Speakers

 


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Colin Martin

Dr Colin Martin is a retired Reader in Maritime Archaeology at the University of St Andrews. He has directed excavations on three Armada shipwrecks, and three wrecks of the 17th and 18th centuries. His book The Spanish Armada, written jointly with Geoffrey Parker, was the first account of the conflict in which archaeological and documentary sources were combined. His most recent book, A Cromwellian Warship Wrecked off Duart Castle, Mull, Scotland, in 1653, was published earlier this year.

Together with his wife Dr Paula Martin he is currently investigating maritime landscapes on Scotland’s western seaboard.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
In his presentation, Dr Martin will focus on 7 Spanish Armada wrecks which have been discovered and investigated along the Irish coastline, including the 3 wrecks at Streedagh Strand in Sligo. As someone who has dived on Armada wrecks himself, including at Streedagh in 1985, he is well positioned to describe the ships structures and origins, their military and commercial cargo, and describe in detail what has been recovered so far from the sea and how new generations of archaeologists are poised to make new and exciting discoveries relating to the Spanish Armada.


Ivan Negueruela

Dr. Ivan Negueruela is Director of the National Museum of Maritime Archaeology in Cartagena Spain since 1993. He has been involved with various and wide ranging explorations and investigations at archaeological sites all over the world since 1977. He has been a Founder Partner and Director of many European Commission and UNESCO projects and has been involved in the organisation of various congresses, conferences and cultural gatherings during his distinguished career. He has published extensively and has received many awards for his work in terrestrial and maritime archaeology.    

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

In his presentation Dr. Negueruela will explore the most recent work by scholars and researchers in the field of Armada studies. Renewed investigations in the archives of the nations of Europe have thrown new light on the events of this period and will inform a new understanding for future generations. Agreements between the countries involved is vital in driving research and scholarship and Dr Negueruela will consider how best practice can be established in international cooperation on ship wreck investigations into the future.


Fred Hocker: Ships, Shot & Splinters

Fred Hocker: Ships, Shot & Splinters

Dr Fred Hocker

Dr. Fred Hocker is the Director of Research at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. The Vasa is the only preserved seventeenth-century ship in the world, and the museum is a bespoke facility housing the ship and its treasures. Dr. Hocker has vast experience in Nautical Archaeology from his work in Texas A&M University and has been involved in many excavations and reconstructions of ships from the 9th to the 18th Century in the US and Europe. His research interests focus on shipbuilding and maritime economics in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. 

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

The Vasa Museum constructed and test fired a replica of one of the bronze 24-pounder cannon cast in Stockholm in 1627 for the warship Vasa. This provided statistically relevant data on the range and accuracy of the piece, and gave a practiced gun crew the chance to explore the ergonomic aspects of risk, rate of fire, and battle space environment. This paper focuses on what the test program revealed about the risk to crew as it relates to the construction of the hull, including several surprising and counterintuitive findings regarding the resistance of different kinds of construction and the damage caused by splinters.

 


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Carlo Beltrame

Professor Carlo Beltrame lectures in Maritime Archaeology at the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. He has researched widely in maritime archaeology in Italy and Denmark. He is currently coordinating a project of research on Venetian ordnance. He has specialized mainly in ship construction from Antiquity to modern age but he is also interested in the management of underwater cultural heritage. He has written five books and more than seventy articles.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

The paper presents recent research from the State Archive of Venice on the requisition of the Venetian ships Labia, Ragazzona and Balancera (better known as Trinidad Valencera) by the Spanish crown to include them in the Armada expedition.

 Intense diplomatic correspondence between the Venetian State and the Spanish crown tell us of the great financial loss suffered mainly by three famous Venetian merchants Paolo Antonio Labia, Giacomo Ragazzoni and perhaps also Alvise Balancer.

  


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Chris Dobbs

Christopher Dobbs is Head of Interpretation at the Mary Rose Trust. For the last 10 years he has been working on the new Mary Rose Museum which opened in July 2016. He originally started at the Mary Rose in July 1979 as one of the diving archaeologists supervising the excavation of the Tudor warship and in 1982, he was a member of the 14-strong Salvage Diving Team that raised the wreck.  He has recently spoken about museum presentation in places as far afield as China, Texas, Taiwan, Peru and Cambodia and is Chairman of the ICMM’s Maritime Archaeology Committee.  

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

Presenting a shipwreck in a museum for a 21st century audience:  The Mary Rose.
In 1545, forty three years before the Spanish Armada, the Mary Rose sank during an engagement with a French invasion force just off Portsmouth and Southsea on the south coast of England.   Raised in 1982, a long and intensive archaeological and conservation project resulted in the opening of the permanent museum in its present form in 2016.  This presentation will explain the thinking behind the displays and outline what techniques are being used to make the results of underwater archaeology accessible and to make a 16th century warship and her contents accessible and relevant into the 21st century and beyond.  

Vasa sank on its maiden voyage, within sight of the spot where it was built, in 1628. It was raised largely intact in 1961, and after a long conservation process, was moved into a permanent, purpose-built museum in 1988. This presentation will address how the museum has updated its presentation and interpretation of the ship since the new museum opened to the public in 1990, and how a full-time research program has been instrumental in driving the narratives used in the exhibit program. 

 


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Renato Gianni Ridella

Dr. Renato Ridella is an advisor on historical artillery and has collaborated with many museums, universities and cultural organisations in Italy and, most recently, in Zagreb and Cadiz. He has worked in the private sector on archaeological investigations in Northern Italy. He is a founder member of a collaborative group that comprises Italian, French and Croatian underwater archaeologists. He has conducted extensive research and published widely on 16th-18th century ordnance of Mediterranean Europe.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

This paper will discuss the provenance of the ordnance aboard the Spanish Armada of 1588 with particular emphasis on the guns of Genoese manufacture. From research conducted in archival surveys in Genoa Dr. Ridella will explain the role of well known gun founder Dorino Gioardi and also another Genoese founder Bartolomeo Sommariva.

Dr. Ridella will also dwell on the ships of the Levant squadron ofthe Armada and in particular those of Genoese origin,  La Santa Maria Incoronata (Rata) and La Santissima Trinità, the only Levanter to make it back to Spain.

 

 


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Augusto Salgado

Captain Augusto Salgado graduated from the Portuguese Naval Academy in 1988. He has a PhD in Maritime History and teaches Naval History in the Portuguese Naval Academy in the Master’s and PhD courses of Maritime History. His field of study is Portuguese Naval History, mainly sixteen century onward and has published 3 books on this subject, plus several papers. He is also a keen underwater archaeologist enthusiast since 1996 and underwater photographer for over 30 years.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Dr. Salgado explores not only the involvement of the Portuguese galleons in the 1588 Armada campaign- nine galleons, two zavras and 10 caravels- but also how these ships, or more precisely, their wrecks, mainly the São Marcos wreck, can or should be approached in accordance with the 2001 UNESCO Convention.

 


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Karl Brady

Karl Brady is an archaeologist who has been working in the Underwater Archaeology Unit of the National Monuments Service since 1999. Karl has responsibility for the management of the Shipwreck Inventory of Ireland and has undertaken surveys of several shipwrecks.. More recently Karl has been directing the underwater archaeological excavations of a number of newly discovered logboats from Lough Corrib Co. Galway and is part of the UAU team investigating the Spanish Armada wreck sites at Streedagh, Co. Sligo.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
La Juliana’s guns – Christian symbols and Islamic links: guns from the sea; survey, recovery and recording; classification, reclassification and interpretation; what they tell us of the wider wreck site; future work on the guns.

* Note that this is a combined presentation with Dr Connie Kelleher.

 


Dr Paula Martin

Dr Paula Martin is a freelance archaeologist, historian and editor, based in Fife and Morvern. She has worked on two Spanish Armada shipwrecks, La Trinidad Valencera in Kinnagoe Bay, Donegal, and El Gran Grifon on Fair Isle, and on two small 17th-century warships in the Sound of Mull. Paula and her husband Colin are engaged in a long-term study of the maritime landscapes of Scotland’s western seaboard. For ten years she edited the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
In her presentation Dr. Martin will discuss the various Armada ships that were wrecked in Scotland and Northern Ireland including the San Juan de Sicilia, El Gran Grifon, Girona, La Trinidad Valencera, and Santa Maria de La Rosa. She will explore the salvage attempts back to the early days of Armada Wreck re-discoveries and trace the changing attitudes towards the conservation of the sites and the treatment and display of recoveries by divers, archaeologists and museum curators. Paula will pay particular attention to the invaluable work of Laurence Flanagan of the Ulster Museum.

 


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Fionnbarr Moore

Fionnbarr Moore is a senior archaeologist with the National Monuments Service, Department of Arts, Heritage & the Gaeltacht and he has been head of the Underwater Archaeology Unit (UAU) since 1999. The UAU has a wide and varied work brief, dealing with development impacts on the underwater cultural heritage and maintaining the Shipwreck Inventory of Ireland. He has contributed papers and chapters to a number of journals and books on underwater archaeology and maritime history. He is currently directing the UAU investigation of the Spanish Armada wreck sites at Streedagh, Co. Sligo.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Streedagh Armada – A Game Changer: Legislative background to the Streedagh Armada Wrecks & changing heritage law; influence of discovery on u/w archaeology in Ireland and the protection of our underwater cultural heritage; UAU set up and its role in context; culminating in the 2015 Armada project.
 

 


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Dr Connie Kelleher

Dr Connie Kelleher is a member of the Underwater Archaeology Unit (UAU), National Monuments Service since 1999. Connie’s work has allowed her to direct archaeological surveys and excavations on a number of specific wreck sites ranging from the 1588 remains of the Spanish Armada ship La Trinidad Valencera; an early 17th-century possible pirate vessel in West Cork; the early 17th-century wreck near Rutland Island, Burtonport in Donegal; the possible remains of one of Cromwell’s Parliamentarian ships, Great Lewis, in Waterford Harbour, to the 1697 remains of the HMS Looe in Baltimore, Co. Cork and most recently as part of the UAU team investigating the Spanish Armada wreck sites at Streedagh, Co. Sligo.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
La Juliana’s guns – Christian symbols and Islamic links: guns from the sea; survey, recovery and recording; classification, reclassification and interpretation; what they tell us of the wider wreck site; future work on the guns.

* Note that this is a combined presentation with Karl Brady.

 

 

 


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Miguel San Claudio

Miguel San Claudio is Owner and Manager of ARCHEONAUTA S.L. a company devoted to underwater and terrestrial archaeology. He has worked as a technician on many projects in cultural heritage over the years and in particular in the museums of La Coruna, Orense and the National Museum of Underwater Archaeology at Cartagena, Spain. He has directed more than 80 archaeological investigations on land and sea and is associate partner in the Marie Sktodowska-Curie Action, a ForSEAdiscovery project. He is the author of many books and articles on maritime and underwater heritage.  

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

Armada shipwrecks off Galicia, remains of a European multinational XVI Century sea battle front. The Atlantic coastline of Spain was one of the most important sea trade routes of Europe and dates back to prehistoric times. In the late16th Century it was the battlefront for the conflict between Spain and England for maritime dominance. This presentation discusses the many shipwrecks in these waters and the artifacts recovered from them that comprise an invaluable historical resource that continues to inform our knowledge of this fascinating period of history.