species and well-intentioned lake users, including fishers and divers, people who are fishing and diving. So the invasive species that we're concerned about here with the boat are mainly quagga mussels which are basically a bigger, more intense zebra mussel that lives in deeper water. The Spitfire is deep enough that zebra mussels can't colonize down there but quaggas can and they have colonized and destroyed many shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. However, currently there is no evidence of quagga mussels colonizing in Lake Champlain. And no one really knows why. They should be here basically based on how invasive species move. So we are working with the Lake Champlain Basin Program to stay up to date on the work they're doing to track quagga mussels and track invasive species overall. And of course, the goal with invasive species is to prevent their arrival. So we're trying to support as much research as we can into invasive species and invasive species mitigation and prevention in Lake Champlain to help protect this boat. I also mentioned well-intentioned lake users. So even well-intentioned divers have the potential to do major damage. The ship is very deep. You actually need advanced diving, training and certification to access it but with Sonar technology advancing every day it's easier than ever to find things in the lake. So you might even be able to find this and dive on it which could lead to unintentional damage or it could be very dangerous for divers who are not trained. People who are fishing specifically with downrigger boats could also catch the mast or do some other kind of irreparable damage. So there are threats and we know what we wanna learn from the boat. So how do we do it? That's a great question. And this year we're really focused on identifying what's possible. You all may have heard initially about our plan to bring the boat out of the water. And while that may still be a plan we are following in 10 to 20 years, right now we are really focused on what we can do by the 250th anniversary of 1776 and of this ship sinking in Lake Champlain. So we're coming right up on 2026 which will be a year where there will be lots of attention on our region on this important story and on the boat. So we really wanna make some great strides by 2026 that will help us both to learn new things from the boat and also share it with more people. So our first focus will be on documenting the boat where it is and developing a three-day model of the ship. We're starting hoping to start that work in 2022 using a relatively new technology called photogrammetry. Photogrammetry uses an underwater digital photography to capture several thousand images of a given shipwreck or really any object in a confined space. And then it plots that confined space into a computer program and the computer program makes a 3D image using points that you've added to the program. And the model that it three model creates is a scale model that you can use to visit the boat even without going underwater. So that'll be our first step is photogrammetry and documentation. We wanna know more about specifically where it is to take measurements, take photographs. So that's step one. Step two will be a major excavation and conservation project. So that will be focused on in-water excavation to learn exactly what is on the boat and where the things are and potentially to take some things off the boat and conserve them out of the water and put them on display. That will be a very complicated process. And as I mentioned earlier that the boat is the property of the US Navy. So we are working in partnership with the Navy and have to apply for and receive all of the appropriate permits so that we can undertake this work. But it'll be really complicated. It's in deep water, it's highly technical and the Navy is an important partner in this work. And we wanna be supporting the management plan that they are leading and we also want to work with them together in Lake Champlain. So that'll be a really important and exciting part of the project will actually be the excavation work on the boat in the water. And then finally, by 2026 we want to put Spitfire in the context of the entire Revolutionary War on Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain Maritime Museum has been doing extensive research on everything that happened in the lake in 1776 and beyond. And we'd like to put that all together in a resource that people can access from anywhere so that people have a broader understanding of the Revolutionary War on Lake Champlain. And now this resource could include all of the other projects that we've been working on throughout the years and the projects we're doing this year in Arnold's Bay. And I think it will be a really important way for people who will never come to visit even Lake Champlain to be able to access this important information and really learn from our past. We don't know what we don't know about this boat and we have a tremendous opportunity to learn from it and we really want to be able to do that in time for this important anniversary that's coming up. We also want to learn more about the shipbuilders and the shipbuilders themselves and the people who built the ship. So there's work to be done. You know, I talked about modeling and photogrammetry and excavation, but there's also new research that needs to be done into the story. A lot of the research about the Battle of Alcor Bay was done in the 20th century. It was important research. It was, a lot of it was kicked off by Haglund actually finding the boats. There's also some amazing 19th century research into this story. So people have been talking about the Battle of Alcor Bay and that in journals for a long time. I think there's an opportunity here to do lots of new research into things that we haven't documented as much. Who are the people who built the boats? Where did they come from? What expertise did they bring or not bring? And what did they think about being here in the Champlain Valley? Who were they interacting with when they got here? There's a lot of layers that we still have to tell. So our goal is to learn the most, the best and share it as widely as possible with the public to help people connect with the national story that happened right here on our lake. The upcoming 250th anniversary of 1776 offers new possibilities and new attention on this amazing national story that happened here. We have new things to learn from this history that can shape our understanding of the people who founded our nation and the choices they made along the way. When we learn more about the individual choices and actions of individual people in history, we can see that all of us as individuals have the ability to make history every day. We look forward to these new discoveries and to sharing all of these stories with you as we head into 2026. Thank you. Thank you, Susan, for a wonderful presentation. Next month, we are excited to feature Angela Vallatinetti of the Vermont State Archives, which are a valuable resource for researchers and historians. They contain documents and items that tell a lot of the history of our state. They also contain interesting items and stories that don't often see the light of day. Join us next month to learn some of them. And as always, if you enjoyed this presentation and would like to support the Ethan Allen Homestead, please go to the donation link in the description box below or on our website, ethanallenhomestead.org. Thank you very much and we'll see you next month.