FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 3, 2007
CONTACT: Molly Dannenmaier
Director of Marketing and Public Relations,
409-765-7834

Expert to Speak on Texas Maritime History, Coastal Archeology, and Recording the Wreck of an 1860’s Union Navy Supply Steamer

Lecture at Galveston County Historical Museum,
Saturday, October 20, 2 p.m.

In honor of Texas Archeology Month, the Galveston County Historical Museum, 2219 Market Street, will host a special lecture at 2 p.m., Saturday, October 20. Speaking will be Andrew Hall, a Marine Archeological Steward with the Texas Historical Commission. Hall will discuss the maritime development of the Texas coast, and efforts by the state to preserve and record archaeological sites. He will also discuss a recent field project to record a wreck in Florida that is believed to be the steamship Tonawanda, which supplied Union ships stationed off Galveston during the Civil War.

Divers map a shipwreck believed to be the 1860s steamer Tonawanda, near Key Largo, Florida on August 9, 2007. Tonawanda served as U.S.S. Arkansas in the Union Navy off Galveston during the American Civil War. Andrew Hall will discuss this underwater archiological project at the Galveston County Historical Museum on October 20. Image courtesy Annalies Corbin, PAST Foundation.

Hall has served as a volunteer with the Texas Historical Commission since 2001. He also serves as the website designer and illustrator for the PAST Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation that promotes partnerships between anthropologists and educators to bring their work to a wider audience.

Mr. Hall has contributed as website developer or historical researcher on several significant nautical archaeology projects, including the 1686 wreck of the French ship La Belle (1995-97) the Civil War blockade runner Denbigh (1997-2003), the Red River Steamboat Project (2001), the U-166 (2003), the Deep Gulf Shipwrecks Project and the U.S.S. Arizona Preservation Project (both 2004). More recently, he has participated in fieldwork on the 1875 wreck of the City of Waco at Galveston, as well as on the Tonawanda project.

A former member of the Galveston County Historical Commission and president of the Southwest Underwater Archaeological Society, Hall has written extensively on maritime history and underwater archeology, and has contributed illustrations to a number of works in the field.

The Galveston County Historical Museum is a joint project of Galveston Historical Foundation and the Galveston County Commissioners Court. For more information, call museum director Jodi Wright-Gidley at 409-766-2340.