Cafe Locale Article

Clifton Brings Past To Life

By David Maull
TV Times

The word "treasure" carries an unconventional definition for Dale Clifton.

When someone asks to see the most valuable item in his DiscoverSea Museum atop Sea Shell City in Fenwick Island, Clifton strides past the gold and silver bars, pewter mugs and antique glassware he has pulled from shipwrecks during the past 20 years and points to a vase made by his late father. "Treasure is something that's dear to the heart," he said.

Most of the more than 30,000 artifacts Clifton has recovered from shipwrecks off the Delaware Coast are dear to his heart. That's why about 6,500 of them are on display at DiscoverSea instead of sitting in a bank vault or being sold for big bucks. "It's not really mine, it belongs to the public," he said. "This is a community project. I don't deserve all the credit. The old saying is true - you can't take it with you."

For Clifton, the reward is teaching museum visitors about shipwrecks from centruies past. "It belongs as much to you as it does to me," he said. "I'm a custodian." The display cases at DiscoverSea are packed with artifacts Clifton has recovered during the past two decades. Along with numerous plates, cups, coins and gold bars are stunning pieces of gold jewelry, weapons, pottery and even a treasure chest he dug up in a marshy area near the beach in Lewes.

For Clifton, a man whose interest in shipwrecks began at age 14 when he searched for coins with a metal detector along a stretch of beach near the Indian River Inlet, satisfaction comes from the effort and research invested to find the artifacts and the history that can be learned from them. "I've actually gone out and done it," he said. "It's persistence and it's research. The hard job is finding them (wrecks). It's an on-going process."

This summer, Clifton will explore shipwrecks in Delaware, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey. He also does excavation work at old colonial home sites. Items recovered at sea and on land offer a glimpse into the past and provide clues about the way of life centuries ago. "I'm literally shaking hands with history," he said. "The real thing is what we can learn from the past." That's the lesson he hopes to teach museum visitors and the reason broken pieces of glassware are so valuable to his research. Those bits of glass, which fill baskets on the shelves of his office inside the museum, provide clues as to how bottles and jars were made in centuries past. Many of those methods are now obsolete. "I'm just as thrilled to find a piece of broken glassware than I am a gold coin," Clifton said. "The knowledge I have learned is worth more than all the gold and silver. History in general is what it's all about."

Clifton is so respected in his field that he served as a historical consultant on the Steven Spielberg film "Amistad." Some of his artifacts actually appeared in the movie.

All of the artifacts pulled from the ocean are sent to an Ocean City lab for conservation work. Most are caked with sand, shells and barnacles and must be soaked in a special chemical solution to dissolve the remnants of the sea. Clifton's crowning achievement was a cannon that needed seven years of restoration work before it could be put on display. Clifton spent two hours a day during those seven years removing the caked on sand. "That's the closest I've ever been to having a child," he joked. Clifton would eventually like to have a restoration lab inside the museum that would be open to the public.

The DiscoverSea Museum was first established in West Ocean City but relocated to Fenwick Island four years ago. In it's first year, the museum had 350 artifacts on display. Today, there are about 6,500 and nearly 90,000 visitors passed through its doors last year. About 30 tour buses visited last summer. "People have always had an interest in shipwrecks," said Clifton, whose artifacts date back to the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

With only 10 percent of his personal collection on display, Clifton can rotate artifacts to keep the museum's offerings fresh. "We've grown substantially," he said. "We guarantee every time you come back you're going to see something new."