Page 94 - Manual for Activities directed at the Underwater Cultural Heritage

 © MMRG. Letter of the
English Consul ofTangier to the Governor of Gibraltar that helped recognizing the wreck of the
HMS Courageux in the Straits of Gibraltar, Morocco.
The first page of the 20 December 1796, letter from
the English Consul at Tangier,
J.M. Matra, to the Governor
of Gibraltar, Lt. Gen. Charles O’Hara.The letter, found in the National Archives, Kew, recounts the wreck of the 74-gun British ship-of-the-line, HMS Courageux, on 10 December 1796, on the Moroccan coast of the Straits of Gibraltar.This letter helped the Morocco Maritime Survey identify a cultural assemblage located during their 1999 survey off shore of Jebel Musa, Morocco
purpose, as, for instance, the identification of a shipwreck, the contextual background of a specific site, the historic overview of an area, or comparative analysis of a site type.
The challenges faced during background studies in historical archaeology are
• the identification of sources,
• the acquisition of access to these sources and
• the possession of the necessary skills to make
actual use of these sources (i.e. language skills, technical understanding, deciphering difficult writing, etc.).
In terms of evidence types, there is a basic distinction to make between primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are original documents established at the time of the event or at the time of earlier investigation of the site. These may be ship logs, original accounts or survey-records. Secondary sources, on the other hand, analyse the event or the original document, or report analytically on the observations that were made in previous interventions. The consultation of reliable secondary sources enables an initial overview of a topic. In many instances, however, it is indispensable to verify the information obtained with the help of primary sources.
International, national, local and personal archives across the world contain an impressive breadth of historical information relevant to underwater archaeological research projects. In complement to geological, environmental and archaeological data, they encompass a wide array of documents that are relevant to different classes of underwater cultural heritage. The following types of sources are, for example, relevant to the research of ship losses, especially from the postmedieval period:
• depictions and iconography (paintings, drawings, etchings, etc.);
• aerial photographs;
• recorded accounts of witnesses;
• maps and charts;
93
3
Preliminary work