THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, February 16, 1997             TAG: 9702150059
SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E14  EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER 
                                            LENGTH:   40 lines

ARCHAEOLOGIST TO DISCUSS SHIPWRECKS

WHEN PIECES of a shipwreck started washing ashore on the beaches last summer, Fielding Tyler, director of the Old Coast Guard Station museum, got two questions from beachcombers.

`` `How old is it?','' Tyler said, ``and `Can I have it?' ''

Virginia Beach has its share of shipwrecks hidden under the waves and sand offshore, more than 600 of them from the days when U.S. Life-Saving Stations dotted the coastline. And every time waterlogged sections from one of those ships show up scattered along the beach, Tyler gets the same questions.

To help with the answers, The Old Coast Guard Station is sponsoring a lecture by underwater archaeologist John D. Broadwater, manager of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, which lies 16 miles off Cape Hatteras, N.C.

Broadwater will speak at 1:30 p.m. today at the Virginia Center for Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach.

``How Old Is It? Can I Have It?: Shipwreck Timbers on the Beach'' is his topic. The slide program will feature information on Virginia shipwrecks, including some in Virginia Beach.

Before becoming manager of the Monitor sanctuary, Broadwater served from 1978 to 1990 as Virginia's senior underwater archaeologist. He directed a study of shipwrecks from the Revolutionary War Battle of Yorktown.

Although he's currently working to raise the famous Civil War ironclad vessel, the USS Monitor, from its grave in the Atlantic Ocean, he is no stranger to Virginia Beach.

He serves on The Old Coast Guard Station advisory board, assisting staff when shipwrecks surface. From evidence on the beach, he helps determine such things as the ship's possible age, length and weight. Most recently, he helped investigate the bow portion of a wooden hull that washed up on the Croatan beach in 1994. ILLUSTRATION: WANT TO GO?

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