About

There are three main levels to a Digital Humanities project. The first level, the foundation of the project, is the sources. In order to begin analyzing a database, one must thoroughly research the metadata surrounding the topic. This not only helps to understand the context behind the data points, but it may also reveals gaps within it--silences that are not immediately apparent. Gaps and silences in data cause bias in a narrative, and should always be addressed when presenting a Digital Humanities project such as this one (1).

When we first approached this database, it was immediately apparent that we needed to limit our scope. The New Jersey coastline is an integral portion of many historical trade routes across America, and so there was a massive amount of data for us to work with. In order to get a better idea of what we had to work with, we created a simple graph of the number of shipwrecks by year over time. We immediately noticed something interesting--the number of shipwrecks around the 1880s spiked sharply, and was immediately followed by a steep drop-off. Our team decided to focus on the time period leading up to and following these events, specifically the second half of the nineteenth century, 1850-1900.

This question met three key guidelines: it was answerable, interesting, and important (2).

With a new focus, our team set out and conducted thorough research on the maritime world during this time period. We examined trade routes, technology, weather patterns, and society. We scoured books, websites, scientific journals, and even hundred year-old newspaper articles, in search of a possible cause. We gained a new understanding of the events taking place during this time, and found that there were a number of possible contributing factors to the trend we could see.

Technology was advancing rapidly during this time period, as it occurred right after Industrial Revolution. There was the possibility that a new technology could have decreased the number of ships wrecked. There were also a lot of storms around the time of the increase, and so those could have been a contributing factor.

However, we weren’t truly set on a cause until we spoke with the curator of the New Jersey Maritime Museum—the source of the database—Dave Swope. His insight into our metadata offered a rather unexpected explanation. He proposed the idea that the reason for the sharp spike in shipwrecks was not necessarily that more ships were sinking, but that more shipwrecks were being recorded. During the 1880s, the Life Saving Services in America expanded tremendously. They began taking a much more thorough record of all ships that sank, and so that could explain why there was such a sudden spike in shipwrecks during this time period.

Now that we had a comprehensive understanding of the time period, it was time to begin the second level of our Digital Humanities project: processing our sources. Our group considered many different possible visualizations. We decided that a timeline would be the best way to display our overarching narrative, since we began by looking at the number of shipwrecks over time. We also included the textual analysis of Life Saving Documents provided to us by the New Jersey Maritime Museum, in order to reveal themes within the written experiences. In addition to this, we had two tree maps, as well as a table created with Google Fusion to further compare our data with metadata.

The final part of a Digital Humanities project is the presentation. Knowing that we had so many different stories and narratives to work with, we decided that we wanted a unique and interactive format to present the data, in a way that truly invests the audience in our content. We decided to structure our website as a sort of “choose your own adventure” type of piece. This not only provides the audience with a deeper understanding of the experiences of the sailors, but adds a creative element that sets it apart from many other pieces of data analysis in the Digital Humanities.

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Sources:

Padilla, Thomas. "Engaging Absence", blog (26 February 2018).
Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 9th. Ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), chapters 1-2.

Meet the Crew: Ocean's 7

Acknowledgements

We owe a big thank you to the New Jersey Maritime Museum for providing us with our database, especially Dave Swope, who interviewed with us and provided us with the Life Saving Services Documents.

Special thanks to Professor Ashley Sanders Garcia and Dustin O'Hara for being wonderful teachers and providing us with the tools necessary to complete our project.

Felician Cristostomo

PROJECT MANAGER

Felician oversaw the progress of the website as a whole and the creation of the "Collisions" page.

Sophia Marencik

CONTENT SPECIALIST

Sophia helped to oversee the content within the site, including illustrating the icons for The New York and the Hylton Castle ships and overseeing the creation of the "About" page. She also aided in the textual analysis of the life saving service documents, and created the textual analysis visualizations.

Janet Luu

DATA VIZ SPECIALIST

Janet helped to oversee the creation of our data visualizations, including the creation of the overall timeline, Life Saving Services timeline, progressive departure ports over time map, and oversaw the Sources & Data Critique page.

Vittorio Migluiolo

MAPPING SPECIALIST

Vittorio helped to oversee the mapping aspects and visualizations of our project. In addition to this, he oversaw the creation of the "Storm" adventure page and narrative. He also narrated the voiceover segments throughout the site.

Elizabeth Tran

DATA SPECIALIST

Elizabeth oversaw the cleaning of our data set, as well as oversaw the creation of the "Life Saving Service" adventure page.. She also created the Weather by Year, Departure Port Map, and Ship Collisions by Year visualizations.

Katie Roschak

WEB SPECIALIST

Katie helped to oversee the generation of our website as a whole, as well as creating the Shipwrecks by Year graph and tree maps. In addition, she oversaw the "About the Life Saving Services" page.

Helen-Sage Lee