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For the 100th episode of the Salty Podcast, Dr. James Delgado joins Cap’n Tinsley to explore what shipwrecks reveal about the people who built, sailed and sometimes died aboard them.
James is a maritime archaeologist, historian, author and explorer whose five-decade career has included more than 100 shipwreck projects around the world. His investigations have included Titanic, USS Arizona, Alabama’s Clotilda, buried Gold Rush ships beneath downtown San Francisco and deep-sea wrecks connected to the Battle of Midway.
He explains how maritime archaeologists identify an unknown wreck and why the most valuable discoveries are often not gold or treasure. Personal belongings, human remains and small physical details can reveal how people lived, worked and traveled at sea.
James shares stories about a teapot still hanging inside Titanic’s engine room, sailors’ bones showing the physical toll of life aboard historic ships, salted pork and weevil-filled hardtack, fire hoses left behind on USS Arizona and the research that helped confirm the identity of Clotilda.
The conversation also explores Gold Rush ships buried beneath San Francisco, press gangs and kidnapped sailors, wrecks near the Dry Tortugas, Confederate blockade runners around Bermuda, Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge, the Atocha and the myths surrounding sunken treasure.
James also discusses using robots and submersibles to explore wrecks too deep for divers, surviving a typhoon near Bikini Atoll, working with descendant communities and deciding whether a wreck should be recovered, preserved, memorialized or left where it rests.
Throughout the episode, James returns to one central idea: shipwrecks are not simply broken vessels on the bottom. They are places where human stories survive, preserved inside what may be the largest museum on Earth.

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SALTY ABANDON: Cap'n Tinsley, Orange Beach, AL:
Oct 2020 to Present - 1998 Island Packet 320;
Nov 2015-Oct 2020; 1988 Island Packet 27
Feb-Oct 2015 - 1982 Catalina 25

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