James P. Delgado

James P. Delgado has led or participated in shipwreck expeditions around the world. His undersea explorations include RMS Titanic, the discoveries of Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic’s survivors, and the notorious “ghost ship” Mary Celeste, as well as surveys of USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, the sunken fleet of atomic-bombed warships at Bikini Atoll, the polar exploration ship Maud, wrecked in the Arctic, the 1846 wreck of the United States naval brig Somers, whose tragic story inspired Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, and Sub Marine Explorer, a civil war-era find and the world’s oldest known deep-diving submarine. His archaeological work has also included the excavation of ships and collapsed buildings along the now-buried waterfront of Gold Rush San Francisco. He is currently director of Maritime Heritage, Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the national Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is a past president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, and is adjunct professor of archaeology with Simon Fraser University. He holds his degrees from San Francisco State University (B.A.), East Carolina University (M.A.), and Simon Fraser University (Ph.D.), and was previously the executive director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum in British Columbia and the head Maritime Historian of the U.S. National Park Service. Professor Delgado has published more than 32 books and was the host of the National Geographic TV series The Sea Hunters.