Abenaki dugout canoes have been found Lake Champlain, but they were never examined by archaeologists, so they were neither dated nor preserved. (Five Abenaki dugout canoes with various dates of 200-500 years ago have also been found in ponds in the Lake Champlain Basin.) The oldest dated Lake Champlain shipwreck is probably the 16-gun British sloop Boscawen, which was abandoned in shallow water near Ticonderoga in 1763, after the French and Indian War. It was a rotted—though artifact-rich—wreck when it was excavated in 1985. The oldest intact shipwreck in Lake Champlain may be the gunboat Spitfire, of Benedict Arnold’s Revolutionary War fleet. It sank to the bottom of the deep lake in 1776 after the battle of Valcour Island. One of its companion gunboats, the Philadelphia, which sank during the battle, was salvaged in 1935 and is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. [Sources: Haviland and Powers, The Original Vermonters & Kevin Crisman, Of Sailing Ships and Sidewheelers.]
- Shipwrecks & History of Lake Champlain (LC Maritime Museum)
The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum carefully surveyed several sailing canal boat shipwrecks in Lake Champlain to build the accurate replica, the Lois McClure.
