In Texas there is the Southwest Underwater Archaeological Society. They are a group of divers and avocational archaeologist who work with the State Marine Archaeologist of Texas to help locate and document historic wrecks of texas.
Artifact Arrest
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wreckdiver1715
Registered
Yet, my old home state of Texas has some of the most restrictive rules and regulations on the salvage of shipwrecks. Damn Aggie’s! The Arches at A&M are definitely in control, no one but the academic types can salvage old shipwrecks, and the yahoos in Austin bought into all that academic bull and made it law. Don’t Mess with Texas Shipwrecks! Oh yea! All you treasure hunters move to Florida.
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wreckdiver1715:
No, that is incorrect. I received my M.A. from Texas A & M in the Nautical Archaeology Department. The professors there do not work in Texas and most in fact do not work in the US. The prefer classical archaeology. There are a few that do but not in Texas. The rules for Texas are set by the Texas Historical Commission in Austin. You are right, everything does belongs to Texas.
Still even so, you can get a permit to look at wreck in Texas and you don't need a permit to dive wrecks in Texas as long as they are left alone. This only pertains to historic wrecks that are 50 years or older. And, as I mentioned previously, there are certain circumstances where you 'might' be able to salvage a wreck or even destroy a wreck. When I worked for the Texas Historical Commission, a gas company putting in a pipeline would have to do an archaeological assesment prior to their work. A wreck was found, it was investigated and then determined to be insignificant and the gas company was not required to avoid they area.
There are thousands of wrecks in Texas. This can be anything from a row boat to a historic wreck. Can you tell me what wrecks in Texas you would like to salvage? For the life of me, what would you take, how would you conserve it and then where would you display it.
Believe me, I am not a traditional academic. I do believe there is room for a compromise.
Also, since there is a group which you could join to look at historic wrecks and help map and preserve them, why not join. Is it that you only want to take things for yourself. If you truly want to salvage them, is it for the materials or just a porthole? These are just questions not put downs. I have a database of the wrecks in Texas and I can't think of one where you could just go take somethings and then put it on your mantle above your fireplace. Everything would need to be conserved and that takes a great deal of money and time.
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james croft
Contributor
I have a modest collection of portholes, lanterns,binnacle, etc. and they needed no preservation. If the good Lord did not want us to have a porthole, he would not have made them out of brass.
phoneman
Registered
I can't help but wonder if academia spent as much time developing a positive role with rec. divers who may find something, would it not be more productive for eveyone. What might happen if divers were told that they could keep a controlling intrest in what they find if its reported? Simply making a criminal out of a diver who takes an old deck nail or cannon ball home doesn't seem to benefit anyone. What is even more puzzling is that if that same deck nail washes on shore and is picked up it would be ok. Turning the oceans and lakes we dive into the Sherwood forrest for archaeologist's will only result in making alot of Robin Hood's. Remember Robin Hood didn't steal from the rich he stole from the sheriff of Nottingham (a.k.a. the government). Sorry for the rant but some times I get stuck on stupid.
james croft:
And if the Good Lord wanted it in a museum, he wouldn't have led you to it...can I get an Amen?
naskatucket
Guest
amen
LVX:
Unfortunately, you're in the minority and you'd be taken to task by your own compadres if you tried to work with divers. That's what happened to an archeologist out here when he proposed a swap of info with us after he found out that we know the locations and identities of a lot of wrecks he had no information on. They're also all deeper than 150FSW, which makes any serious survey extremely expensive. We'd have been happy to share video, descriptions and locations - and even donate whatever small artifacts we had to a museum, in exchange for more information on the wrecks he might have been able to uncover and credit for the "discovery". By the way, these are all unprotected wrecks. But unfortunately his buds made it clear that his credentials were at stake if he actually worked with us ignorant "criminals" and so we continue to find and document more wrecks for fun and on our own dime, and they remain righteous and clueless.
fire_diver
Contributor
Really sad that 99.9% of all archies are like that.
Same exact situation occurs in the field of civil war relics. CW archies would rather commit sepuku than share data with, or ask for the help of, a CW metal detectorist. Even though many detectorists spend more time and personal money in research than the government paid archies. Most find battle sites that the archies never heard of, or only dreamed of finding. These guys do a damned good job of conserving and displaying their finds too. They are proud of the results of thier hard work, and would gladly set up thier own museums, except that would prevent them from going out and looking for more.
FD
Same exact situation occurs in the field of civil war relics. CW archies would rather commit sepuku than share data with, or ask for the help of, a CW metal detectorist. Even though many detectorists spend more time and personal money in research than the government paid archies. Most find battle sites that the archies never heard of, or only dreamed of finding. These guys do a damned good job of conserving and displaying their finds too. They are proud of the results of thier hard work, and would gladly set up thier own museums, except that would prevent them from going out and looking for more.
FD
phoneman
Registered
Yes and I'm sure if you did set up your own museum it would be siezed before the door opened. Its a shame.
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