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This shipwreck was recently exposed on the beach at Bamburgh Castle in Scotland. One of our former students, Jessica Berry, was called in to investigate.
Here at LAMP we always are proud to see our former students make good! We recently saw a news story involving one of our 2007 Field School students, Jessica Berry. She was a Flinders University student at the time, working on her master’s degree, and she participated in the joint Flinders-LAMP Field School in that year, which was the first Field School LAMP ever sponsored (we have continued to run a summer field school in maritime archaeology each year since). Jessica, a native of the United Kingdom, was a great student, lots of fun to work with, and she even authored some of our LAMPosts Blog entires–check them out here and here .


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Here is Jessica during the 2007 Field School, being taught the basics of a terrestrial magnetometer by Marine Magnetics, Inc. founder Doug Hrvoic. As she said, wearing the magnetometer strapped to your back makes you look like one of the Ghostbusters!
Jessica is now the CEO of Britain’s Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST), and as such she was first on the scene when a mysterious shipwreck was unearthed on the beach by Bamburgh Castle in Scotland. From Huffington Post:

“When we first heard the wreck had emerged from the sands, we were up there the next day,” Maritime Archaeology Trust CEO Jessica Berry said, according to the outlet. “We sat on the beach waiting for the tide to go out. At that point we did not know precisely what it was. As it appeared in front of us, it was the most incredible sight.”
Located in the shadow of the historic Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland, the discovery has given way to extensive testing led by MAST. Research recently revealed that the wood used to construct the boat is English and dates to the 1750s or 1760s, according to a press release.

It sounds like Jessica has been busy since she worked with us in St. Augustine. From the MAST webpage:

Jessica established MAST in February 2011. She is a maritime archaeologist MA (Hons) MA PIFA. She is a director of the Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS). She is a former journalist with UK broadsheets. After completing her Masters at Flinders University in Australia, she worked internationally as a maritime archaeologist, first in Australia as Assistant Curator at the Western Australian Maritime Museum, then as a freelance maritime archaeologist in Ireland before working for Wessex Archaeology as a Project Supervisor and then at the Association for the Development of Maritime Archaeological Research (Adramar) in France. Apart from her work with MAST she has been working since 2010 as part of the project team excavating the Swash Channel wreck, a 17th century Dutch armed merchantman off Poole in Dorset. She is the archaeological advisor for the 1685 Coronation wreck in Cornwall. She is an HSE Part IV and Part III diver and a PADI Open Water Instructor.

I like to think that our catchy acronym, LAMP, may have inspired her when she founded and named MAST . . . 🙂
In all seriousness, though, I have always been impressed with how much our students and interns have achieved after leaving LAMP. In a field such as maritime archaeology that is often difficult to make a career in, we have had many, many students who have gone on to find employment, to get into graduate school, and to secure leadership positions in the discipline. Congratulations to Jessica, and keep up the good work!