HOLY WHAT?: REINTERPRETING THE JOHN’S ISLAND WRECK IN EDENTON, NORTH CAROLINA

Abstract

From 1775 to 1783, the Revolutionary War raged across the 13 British North American colonies. To exert greater pressure on the rebellion, the Royal Navy blockaded harbors throughout New England, and British authorities encouraged harassment and raiding of colonial ports. For the purpose of coastal defense, North Carolina and Virgina worked together to construct two galleys: Washington and Caswell. Both galleys used Edenton, North Carolina, as a home port, and Caswell sank there in 1779 due to structural issues. Washington was summarily deployed for action and vanished from the historical record in late 1780. Roughly a year after Washington left Edenton, a ship-rigged row galley named General Arnold attacked the town. Targeting economic infrastructure, General Arnold burned plantations and warehouses, stole a merchant sloop, and disabled a local schooner before being seized by the townspeople of Edenton. After its capture, the fate of General Arnold is relatively ambiguous. Some stories indicate that it was used as communal property by the merchants of Edenton, while others suggest it was renamed as the privateer galley Tartar, reportedly launched at Edenton in 1782 (Babits and Howard 2008:20). The John’s Island Wreck is located at the mouth of Pembroke Creek near Edenton. The site was the subject of archaeological investigations in 1980 and 1993, which resulted in speculation that the remains represent the merchant ship Holy Heart of Jesus. Helmed by Swedish captain and gun smuggler William Borritz, that vessel was reported to have unexpectedly arrived at Edenton in 1778 with a cargo of 45 cannon. Though archaeological evidence found in both investigations did not explicitly rule out this interpretation, the vessel’s identity was never confirmed. The proposed thesis seeks to reassess the interpretation of the John’s Island Wreck by comparing legacy archaeological data with that recorded in 2024, as well as recently available archival data, to determine whether it could be the remains of a row galley dating to the Revolutionary War.