This year’s conference will be held on Saturday 3rd February 2024 at the Robins Conference Centre, University of Plymouth. Tickets are known to sell out fast, so get in quick! After the success last year, there will be the option of ordering a lunch bag again, watch this space for further details.
The conference will be followed by the evening dinner at the Copthorne Hotel restaurant – 50 Degrees North Brasserie & Bar where there will be a hot buffet with meat, fish and vegan options and a selection of desserts.
The Copthorne Hotel are offering rates of £95 for double occupancy and £85 for single occupancy including breakfast. This rate is ‘fully flexible rate’ meaning no payment is taken until arrival, and free cancellation up until 2pm on the day of arrival. Ring the Copthorne to book on 01752 224161 and ask for the Shipwreck Conference rate.
On Sunday 4th February there is an option of two events:
1) The Neville Oldham Memorial Symposium for 2024 will be on Ordnance. The ordnance workshop will be led by Nicolas Hall and will cover commonly found ordnance by divers, but also give an overview of early maritime ordnance and materials. The workshop will be held at the University of Plymouth Marine Station, from 10 am to 4 pm. The workshop will be run as it has in the past with a morning and afternoon session, and an open session to share or discuss ordnance that participants have located, you will be able to share videos and photos via the projector, please bring media on a USB thumb drive. This event will be £10 and can be paid on the day of the event. You will be able to sign up for this event at the conference or you can register via eventbrite.
2) The Sunday Tour will be at the recently re-opened Devonport Naval Heritage Centre. Admission is free, but IMASS is suggesting a donation of £3 per person that will help with running costs and can be paid on the day to the Heritage Centre. Please register with Eventbrite if you plan to attend so we can forewarn the staff of the expected numbers. This event will start at 10 am.
Jon Adams – Deepwater Shipwreck Discoveries in the Baltic Sea
Mark Beattie-Edwards – Discovering Klein Hollandia – a Warship from the Dutch Golden Age of Sail
Emily Turton – New Discoveries from HMS Hampshire 1903
Rex Cowen & Jerzy Gawronski – The Dutch East India Company- Excavating VOC Shipwrecks
Leigh Bishop – Never Before Told Stories (After Dinner Speaker)
EMILY TURTON
JOHN ADAMS
MARK BEATTIE-EDWARDS
REX COWAN
LEIGH BISHOP
EMILY TURTON
Emily Turton is a technical diver, dive boat skipper and lecturer in Maritime Studies based in Orkney – a group of islands off the top of Scotland. She can usually be found aboard her purpose built dive boat MV Huskyan. Emily has dedicated the last 15 years to the wrecks of Scapa Flow and continues to champion the WWI German Fleet Wrecks. She was the driving force behind the Scapa 100 Initiative, a project set up to commemorate the centenary of the scuttling of the WWI German High Seas Fleet in 2019. Emily organised the the HMS Hampshire 100 and HMS Vanguard 100 surveys in 2016 and 2017 respectively and the HMS Royal Oak 80 survey in 2019. In her survey and project work Emily collaborates with a wide group of people and institutions building expert teams of likeminded individuals. Digital heritage is at the forefront of their work which uses underwater photography, videography and 3D photogrammetry to document shipwrecks and bring them to the surface for the wider community to see.
In 2024 Emily will be speaking about the New Discoveries from HMS Hampshire 1903
JOHN ADAMS
Jonathan Adams (Lecturer) is a specialist in maritime archaeology, with interests in ships as material culture, and in the practice of archaeology under water, particularly the ethics of the developing field of deepwater archaeology. He has participated in the excavation of several wreck sites, including the Mary Rose, the Amsterdam, and the Sea Venture. He is currently working on the Kravel and Krogen shipwreck research projects in Sweden and the Department’s field project at the 18th Century shipyard at Buckler’s Hard. He is course convenor for the MA/MSc in Maritime Archaeology and director of the Centre for Maritime Archaeology.
Recent publications include:
Adams, J., van Holk, A., & Maarleveld, T. J. Dredgers and Archaeology, Ship Finds from the Slufter. Ministerie WVC, The Netherlands, 1990.
Rönnby, J. & Adams, J. Östersjöns Sjunkna Skepp – En marinarkeologisk tidsresa Tiden, Stockholm, 1994.
Adams, J. & Rönnby, J. Furstens Fartyg. Swedish National Maritime Museum. Stockholm, 1996.
Quinn, R., Adams, J. R., Dix, J. K., Bull, J. M. The Invincible (1758) site – an integrated geophysical assessment, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, (in press).
Mark began working for the Nautical Archaeology Society in September 2001 and since 2015 has worked as the Chief Executive Officer, responsible for the day to day management of the charity. As both a technical and commercial diver, Mark is the licensee of the HMS m Holland No. 5 submarine and the Norman’s Bay Wreck protected wrecks off Eastbourne. He has coordinated research and access to both these protected wrecks and in addition has undertaken research on the HMS m/A1 submarine and the Coronation protected wreck site on behalf of English Heritage. In 2014 Mark authored a report for English Heritage on the Local Economic Benefit of a Protected Wreck, establishing the value that could be placed on a historic wreck for the local economy of Plymouth. In 2017, Mark joined the team working on the protected wreck of The London, as the licensee’s (Steve Ellis) nominated archaeologist. Since July 2019 Mark has been working with the London Shipwreck Trust and Southend-on-Sea Borough Council to try to Save the London from the ravages of the Thames Estuary.
REX COWAN
A former lawyer, wreck hunter, writer and film producer whose varied work includes the award winning science film ‘Chaos’, has spent much of the last 40 years discovering and excavating shipwrecks of the 17th and 18th. Centuries.. Among his teams most substantial discoveries are the Hollandia, a Dutch East Indiaman sunk off the Isles of Scilly in 1743, the T’Vliegenthart sunk 1735 off Holland and the Svecia a Swedish East Indiaman sunk off the Orkneys in 1740. His finds have been seen in Museums and Exhibitions by millions all over the world from Japan to Malmo in Sweden. For many years a special gallery in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam housed a substantial collection of his finds from all over the world. He was for 23 years representing independent shipwreck divers as a member of the HM Government’s Advisory Committee on Historic Wrecks. In 1991 The Queen of the Netherlands made him a Knight of the Order of Orange Nassau for his services to Dutch Maritime History.
LEIGH BISHOP
Leigh is a world-renowned shipwreck explorer and specialist deep-water photographer. He has been a member of many well know shipwreck expeditions. As a pioneer of deep wreck mixed gas wreck diving in and around Europe, his specialist deep-water photography, alongside his research has led to the documentation and discovery of hundreds of shipwrecks including several famous ones. He has been a member of some of the most significant deep shipwreck expeditions over the last two decades, that has utilized mixed gas and modern technology to explore deeper and previously unseen shipwrecks. Some of these include no less than six expeditions to HMHS Britannic the worlds largest sunken liner; RMS Lusitania, RMS Egypt, RMS Transylvania in the North Atlantic and the Nazi liner Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic just to mention a few. He has also explored an estimated 400 un-dived deep shipwrecks off the English coastline. He was a member of an Australian led team to photograph the deep Gold ship Niagara off New Zealand and is currently working with an ongoing project to photograph the deep wrecks of Truk Lagoon in the Pacific. He has also been a photographer on the expeditions to the Arctic in search of the lost British Submarine X5. He was the first to photograph & explore other famous lost British submarines such as HMS Vandal HMS Affray all again in deep water. He was also a member of the 2003 NOAA Titanic expedition aboard the Russian research vessel Keldysh. In 2014 he has joined expeditions to Sierra Leone, Africa as well as the Mars in the Baltic Sea sunk in 1564. Leigh is recognized as an innovator of black & White time exposure photography underwater, using a tripod he has used this method to capture many inspiring shipwreck images like the famous bow of the massive liner Justica and the huge guns of HMS Audacious. Leigh has been used as an expert in several television deep-water shipwreck documentaries and worked as a deep-water cameraman for National Geographic as well as the History Channel, BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and other global networks. He is a prolific speaker and lectures on the subject of shipwrecks globally and over the last two decades his photographs have been used in countless books and major worldwide newspapers. He has published hundreds of shipwreck articles that have appeared in just about every diving magazine around the world. He is the co-founder of the technical diving conference EUROTEK and the idea behind the concept. http://fourthelement.com/adventures/dive-team/photographers-videographers/leigh-bishop/