J. Richard Steffy
(1924-2007)
A Tribute from George Bass
first published in the Winter 2007/08 issue of The INA Quarterly Volume 34, No. 4
Readers of this journal must be aware of J. Richard Steffy's universal respect as an authority on early ship construction, especially on details he gleaned from remains of ships uncovered by archaeological excavation. When he was not lending his expertise to projects all over the world, archaeologists made pilgrimages to Texas to seek his advice. His legacy includes publications of the Yassi Ada, Serçe Limani, and Kyrenia hulls, and his 1994 Wooden Ship Building and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks.
That was J. Richard Steffy, the noted expert. Anyone who consults the web site http://blogs.tamu.edu/steffy/, however, will see the outpouring of affection from colleagues and former students for Dick Steffy, the man, who died on 29 November 2007 in Bryan, Texas.
There was a less well-known role that this remarkable, self-taught scholar played in the development of modern nautical archaeology. Because our careers were so entwined for over four decades, this is a personal remembrance.
Dick Steffy first contacted me when I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. He had read my 1963 article in National Geographic on a seventh-century Byzantine shipwreck I was excavating off Turkey. He said that as a hobby he built ship models, not for mantelpiece displays, but for research, in order to learn how ships worked. Could he build such a model of our ship?
I put Dick in touch with my fellow student and excavator Frederick van Doorninck, who was writing his doctoral dissertation on a reconstruction of the Byzantine ship based on its seabed fragments. Thus began a productive collaboration that lasted until Dick's death. We traded visits between his home in Denver, Pennsylvania, about 60 miles from Philadelphia, where Dick ran an electrical contracting business. I became so impressed by his knowledge of ships that after I joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty, I annually asked him to speak to a graduate seminar on ancient seafaring.
It was the invitation by Michael Katzev for Dick to come to Cyprus in the summer of 1971 that gave Dick the opportunity to work with actual remains, those of a classical Greek hull raised from the sea off the north-coast town of Kyrenia by Michael and his wife Susan.
Later that year, when Dick was back in the United States, a telephone call from the New Jersey shore changed our lives, and to some extent the history of nautical archaeology. The caller, Susan Langston, said a storm had uncovered part of a wooden hull on the beach, and neighbors speculated it might be Viking. Dick and I made a quick inspection of the scanty remains, and he concluded the hull seemed to be from a down-easter built between 1880 and 1910. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Langston learned that the hull was from the George R. Skofield, built in Maine in 1885 and stranded on the beach in 1920! It was not the last time I was awed by Dick's magic.
On the drive home from the shore, Dick pulled his car off the highway and motioned me to stop. He walked to my car and told me that he had decided to give up his business to become a professional ancient ship reconstructor. I said he was crazy. He had a wife and two sons to support. He responded that he could always return to electrical contracting, but he had to give this a try, for he would only live once.
Fred van Doorninck and I had been musing about establishing a private institute devoted to shipwreck archaeology, but neither of us had taken any steps toward its formation. Surely Dick's words, and his courage to follow his passion, served as the catalyst that encouraged me to resign a tenured position at the University of Pennsylvania to follow my dream. Just as Lucille Steffy stood behind Dick's decision, Ann stood behind mine. And so, in 1972, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) was incorporated.
The new institute was based on Cyprus, and Dick spent the 1972-1973 academic year in Kyrenia with Lucille and their sons, David and Loren, reassembling the hull from thousands of PEG-treated pieces of wood. After he returned to the island in early 1974 to continue the reassembly, he asked me if he could work for INA. I replied that we did not have enough money to add to our two-person staff. He persevered. I said I could not insult him with my only possible offer. He said: "Try me." I hesitated: "$8,000." No fringe benefits, no insurance, no retirement plan. "I'll take it," he said.
Within months, Cyprus, divided by war, was no longer suitable for INA headquarters. I moved with my family to Denver, Pennsylvania, to be near the Steffys. Lucille went back to work at the middle school so her family would have health insurance. Dick and I talked daily about the future of the institute. When a university offered INA a base, we drove together to North Carolina to look for homes. Then Texas A&M University made a counter offer that included establishment of a graduate program in nautical archaeology, with generous funding, so we moved to College Station instead. It is to the everlasting credit of Texas A&M that it hired Dick, without so much as a B.A. or B.S., as a faculty member in the program where we soon were joined by Fred.
The University never regretted its decision. Dick was an excellent lecturer, receiving top ratings from the chapters of the Archaeological Institute of America to which he was invited to speak. He wrote more beautifully than most scholars with doctorates. And he was a first-rate teacher, his students taking back to their homes around the world the unique knowledge he so selflessly imparted, a generation of nautical archaeologists with so much more knowledge than the pioneers in our field. He retired as a full professor.
Dick's genius was further recognized when he became a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship - the so-called "genius award." He was a perfect candidate, one who had reached the pinnacle of success via an unconventional route. With his additional income he joined the Board of Directors of INA, generously giving back annually to the Institute far more than his initial salary from it!
Both INA and the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M succeeded beyond our expectations, but Dick's pivotal role in the formation of each is little known. How different our field might have been without that drive to the New Jersey coast.
