One of the earliest usages of the abbreviation “USA” has been identified on a button removed from concretion on a Florida shipwreck – much to the surprise of archaeologists, because the 18th-century vessel was not American but British.
The artefact has been found among the remains of the Storm Wreck, a British loyalist vessel from the American Revolutionary War that sank on the last day of 1782.
A conservator from the St Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum laboratory in the north-east of the state was demonstrating extraction techniques to museum visitors when he came across the inscribed button.
The Storm Wreck was discovered by St Augustine Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) underwater archaeologists about a mile off Florida’s Atlantic coast in 2009.
They spent the next six years scuba diving the wreck and recovering artefacts for conservation and display, including a ship’s bell, a swivel gun, shoe-buckles and coat-buttons, but finding an American artefact was unexpected.
The assumption is that it must have been a war trophy: either found on a battlefield or taken from a prisoner.
Cherry on top
The United States of America came into being in September 1776 and from the following year, even before any coins marked “USA” had been minted, inscribed buttons were thought to have been fitted to the coats of soldiers in George Washington’s Continental Army.
The example found on the wreck appears almost identical to a button from 1777 found at Washington’s Valley Forge encampment in Pennsylvania. One theory is that the new find came from the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey in June 1778, because buttons previously found on the Storm Wreck were from the British 63rd Regiment, which fought in that action.
“This button is among the earliest evidence we will see in St Augustine of the acronym USA used to represent our young nation,” said the museum’s executive director Kathy Fleming. “Finding it was like the cherry on top of the maritime history of the Oldest Port.”
Time capsule
The as-yet unidentified Storm Wreck was added to the USA’s National Register of Historic Places in 2017. “This shipwreck is full of stuff,” said LAMP director Chuck Meide at the time. “It is a well-preserved time capsule with thousands of artefacts related to the daily life of Americans during the Revolution.”
The ship sank at the end of the Revolution while carrying British loyalists fleeing from Charleston in South Carolina to one of the last British colonies in southern Florida. One of a fleet of 16 ships trying to reach a safe haven, it ran aground on a sandbar.
The button is now being conserved for display in the museum’s Wrecked! exhibition.
