Carrie Sowden is the Archaeological Director of the Peachman Lake Erie Shipwreck Research Center, Great Lakes Historical Society. She began diving over ten years ago as a class for credit in college. Since then Carrie has had the fortune to go all over the world and visit fascinating sites including Truk (Chuuk), Belize, Long Island, NY, Lake Erie, Maine, Florida, and Alabama. She holds a Master Degree from Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University. Carrie has stated that the Institute of Nautical Archaeology has given her the opportunity to work with the 16th century timbers in Lisbon, Portugal, dive a wreck in the Azores, work with artifacts from a shipwreck from 1300 BC and dive in Turkey. She spent two summers working in the Red River in Oklahoma on the earliest western river steamboat excavated to date.
The Battle of Lake Erie occurred on September 10, 1813 just west of South Bass Island. It is one of the most important naval battles in American history, changing the control of Lake Erie and giving the United States and needed advantage. While the battle has been studied extensively through contemporary documents and personal statements, the actual site of the battle has never been positively identified. In the summer of 2009, the Great Lakes Historical Society and the Cleveland Underwater Explorers started a multi-year project to fill this gap. We will be discussing the history of the battle, the work that was accomplished, as well as how to meld battlefield archaeology with underwater archaeology.