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On the evening of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum’s annual Luminary Night, Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) Conservator Andrew Thomson was air scribing when he made an exciting discovery.
Air scribing is a conservation process where a cleaning tool uses air to remove built-up minerals and other gunk from a concretion, a rock formed in saltwater from the interaction between metals and the surrounding environment. One concretion can hold several undiscovered objects.
Thomson was working on a concretion from a 1782 British shipwreck. The vessel represents one of potentially 16 ships that wrecked on the treacherous St. Augustine bar on New Year’s Eve during a nor’easter. Many artifacts from the storm wreck (archaeologist’s name for this wreck site) are already displayed in the exhibition Wrecked! inside the Keepers’ House at the St. Augustine Light Station.
The exhibit displays a ship’s bell, a rare swivel gun, Artois shoe buckles, sailors’ spoons and x-rays of Brown Bess muskets. Archaeologists also recovered and conserved coat buttons from various British regiments. The 63rd and the 71st Regiments of Foot and the Royal Provincials were among these.
“These troops were garrisoning Charleston, South Carolina, at the end of the war,” said Thomson.
Yet, this discovery on Luminary Night was different.
Yes, the button was also made of brass and featured three interlocking Roman letters, similar in style to an order requisitioned by the Continental Army from the French in 1778. But this button isn’t British at all. It’s American, with the letters U.S.A. distinctly revealed on its front side.
Suddenly, a button from George Washington’s Continental Army was revealed in the lab, with the public looking on.
No one knows when Continental soldiers first received U.S.A. buttons, but the agreed-upon date is around 1777. The Continental Congress formally declared the new nation’s name in September of 1776. There are dozens of different styles of U.S.A. buttons, but this one appears almost identical to a button found at Valley Forge, lost during the harsh winter of 1777.
So how did it get on this shipwreck?
One plausible theory is that the button is a trophy of war. The collecting of souvenirs was not uncommon. Soldiers far from home sent evidence of victories back to loved ones for reassurance and often kept mementos.
The button could have been picked up on a battlefield or taken directly from a fallen enemy, removed from the American prisoners aboard a prison ship in Charleston Harbor, or taken at the Battle of Monmouth. This is where the 63rd, one of the British Regiments whose coat buttons also appeared on the storm wreck, took part in an indecisive but significant conflict near Freehold, New Jersey, on a scorching day in June of 1778.
Monmouth was the first battle after Washington’s army trained extensively at Valley Forge.
“Wherever it is from, the U.S.A button represents evidence of direct contact between the Patriots and the British Army,” said Kathy Fleming, the museum’s executive director. “It is up close and personal. This button is among the earliest evidence we will see in St. Augustine of the acronym ‘U.S.A.’ used to represent our young nation. Finding it was like the cherry on top of the maritime history of the Oldest Port.”
The button will go through an extensive conservation process, with the first step being desalination. After that, it will be coated with a corrosion inhibitor, waxed and ultimately documented. The degree to which salt has penetrated the button will determine how long the overall process will take.
The St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum plans to display the button in the Wrecked! exhibit once conservation is completed.
In 2017, LAMP archaeologists added the storm wreck to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, a designation of distinction due to the level of its historical significance.
