Our speaker is Paul Johnston, PhD, retired curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

 

In 1816, the first oceangoing yacht built in the United States left on its maiden voyage from Salem, Massachusetts to the Mediterranean. The $100,000 hermaphrodite brig Cleopatra's Barge was so extraordinary that up to 8,000 visitors a day went aboard. After that single voyage, owner George Crowninshield died. The boat was sold to Boston China traders, who sold it for a million pounds of sandalwood to Hawaiian King Kamehameha II, who used it as his private yacht. Kamehameha left for England in 1824 to meet British King George; while he was gone, a Native Hawaiian crew sailed the Barge to Kauai and lost it on a reef in Hanalei Bay. Under the only underwater archaeology permits ever issued by the State of Hawaii, Dr. Paul Johnston of the Smithsonian located, surveyed and excavated the wreck of the famous ship. His book about the project, Shipwrecked in Paradise: Cleopatra's Barge in Hawai'i won the Smithsonian Secretary's Research Award.