ABSTRACT
In mid-September 1781, trapped in the York River by the French at the opening to the Chesapeake, Cornwallis weighed his odds and gave the order to scuttle a collection of chartered merchant vessels in his fleet along the south side of the York River surrounding Yorktown. The scuttling was a strategy to protect Yorktown from an amphibious assault on behalf of the Allied forces. Included among these vessels was Betsey, a merchant vessel from Whitehaven, England chartered for use by the British during the American Revolutionary War. Launched in 1978, the Yorktown Archaeological Shipwreck Project conducted a full excavation of Betsey (44YO88), which resulted in the amassing of a considerable material culture collection. Among these assemblages, there is a collection of artifacts categorized as military in the five-volume 1996 report. In addition to providing an overview of the different collections that exist under this military category, the focus will be on a collection of military buttons and a bellybox cartridge holder obtained during excavations of the wreck, in order to gain a greater understanding of the role these materials played onboard the ship before it was scuttled, as well as in the decision to scuttle this particular vessel.
KEY WORDS
Military, material culture, American Revolution, American War for Independence, British Royal Navy, buttons, bellybox