AJV Archaeology No. 24 | LEGACY Part 5
Trading America: Nelson, Collingwood, and the Shipwrecks of the Jamaica Station
Recorded live at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, Florida, on 15 October 2026, hosted by the Bay Anthropological Society, a chapter of the Florida Anthropological Society.
Released on Trafalgar Day. On 21 October 1805, Horatio Nelson died aboard HMS Victory and his closest friend, Cuthbert Collingwood, took command of the fleet. Twenty-five years earlier, both men were young officers on the Jamaica Station, fighting a very different war, and the ships they sailed then are still on the seafloor between Florida and Jamaica.
In this talk, Andrew J. Van Slyke, M.A. (Co-Founder and Underwater Archaeologist, Maritime Legacy Project: Jamaica; Lecturer, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) makes the case that Britain traded America for the Caribbean. After France entered the war in 1778, the Royal Navy's priority shifted south to protect the sugar islands, and the colonies of West Florida and Jamaica became the hinge on which the end of the American Revolution turned. The story is told through the captains who lived it and the shipwrecks they left behind.
WHAT'S IN THIS EPISODE
The 1778 shift of British priorities from the Atlantic colonies to the Caribbean. George Gauld's surveys of the Gulf Coast and the British shipwrecks of Pensacola, including HMS Mentor and HMS Florida. Willing's Raid and the Spanish response under Bernardo de Galvez. The Jamaica Station under Admiral Sir Peter Parker and the young officers who passed through it: Nelson, Collingwood, and Robert Deans of HMS Mentor. The San Juan Expedition of 1780, with a 21-year-old Post Captain Nelson aboard HMS Hinchinbrooke and Collingwood following him into command. The hurricanes of 1780 and 1781 and the attrition that cost Britain West Florida. The Siege of Pensacola (1781). The hunt for HMS Hinchinbrooke in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, and what finding Nelson's first frigate means for the Maritime Legacy Project. Two admirals, one bay: how Nelson's and Collingwood's early careers converge on the same stretch of Jamaican coast.
This talk is drawn from research for AJ's forthcoming book, Trading America: Nelson, Collingwood, and the Shipwrecks of the Jamaica Station, which follows four Royal Navy officers, Nelson, Collingwood, Robert Deans, and Admiral Sir Peter Parker, through the shipwrecks that mark the fall of Britain's southern colonies.
ABOUT THE MARITIME LEGACY PROJECT: JAMAICA
The Maritime Legacy Project: Jamaica (MLPJ) is a volunteer group of Jamaican and American archaeologists working with the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT) to uncover the submerged history of St. Ann's Bay. The project was founded to locate Christopher Columbus's lost ships, but its research keeps revealing new shipwreck identities and the ties between Jamaica and Florida that connect them. The project runs entirely on volunteer time and donated support.
ABOUT THE HOST
Andrew "AJ" Van Slyke is a maritime archaeologist and technical diver. He holds a BA and MA from the University of West Florida, spent five years with the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center, and now teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he directs Historical Archaeological investigations at the Geoarchaeology and Submerged Landscapes Laboratory. He hosts the AJV Archaeology podcast and its LEGACY documentary series.
This is Part 5 of the LEGACY series. If you missed Part 4, The Archaeological Legacy of Jamaica and Florida, start there for the shipwreck trail from Pensacola to St. Ann's Bay.
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