We have begun excavating in the northern crawl space of St. Peter's Church. The space itself is a product of the the 1950s restoration of the church when support walls were constructed to reinforce the floor of the building. On our stomachs with little room to even kneel we have started to remove the dirt sealing the bedrock underneath the oldest portion of St. Peter's. We first excavated a two foot wide unit spanning the entirety of the 6 foot space. This unit quickly gave way to bedrock. We then moved to the east to the next two foot unit; as we removed the soil near the bottom of the deposit a small copper plate was discovered. Corrosion obscured the inscription however, by its size and shape and the fact that a small portion of wood remained on the back side we figured it might be a pew marker since we did not expect to find any burials in this part of the church. Nonetheless when cleaned this copper artefact was a burial plaque reading: "Sir Jacob Wheate BARt Commander of His Majesty Ship Cerebus OBt the 12 February 1783." Some inital research told us that the Cerebus herself wrecked in around that time near Castle Roads the main cut into Castle Harbour. While we have yet to fully explore the area this coffin plate could be associated with the burial of Jacob Wheate in this part of the church. The mystery surrounding this would be that he would have been buried underneath the floorboards of the 1713/4 part of the church. An odd place to put a man who died of Yellow Fever. We are continuing the explore this area but the coffin plate (pictured above) is an exciting find for our field season. brf.
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