James P. Delgado (born on January 11, 1958 San Jose, California) is a maritime archaeologist, explorer and author.
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As a maritime archaeologist who has worked all around the globe, he has spent decades underwater exploration and has uncovered many new archaeological sites across the globe. He was born in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States.
His association with San Jose State University led to his enrolling there. In his sophomore year, he shifted to San Francisco State University as a cooperative education student working with the National Park Service. He remained with the N.P.S. through University. While working as park historian on sites such as Alcatraz and a number of military forts and gun batteries, including the excavation of a forgotten Civil War fortification at Black Point, his interest in ships and especially shipwrecks was intensely reinforced by the discovery of buried ships from the Gold Rush of 1848-1851.[1] Delgado worked with archaeologist Allen Pastron on several excavations in downtown San Francisco in the 1980s. Among the buried ships he would help excavate or analyze between 1979 and 2005 were the storeships Niantic and General Harrison, and the ships William Gray and Candace.
The N.P.S. years also introduced him to shipwrecks, diving, and underwater archaeology. His early projects in California also included the 1982-1985 documentation of the medium clipper ship King Philip on Ocean Beach, the schooner Neptune, also wrecked on Ocean Beach (in 1900) and the steamships Tennessee and Winfield Scott, wrecked at Tennessee Cove in Marin County and off Anacapa Island in California's Channel Islands. Working closely with the Park Service's submerged cultural resources unit, he participated in surveys of wrecks in his own park and Pearl Harbor, where he participated in the study of the sunken USS Arizona and USS Utah, and finally at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, where he worked with the team on the atomic-bombed ships of Operation Crossroads, the world's first nuclear tests (1946). Those wrecks include the carrier USS Saratoga, the Japanese battleship Nagato, the battleship USS Arkansas, the destroyer USS Anderson, the attack transport USS Gilliam and the submarine USS Pilotfish.[2]
After gaining a master's degree in underwater archaeology from East Carolina University, he was assigned by the N.P.S. to work as project historian on the USS Monitor Project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He then headed the National Park Service's maritime preservation program, the National Maritime Initiative, as its founding chief. The NMI was also the maritime preservation program for the federal government, and as chief, he led an effort to study 142 ships for designation as national landmarks, inventoried the nation's maritime resources, and supported the development of standards and guidelines for preservation and documentation. He continued his active diving and shipwreck work during those years. This included the documentation of the wreck of the famous US Navy brig USS Somers, the setting for the Navy's only mutiny and the inspiration for Herman Melville's Billy Budd.[3]
In 1991, he moved to the Vancouver Maritime Museum in Vancouver, British Columbia and remained there for fifteen years as executive director. He returned to university and gained a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University. He also hosted the television series The Sea Hunters with author Clive Cussler for five years.[4]
He has written, contributed to, or edited 33 books. In 2006 he joined the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) as Executive Director, and in April 2008 he was elected President and CEO of this worldwide archaeological institute.[5] Among his later projects Delgado was the principal investigator on the 2010 expedition to map the Titanic shipwreck site, and he also spent several years leading the archaeological documentation of the early submersible Sub Marine Explorer. In October 2010, he left INA to become the Director of Maritime Heritage in the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration in Washington, D.C.