[circa May-June 1966]

Held in the 1791 John Warner Arnold House of the Warwick Historical Society, the First Annual Rhode Island Marine Historical Symposium is the first attempt to consider the marine history of Rhode Island as a concentrated effort. The theme is "Narragansett Bay - Past, Present, and Future." The Symposium is the result of a suggestion by Jackson Jenks, of the Newport Naval and Underseas Museum, and welcomed by Mayor Horace E. Hobbs of Warwick as a permanent adjunct to our city's cultural life. Mr. Jenks is engaged with the assistance of the United States Navy, the Coast Guard, the Warwick Fire and Police Departments, and his own Museum, in an underwater search for remains of the British customs schooner, Gaspee, off Gaspee Point in Warwick.

The speakers at the Symposium, whose talks will be published, are:

• Franklin Coyle (Ph. D. candidate, Brown University) The American Revolution in Narragansett Bay
• Mrs. Mary Donnelly (A. M., Gorton Junior High School) Trade in Narragansett Bay: Pre-Revolution to 1810
• William King Covell Steamboating on Narragansett Bay
• Professor Clarence Miller (University of Rhode Island) Effect of Glaciers on Narragansett Bay
• Dr. Niels Rorholm (University of Rhode Island) Potential of Narragansett Bay

• William. A. Baker, NA., Curator, Francia Russsell Hart Nautical Museum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
      "Historic Ships as Floating Museums"
• Evelyn M. Walsh, Ph.D., Professor of History,. Rhode Island College,.
  "Activities of the Customs House at Newport, RI, 1763-1773"
• Samuel W. Bryant. The Graduate School, Brown University; Author, The Sea and the States; A History of the American People,
  "Silas Downer-Undiscovered Rhode Island Hero"
• Jeannette Black, Assistant, in charge of the Map collection, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.
  "Some Early Maps of Rhode Island"
• Thomas T. Benson. Executive Director, Old Port Association Inc., Newport, Rhode Island.
  "The Anatomy .of a New England Coastal Community"