James P. Delgado

Photo: Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, courtesy the Vancouver Maritime Museum

He’s a shipwreck archaeologist with a long list of books under his belt, is executive director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, has appeared as an expert in numerous television documentaries, co-hosts the new National Geographic International Television series The Sea Hunters, and is pursuing a PhD in history at SFU. He has participated in shipwreck expeditions around the world, including the Titanic, the Carpathia (the ship that rescued Titanic’s survivors), and the notorious ghost ship Mary Celeste. Recent books include Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage, Native American Shipwrecks, and Lost Warships: An Archaeological Tour of War at Sea.

With all your notable achievements already, why the PhD?
I’d always intended to finish school with a PhD, but family and work took priority and I did not need it in a non-academic career. But the challenge of the intellectual discipline of a PhD program and the opportunity to complete my professional training beckoned. SFU has a great archaeology department, and I’m delighted to be a small part of it as a student.

What is your main area of study and/or thesis topic?
I’m analyzing the material culture from 25 years of excavations in downtown San Francisco that has steadily revealed the burnt-over, buried, and largely forgotten waterfront of Gold Rush San Francisco (1849–51). The finds include half-intact ship’s hulls filled with merchandise and collapsed stores and buildings. I’m fitting all this into a new model for Pacific Rim frontiers – a “maritime model” in which entrepots linked to worldwide trade routes create settlements that do not fit into the traditional frontier models.

How did you get interested in underwater archaeology?
I’ve been fascinated by the past since I was a child. In 1978, I saw one of the Gold Rush ships come out of the mud, two storeys beneath the streets and high-rises of downtown San Francisco, and was hooked on ships and shipwrecks. From there I moved on to diving on wrecks as part of my duties in the U.S. National Park Service, and the rest wasn’t just history, it was archaeology.

What brought you to the Vancouver Maritime Museum?
The desire to return to the West Coast and a chance to work in a medium-sized museum with a tremendous staff and a great collection to reach the public. I’m very committed to public outreach and education, and after a career in parks, a museum was an ideal place to work next.

What do you appreciate most about your time at SFU?
The interaction with fellow archaeologists, both the faculty and the other students.

Do you have any time for relaxation? Do you have any hobbies? What do you do when you have time off?
Time off? Relaxation? What’s that?

What are you reading right now?
I’m reading a few things: Material Culture and Consumer Society: Dependent Colonies in Colonial Australia by Mark Staniforth, Ray Bradbury’s One More for the Road, and Stephen Ambrose’s
D-Day, June 6, 1944. aq

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