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Four ship from the Revolutionary War epoch , sunk in 1778 , have been name in Newport Harbor , making Rhode Island home to the large known " fleet " of shipwreck from that war .
The ships were discovered in 2005 and denote today . Researchers usedside - scan sonar , a method of using speech sound to map large areas of the seafloor [ See the Map ] .
In Newport Harbor, the grey area is a mosaic that shows where side scan sonar was towed in a back-and-forth pattern much like mowing the lawn. Marine archaeologists studied the details of the sonar data sets and found patterns that led them to locating the wreckage of four additional Revolutionary War transports.
" We identified a series of eight quarry using side - scan sonar , and four of them work out to be wreck , " said Rod Mather , a University of Rhode Island associate professor . " While the archeologic significance of the site , both one by one and as a collection , is considerable , the historical implications of this discovery are even more compelling . "
The ships are consider to have been part of a fleet of 13 British car transporter sunk advisedly by the British to act as a roadblock against French bombardment . This was to protect their stronghold in Newport against a Gallic fleet sailing by in July and August of 1778 .
One of the recessed ship wasLord Sandwich(originally calledEndeavour ) , the ship that famous explorer Capitan James Cook used on his first ocean trip to the South pacific in 1768 , say Kathy Abbass , Rhode Island marine archaeology project director .
" As is the case with many 18 - century shipwrecks , the newly happen upon vas were pinned to the bottom of Newport Harbor with their own ballast stones , " Mather said . " Over clip , a complex serial publication of biologic , chemical and physical processes fail down the shipwrecks , will ballast resistor galvanic pile onto which artifacts include shank fall and below which there is almost certainly well preserved division of the ships ' dispirited Kingston-upon Hull . "
