D. K. (Kathy) Abbass received her Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, with Post-Docs at Harvard and Berkeley. She taught ten years at Norfolk State University, then apprenticed for four years with SurveyYacht in Newport, and spent two years as Director of Newport’s Museum of Yachting. For the past 24 years the Founder, Director, and Principal Investigator of the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP). RIMAP was created in 1992 to incorporate members of the diving and non-diving public in a professionally organized and directed effort to study maritime history and marine archaeology sites in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. RIMAP is a federally approved 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. As the scope of research developed, it became clear that Rhode Island’s history should also include Rhode Island Sound and all of the connections between the colony and state and the wider world. RIMAP investigation into local history includes Royal Navy ships lost in the American Revolution (including Captain James Cook’s famous and former bark, the Endeavour), a reputed 19th-century slave ship in Newport, the steam ship in Bristol, the World War II marine railway at the former US Army shipyard at Fort Adams, and many other sites under water and on land around the state. Dr. Abbass has authored a number of articles and pamphlets on Revolutionary War land and water sites in Rhode Island, as well as the five-volume Rhode Island in the Revolution, a report to the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program, which contains an extensive history of Rhode Island in the Revolutionary War, describes the state’s colonial and Revolutionary War historic sites, and details marine archeological efforts to investigate sunken Royal Navy ships in Narragansett Bay. RIMAP research details and publication list are found on the www.rimap.org website, and non-RIMAP research details and publication list are available from Dr. Abbass (rhodeislandmap@yahoo.com).
