Maritime Museum’s Art Cohn to Speak at Middlebury

College on Sunken Artifacts in Lake Champlain

Arthur B. Cohn, director of the Lake Champlain Maritime

Museum (LCMM) in Panton, Vermont, will present a lecture on “Surveying

Lake Champlain: New Discoveries, Great Potential, and Significant

Challenges” on Thursday, Dec. 4, at 8 p.m. in the concert

hall in the Middlebury College Center for the Arts on South Main

Street (Rt. 30). The lecture is free and open to the public.

Cohn led a survey team in June which discovered-on

the bottom of Lake Champlain-a Revolutionary War gunboat commanded

by Benedict Arnold. Patricia L. Manley and Thomas O. Manley of

the Middlebury geology department, and Middlebury students Billie-Jo

Gauley ‘99 and Bret Thibault ‘97 were also part of the survey

team. At the time of the discovery, researchers were

using the College’s side-scan sonar system, which detected the

gunboat’s presence.

When the finding was announced in July, Philip Lundeberg,

curator emeritus of naval history at the Smithsonian Institution’s

American History Museum, commented to “The Boston Herald,”

“This could prove to be the most significant maritime archeological

discovery in American history in the last half century.”

Cohn said researchers recognize the urgent need to

continue locating and identifying previously unknown submerged

shipwrecks before they become encrusted with the zebra mussels

that have invaded Lake Champlain.

A professional diver and nautical archeologist, Cohn

is also on the adjunct faculty of the University of Vermont and

the Institute of Nautical Archeology at Texas A&M University.

He has served as coordinator of the State of Vermont’s Underwater

Historic Preserve Program since 1985.

The lecture will be sponsored by the Middlebury College

geology department and Atwater Commons. Please contact Trish Dougherty

of the geology department at 443-5970 for more information.