Katie Custer Bojakowski

Research Interests

Specialty:

Post-Medieval to Early Modern Seafaring (16th to 20th centuries): ship construction and reconstruction; iconography of ships; early navigation and cartography; books and treatises; and social archaeology of seafaring and ships.

Cultural Heritage and Resource Management: Historic preservation and federal regulations (NHPA; Section 106/110, NEPA); Preservation of shipwrecks, abandoned vessels, and museum ships; Environmental impact of polluting shipwrecks; Museum Studies including exhibit design, collections management, and curation and conservation.

Current and Selected Research Projects:

Cape Ratac Wreck, Croatia

Survey of an early 17th-century shipwreck in the shallow Koločep Channel, just outside the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia. Originally discovered in 1997, this ordinary merchantman sank with a precious cargo of Venetian glass from the Murano workshops destined for the Ottoman markets. The INA survey identified only the most exposed areas of the site, where the glass, ceramics, cannon, shipboard items, and ship timbers were still well-preserved under a thin layer of sand and silt of the bottom sediment. Collectively, this diverse assemblage of luxury stemware, flasks, vases, tubular lamps, and an assortment of windowpanes tells a fascinating story of the interconnectivity of the Christian and Islamic worlds and the mutual influence on ideas, art, and social and political life. The goal of this initial pre-disturbance survey was not only to map the site at its current state and evaluate the extent and range of the visible cultural material, but also to formulate detailed plans for potential future full-scale systematic excavation effort.

Historic Preservation of Ships: Schooner Equator  (1888)

The Equator Project involves the application of new technologies to the preservation of historic ships. Equator was built by Matthew Turner, one of the most prolific and respected American shipwrights in the 19^th century, in Benicia, California, in 1888. It was used in the South Pacific copra trade and in 1889 was chartered by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It was later sold and converted from sail to a steam tender for the Alaskan salmon canneries. Equator underwent its third transformation in 1915 when it was outfitted with a diesel engine and became a tugboat based out of Seattle. It remained in operation until 1956 at which time it was scuttled at the mouth of the Snohomish River in Everett, WA. Equator was raised in 1967, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was dry docked in the Port of Everett in Washington State until 2023. Prior to deconstruction Equator was documented using archaeological recording, drone photogrammetry, and LiDAR to produce an accurate 3D representation of the hull structure, captured the lines of the ship, and recorded all visible external and internal features in the expedited time frame.

Science of Preservation Project at Pearl Harbor National Memorial

Cultural and Natural Resource Manager for Pearl Harbor National Memorial. Managed archaeological and preservation research and activities on the USS Arizona and USS Utah shipwrecks including multi-disciplinary research into the archaeological monitoring, hull integrity and mass loss modeling, and how microbial communities relate to the preservation of metals and organics, and mapping of oil being released from the USS Arizona. The project was directed by Pearl Harbor National Memorial and the NPS Submerged Resource Center in collaboration with Harvard University, Woods Hole Research Institute, Colorado School of Mines and Technology, Wounded Veteran’s Diving, and Coast Guard University.

From Nail to Sail: A Holistic Perspective on Dhow Construction in Zanzibar, Co-PI

Dhows are the quintessential watercraft of the Indian Ocean and are constructed in a variety of ways along its littoral. This project will record how dhows are currently constructed in Zanzibar. This will involve not merely recording the construction process from start to finish, but also an examination of the rigging, ship’s hardware, and supply networks that circulate shipbuilding materials across this region of the Western Indian Ocean. In particular, the manufacture of nails used to fasten dhows, and the production of coconut rope for rigging, and fabric for the sail will be recorded, as these have remained relatively unchanged over centuries. The study of artisanal shipbuilding practices has relevance for the study of shipwrecks and historic shipbuilding in the region. This project also has anthropological significance in its study of supply networks and in its recording of the gendered divisions of labor involved in the construction of different components of vessels.

Warwick Project, Co-PI

The Warwick Project is a joint effort of the National Museum of Bermuda (NMB), Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), Texas A&M University, and the University of Southampton (UK). The original focus of this project was the excavation of the hull remains and artifacts from Warwick, a ship that sank in Castle Harbour, Bermuda during the hurricane of 1619. Part of the historical and scientific importance of Warwick is the discovery of previously unknown technical solutions to traditional shipbuilding problems, new constructional features, the remains of provisions and tobacco, as well as navigational and rigging artifacts which helped to redefine our understanding of Early Modern English seafaring.  

Iconographic Evidence of Iberian Ships of Discovery Project

This project focused on maritime exploration during the Age of Discovery and the vessels that were the technological impetus for this dynamic era. Little is known about the caravel, galleon, and nau, three ships that defined this era of global expansion; archival documents provide scant information regarding these vessels and to date, there are only a few known archaeological examples. The caravel, galleon, and nau became lasting symbols of the bourgeoning Portuguese and Spanish maritime empires and are featured prominently in contemporaneous iconography.  This research bridged the gap between the humanities and sciences through the statistical analysis of these ships in the iconographic record. As one of the first intensive uses of iconography in nautical archaeology, the study analyzed over 500 images using descriptive statistics and representational trends analysis. This research also addressed technology as a cultural symbol to understand how and why cultures attach such powerful and important symbolism to technology and adopt it as an identifying feature.