ECU students practice land-based skills during maritime field school
East Carolina University’s summer maritime studies field school may be a student’s first archaeological or maritime archaeological field work. Therefore, Dr. Nathan Richards, professor in the Department of History and the Program in Maritime Studies, takes students to an exposed wreck that allows them to hone their archaeological skills in scaled mapping, photography, videography and photogrammetry on mostly dry areas. He then transitions them into snorkeling-based recording and finally scuba operations in a restricted visibility setting.
The first of the two summer field school sites, which allowed students to get their feet wet, so to speak, was the USS PC-1084.
Maritime studies graduate students Jacob Thomas and Liam O’Brien discuss their observations of the upper section of exposed plating along the starboard side of the USS PC-1084. (Photo by Dr. Nathan Richards)
“I wanted to do this because once the recording was completed, we planned to travel to record the USS Picket in the lower Tar River, where we would have to be underwater 100% of the time,” Richards said. “The site is also an incredible opportunity to teach maritime archaeology students about the ship construction techniques of the era and those coming into prominence during the Second World War.”
The PC-1084 was a PC-461-type vessel also known as a U.S. subchaser, which Richards said was considered very effective in World War II — perhaps the best. He said it was also one of the last and most technologically significant subchaser designs of the war.
According to Richards, during WWI and WWII, the Allies spent a lot of time, energy and money in combating German U-boats — with the subchaser being a type of craft specifically designed to help ward off attacks on Allied shipping and to send German subs to the bottom of the seafloor.
Though designed to chase subs, subchasers also served other roles — especially as escort vessels. Richards said a major factor to the Allied victory was that lines of supply to Europe and Asia could stay open, and this could be achieved only by protecting goods, personnel and materiel on cargo ships in convoys. Escort vessels had the role of looking out for enemy vessels and engaging with them if encountered. An additional task subchasers like PC-1084 served was as patrol craft — with the designations SC (subchaser) and PC (patrol craft) often being swapped over the period from WWI to post-WWII.
Commissioned on Aug. 31, 1943, the PC-1084 escorted convoys along the Atlantic coast until its decommissioning in December 1945.
“We are still piecing together its relatively short life as a ship of war,” Richards said.
He said a series of newspaper articles note the vessel saw but did not engage with a German U-boat off the East Coast.
“This is likely as close to real action as PC-1084 got,” Richards said. “However, it provided critical wartime service — we know it was involved in many convoy runs in the Atlantic, and also in the Caribbean Sea. We’ve now found details of many of the convoys it was involved with — multiple runs from Key West to New York and New York to Guantanamo Bay. We also know the ship picked up a mascot — a 4-week-old puppy (in October ’45) named Pogy (or in another account, Mugsy) — which took an unexpected swim at one stage and had to get rescued.”
Upon closer examination of the war diaries of the period, Richards said it appears that PC-1084 made a trip from Boston to Miami in October 1943 and thereafter worked on convoy escorts, mostly out of Florida (Key West and Miami), from at least mid-November 1943. During this time, it worked with other U.S. naval craft as a convoy and submarine escort along the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast. This included many trips to Cuba and Guantanamo Bay.
Maritime studies graduate students prepare to record underwater sections of the starboard-side profile of the USS PC-1084. In the background, students Ian Shoemaker and Harley Drange record exposed details of the ship’s deck. (Photo by Dr. Nathan Richards)
The PC-1084 was transferred to surplus in August 1946. It was then purchased and brought to Breece’s Landing in the Upper Cape Fear River near Fayetteville. Unless the water level is high, the wreck of PC-1084, can be seen between the Person Street and Grove Street bridges.
According to Fayetteville city historian Bruce Daws, the ship remained floating for some time before salvage hunters punched a hole in the stern. The vessel quickly filled with water and shifted into its current listing position. Though the water is murky, students can explore the vessel and easily identify and visually scale gun placements, superstructures and other features that have long since been removed from the ship.
Richards said water levels and flow rates vary, making access to the site difficult at times.
“Luckily for us, during our project, we were only interrupted by this a few days toward the end of our time there,” he said.
“Our interest in the site during the field school mainly pertained to the technical significance of the ship — a representation of the technology of its day — and what we call the archaeological site formation — charting the life of the ship and modeling its deterioration, whether caused by the environment or by humans,” Richards said.
“The archaeological site formation and level of preservation may provide insights into the preservation status and long-term stability of similar sites,” he said. “We know from our work on the Pappy Lane wreck (an amphibious assault vessel built at the same yard and by the same builder as PC-1084) that the throwaway nature of these ships (there was no real intention to keep all of these after the war ended) means they are degrading quite rapidly.”
Richards concluded that maritime archaeologists cannot say with certainty how many of these vessels are now archaeological sites — but he guesses very few are in their original location, fewer are accessible and this may be the only one in North Carolina. Material previously salvaged from the PC-1084 is in local museums and some businesses in Fayetteville, and at one time, the vessel was being considered for heritage tourism or museum development plans.
Contributed to by Dr. Nathan Richards.