James P. Delgado

James P. Delgado, PhD, FRGS, RPA, has led or participated in shipwreck expeditions around the world. His undersea explorations include RMS Titanic, the recent discoveries of Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic’s survivors, and the notorious “ghost ship” Mary Celeste, as well as surveys of USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, the sunken fleet of atomic-bombed warships at Bikini Atoll, the polar exploration ship Maud, wrecked in the Arctic, and the 1846 wreck of the United States naval brig Somers, whose tragic story inspired Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. His archaeological work has also included the excavation of ships and collapsed buildings along the now-buried waterfront of Gold Rush San Francisco.

Delgado is ending his 15-year career as Executive Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, and in July 2006, takes up a new position as Executive Director of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. Previously, he was the head of the U.S. government’s maritime preservation program and was the maritime historian for the U.S. National Park Service. When not at the museum, he is the co-host of The Sea Hunters along with best-selling author Clive Cussler. The show is now in its fifth season. Delgado’s other television credits include specials for the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Explorer, A&E, the History Channel, and ABC. Delgado’s active participation in the study and preservation of shipwreck sites and maritime heritage has included a founding membership in the International Commission on Monuments and Site (ICOMOS) committee on underwater cultural heritage and the presidency of the Council of American Maritime Museums. He also enjoys a more hands-on approach to preservation, and most recently led the crew that restored Ben Franklin (PX-15), a 130-ton oceanographic research submersible originally built in Switzerland for famed undersea explorer and scientist Jacques Piccard and most famously employed on a historic 30-day “drift mission” along the eastern seaboard of the United States in 1969.

A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Fellow of the Explorers’ Club, Jim is the author or editor of 29 books and numerous articles, most recently Waterfront: An Illustrated Maritime Story of Greater Vancouver and Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks. His books Lost Warships: An Archaeological Tour of War at Sea and Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage are both international best-sellers published simultaneously in North America and Britain. His other books include The Encyclopedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology; Ghost Fleet: The Sunken Ships of Bikini Atoll, Pearl Harbor Recalled: New Images from the Day of Infamy, Great American Ships, To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the Gold Rush and three books for children, Wrecks of American Warships, Native American Shipwrecks, and Shipwrecks of the Westward Movement.

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