CASAN­DRA THOMP­SON�FORBES

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has grant­ed ap­proval for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut in the USA to con­duct ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sur­veys and ex­ca­va­tion works near the Scar­bor­ough Har­bour to lo­cate the re­mains of 16 ship­wrecks. The ves­sels were sunk dur­ing the fierce wars the Dutch and the French fought in the 17th cen­tu­ry for con­trol of the is­land.

A 30-mem­ber team is ex­pect­ed to un­der­take the sci­en­tif­ic in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the her­itage project. It is head­ed by Dr Kroum Batch­varov, pro­fes­sor of mar­itime ar­chae­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, as­sist­ed by Ja­son Pa­ter­ni­ti, di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions at the G-eos Foun­da­tion.

Speak­ing at the post-ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Batch­varov said the ini­tia­tive was the most im­por­tant project of its kind in the Caribbean in 12 years. He said the project will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal schol­ars to par­tic­i­pate in the ex­cit­ing work of deep-sea map­ping and ex­plo­ration.

"This project will pro­vide unique op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal stu­dents and stu­dents abroad to in­ter­act with each oth­er to find an in­ter­est­ing as­pect of this," he said. "Ar­chae­ol­o­gy is not on­ly about ex­ca­va­tion of an ob­ject. Many dis­ci­plines of sci­ence are in­volved in this, start­ing from the study of tech­nol­o­gy back then to tech­nol­o­gy in the present day.

"We al­ways use up-to-date, high-qual­i­ty equip­ment like com­put­ers. All this is part of our op­er­a­tion, so there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for sci­ence de­vel­op­ment, there is chem­istry in­volved, there is physics in­volved and com­put­er sci­ence in­volved...and we are hop­ing to share the knowl­edge with the lo­cal stu­dents who would like to work with us."

Batch­varov said his team has been work­ing with Ed­ward Her­nan­dez, di­rec­tor of the mu­se­um at Fort King George, to de­ter­mine ways to pre­serve the items that would be re­cov­ered, to boost cul­tur­al tourism "Part of our ob­jec­tive is the es­tab­lish­ment of a good-class mar­itime ar­chae­ol­o­gy sec­tion with­in the mu­se­um," he said.

"To­ba­go has been blessed with a fan­tas­tic mu­se­um and venue for dis­play­ing To­ba­go's cul­tur­al her­itage at the Fort King George Mu­se­um. "Our hope is that this would en­hance To­ba­go's rep­u­ta­tion as a lead­ing des­ti­na­tion for cul­tur­al tourism with­in the re­gion."

He not­ed that the event would be wide­ly doc­u­ment­ed on the In­ter­net with its own Web site. So­cial net­works Face­book and Twit­ter will al­so be utilised and the world-re­spect­ed Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic mag­a­zine will al­so doc­u­ment the find­ings. Batch­varov said a book would al­so be writ­ten about the ex­plo­ration, with joint copy­right be­tween him and the THA.

He said all the arte­facts found would be the prop­er­ty of the THA. The project is be­ing spon­sored to­tal­ly by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut and is ex­pect­ed to cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$82,000 a year. Ex­ca­va­tion, record­ing, doc­u­men­ta­tion and con­ser­va­tion are ex­pect­ed to start in June 2013, and to be com­plet­ed in be­tween three and five years.

His­tor­i­cal back­ground

In 1677, a French squadron, as­sist­ed by a large de­tach­ment of troops, at­tempt­ed to wrest con­trol of To­ba­go from the Dutch West In­dies Com­pa­ny. The squadrons fought a cru­cial bat­tle in what to­day is the Scar­bor­ough Har­bour. The bat­tle was one of the largest fought out­side Eu­rope in the 1600s, and the even­tu­al loss of To­ba­go to the French marked a sig­nif­i­cant turn­ing point in the his­to­ry of Caribbean set­tle­ment.