[2] It served as a trading vessel delivering mixed cargoes from Britain to its colonies in the West Indies and India for 17 years before being sold to Green and Co. of Liverpool.
After clearing Montreal customs on 17 June 1841, the vessel set sail on open water for Melbourne by mid-July loaded with mainly flour and salted provisions, but also carrying whiskey, wine, cider, vinegar, and nails.
Captain Brown ordered that an anchor be dropped to steady the unnavigable vessel while a brave unnamed pilot from nearby Queenscliff boarded the crippled ship in an attempt to help sail it through the Heads of Port Phillip Bay.
Divers Peter Kennedy and Dennis Bolton discovered William Salthouse wreck in August 1983, near Popes Eye Bank in Port Phillip Bay.
The main objectives were to examine the archaeological potential of the site, and prevent the further loss of loose material that had been previously disturbed by divers and the strong water current.
It was discovered that the site had a very large archaeological potential with the integrity of the hull able to provide information on ship construction, as well as details about food and cargo being carried and packing methods.
The excavations on William Salthouse have resulted in several archaeological investigations in order to better understand the social climate of 19th century colonial trade.
Examples of these studies are summarised below include analysis of cask materials, wine contents, and butchering techniques in use at the time of William Salthouse's wrecking.
The 19th century was the pinnacle of Cooperage technology, the regulation of cask size and production had a streamlining effect on maritime trade and industry.
At this time in the mid 19th century, cask had become a generic term for any type of wooden staved container, and could vary in both size and purpose.
[7] The manifests of William Salthouse state there were at least 1000 casks of varying size stowed on board when the vessel foundered at Port Phillip Bay in 1841.
[3] This combination of materials acted as a representative sample for the ship, with no complete casks being raised due to the subsequent conservation problems they would present.
[7] There is historical evidence that suggests from the late 18th to early 19th century British North America was continually enacting, amending, and repealing numerous acts of legislation related to the regulation of various facets of inspection, packaging, and shipment from their ports.
In an interesting application of post-processual archaeology, Staniforth (1987) assesses the regulations surrounding the position of inspector, to further analyse the statutes that had been implemented.
[7] It is likely that the variance in cask quality found in the archaeological record is the result a combination of factors, but the above examples illustrate how complex the system surrounding cooperage and inspection was in the mid 19th century.
[7] By gathering the data from excavated casks, we can learn more about what types of goods were important to help establish and strengthen the newly forming colony at Port Phillip Bay, and test the validity of the historical record through comparison with cargo manifests.
In the case of William Salthouse, the small excavation sample has already yielded discrepancies in the cargo manifest related to the grade and quality of salted pork, and types of alcohol being shipped to the budding Australian colony.
[8] However, the incoming cargo manifest published in thePort Phillip Herald stated that only French Champagne and Sauternes were aboard William Salthouse when the vessel wrecked on Pope's Eye Shoal.
[8] Therefore, the presumption that the wine styles of Sauternes and Muscat had gone unchanged for the last 150 years was incorrect, and influenced the resulting conclusions of the oenological analysis.
Conservation restraints made the excavation of intact casks too costly, however, analysis of both beef and pork carcasses artefacts recovered from William Salthouse found that these examples of imported salted meats would be indistinguishable from Australian terrestrial sites in Australia due to commonalities in butchering techniques.
Butchering practices are further complicated by factors such as type of carcase, quality, meat bearing capacity, consumer taste, economic climate and the source of trade training.
The range of external factors that impact use of meat type require investigations to address the relationship of site occupants to forms of supply, and the butchering mark morphology and frequency.
[6] Results from a later visit in May were compared and it was obvious that sand movement was increasing, and that the hull and contents were so exposed that the structural and archaeological integrity of the site was at risk.