The Daily Orange

At age 16, Cathryn Newton was part of the crew that located the wreck of the ironclad warship USS Monitor.

"Doing science 24 hours a day, being on watch with Doc Edgerton of MIT as he was inventing the side-scan sonar. Imagine what that would do in someone's life," The College of Arts and Sciences dean said.

That life-changing experience led Newton to finish her father's research from the late 1970s after his unexpected death. Newton is nearing the end of her research and will step down as dean after this year with hopes of completing the project, which includes a searchable database of more than 2,500 shipwrecks off the coast of North Carolina. Newton aims to eventually publish the information in written form.

"For every one of these, it's like a huge narrative in the story of some people's lives," she said. "Like 2,500 snapshots of history."

The research contains collected data about the time and date of the wreck, the approximate location using longitude and latitude, how many casualties and survivors were a result of the sinking and even the amount and type of cargo the ship was carrying.

Such information was collected from a variety of sources during the past 20 years, Newton said, using firsthand accounts of letters to family members from survivors, newspaper articles from the date of the wreck and insurance company's information on what the vessel was carrying.

"There are lifesaving reports of those who rowed or motored their boats out to sea to the tanker," Newton said.

Currently, Newton has a database on her computer that can be searched for any information about a particular wreck. A searcher can also have a randomized ship's data selected.

Newton also has a collection of index cards, one for each wreck, that have handwritten notes on the details of how the vessel sank. The cards have an array of handwriting on them, signifying the amount of work that has gone into editing them throughout the past two decades.

Newton noted specific trends in the data, such as how in March 1942, there were a significant number of sea vessels being sunk in the area by German U-Boats.

Dr. Lee Spence, a founder, owner and vice president of the International Diving Institute, noted that the importance of what can be found in Newton's database reaches beyond historical relevance.

"I really do think it's a worthwhile thing for historians and the general public for many different reasons. It can help people for marine biology, saving the seas against pollution, people wanting to know where to fish, not just marine archeologists," Spence said.

He said he has done research on the wrecks off the coast of the Carolinas himself, but chances are Newton's data may have information that he did not come across.

"Although there is going to be some overlap of our stuff, there's going to be some stuff I have absolutely never seen that they came across simply because they would have had access to different resources and materials," Spence said.

A database like Newton's helps immensely in narrowing down a particular wreck once it's found, Spence said.

"You might find a bottle you know was made after 1845," he said. "If you look in a shipwreck research list for that particular area it was wrecked, there might be only about five vessels that could match it."

The discovery and classification of wrecks has an important ecological connection, Spence said. Many ships sank during the world wars could have dangerous, hazardous materials still lurking beneath the ocean.

"These things eventually need to be cleaned up before they totally get out of control," Spence said.

Orrin Pilkey, geology professor at Duke University, also said Newton's research will have a broad appeal.

"Historians are going to be surprised when they see the massive number of ships that have sunk off the Carolinas and Virginias, but the big interest is going to come from treasure hunters and from fishermen," Pilkey said. "There's going to be a huge interest in those who have an allure of the coast."

Pilkey was a close friend of Newton's father, John, with whom he worked at Duke. Together they published an oceanographic atlas of North Carolina. He said they had "a number of adventures together," and he remembers John Newton beginning the research process.

He said he was thrilled to see the younger Newton working toward publishing it herself.

"This is the kind of thing that publishing companies are dying for," Pilkey said. "It's really great she's going to do this, partly because it's her father's work and partly because she's interested in the subject herself."

Newton recognizes the importance of getting the database in published form, though she has yet to decide in what manner to do so. She said she aims to have a scholarly book that will be broadly appealing.

"For 20 years I have been, every week, getting many calls from scuba divers, letters and calls from historians, you can just imagine different genres of people who are interested in this database," Newton said.

She said she's looking forward to having a year off to complete the work.

"You can see why taking a year out of your life and finishing something like this is just the right thing to do," she said.

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