I yam what I yam!
Posted on 11/27/2007 2:45:45 PM PST by blam
Archaeologists explore wreck off Fla.
By MELISSA NELSON, Associated Press Writer
Tue Nov 27, 4:19 AM ET
PENSACOLA, Fla. - When Matthew Kuehne dives to the sandy bottom of Pensacola Bay, he reaches back 450 years to Spaniard Don Tristan de Luna's hurricane-doomed effort to form the first colony in the present-day United States.
Archaeologists say the buried hull of a ship from de Luna's fleet of 11 ships holds crucial clues to the 1559 expedition, which sailed from Mexico to Florida's Panhandle.
The ship's discovery was announced in October after lead sheeting and pottery from the wreck site were matched to the de Luna expedition. Another ship in the fleet was found nearby in 1992.
Kuehne, a University of West Florida archaeology student, has retrieved some ship artifacts from a barge anchored in the Gulf of Mexico about a half-mile off the coast.
He imagines what de Luna and his men would think of his modern-day exploration.
"I don't know if they would be honored that we are out here digging up their stuff or if they would be embarrassed that their technology, their efforts at colonization, failed," he said.
Had the colonization succeeded, the Panhandle settlement would have predated St. Augustine, the oldest Spanish colony in modern-day America, by five years.
The two Pensacola shipwrecks are the second-oldest discovered off U.S. waters. The oldest are a fleet of 1554 merchant ships that sunk off Padre Island, Texas.
The West Florida archaeology team has brought more than 800 artifacts from the latest de Luna site to the surface, including pieces of olive jars used to transport food and wine, chunks of the ship's wood frame, cow bones, Spanish bricks and even tiny balls of mercury, used to extract gold from ore.
Of the 11 ships that came from Veracruz, Mexico, on de Luna's expedition, seven ran aground in the water, one was blown onto shore and three survived the storm, said John Bratten, a West Florida professor of maritime archaeology.
Although the Spanish kept detailed records of the ships and their contents, historians are uncertain which of the 11 ships the archaeologists have discovered.
"We aren't sure how this ship fits into the picture of those seven ships that were lost in a hurricane. We do know this one is smaller than the 1992 ship," he said.
What Bratten and others on the West Florida team also know is the significance of their work: "A ship like this is what you hope to find in your career," Bratten said.
In the 15 years since the discovery of the first de Luna ship, researchers have scoured Pensacola Bay in hopes of finding the rest of the fleet.
Bratten and a team of students found the second ship during the last day of an archaeological field school last fall after students began bringing up ballast stones from the site. They continued to explore the site for months before its origins were confirmed.
At their laboratory on the university campus, Bratten and Judith Bense, director of the university's archaeology program, display the side of a large olive jar, its inside coated with a bright green glaze to protect the honey or wine it likely carried.
Other artifacts from the dive site are carefully laid out in various states of preservation before they are placed into plastic bags, labeled and stored in bins under a careful cataloguing system.
Divers have explored only about 5 percent of the shipwreck site, Bense said.
But the long-term plan is for underwater archaeologists to excavate less than 40 percent of the site and leave the remainder of the ship buried.
Because the artifacts have been buried and underwater for so long, it is best not to disturb them, she said.
Graduate student Cameron Fletcher dons his wet suit, picks up his scuba gear and waits his turn to dive to the wreck site.
Fletcher, who has made dives to the site for the last year, said he is amazed by the history of the de Luna expedition whenever he visits piles of ballast stones and chunks of wood on the ocean floor.
He's found shiny obsidian stones at the wreck site that the Spaniards would have taken with them from Mexico.
"When I think that I was the first person to touch something in 500 years, it's kind of crazy to wrap your brain around that," he said.
GGG Ping.
Right down the beach from here...................
They’ll find the rest of the fleet closer to Destin/Fort Walton Beach where I sunk ‘em in a previous life.
Uh-Oh, the envirowhacko's won't be happy about this.
The party anchored in Pensacola Bay (which they called "Ochuse") and set up the encampment of Puerto de Santa Maria during the summer of 1559, at the site of the modern Naval Air Station Pensacola. De Luna dispatched the factor Luis Daza with a galleon back to Vera Cruz to announce his safe arrival. He fitted two other vessels to sail to Spain, awaiting the return of two exploring parties. With much of the colony's stores still on the ships, de Luna sent several exploring parties inland to scout the area; they returned after three weeks having found only one Indian town. Before they could unload the vessels, on the night of September 19, 1559,[2] a hurricane (with storm surge) swept through and destroyed most of the ships and cargo: five ships, a galleon and a bark, pushing one caravel and its cargo into a grove inland.[2] With the colony in serious danger, most of the men traveled up the Alabama River to the village of Nanipacana (Nanipacna or Ninicapua), which they had found abandoned; they renamed the town "Santa Cruz" and moved in for several months.[2] Back in Mexico, the Viceroy sent two relief ships in November, promising additional aid in the spring.[2]
The relief got the colony through the winter, but the supplies expected in the spring had not arrived by September. De Luna ordered the remainder of his force to march to the large native town of Coca, but the men mutinied.[2] Bloodshed was averted by the settlement's missionaries, but soon after, Ángel de Villafañe arrived in Pensacola Bay and offered to take all who wished to leave on an expedition to Cuba and Santa Elena.[2] De Luna relented and agreed to leave, eventually moving back to Mexico, where he died in 1571. The Pensacola colony was inhabited for several more months by Captain Biedma and a detachment of fifty men who Villafañe had left there, in case further orders arrived from Viceroy Velasco;[2] when they sailed away, the area was not populated again by Europeans until 1698, when the Spanish founded the city of Pensacola.
Why are vessels that hold honey or wine called olive jars?
I yam what I yam!
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Thanks Blam. |
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I am assuming the street in Pensacola Beach is named Via de Luna after the same fellow.
Ahh, wish I were there now!
Yup.
Cadillac Square on Daulphin Island (The capital of all Louisianna terrorities in 1699) was named for this guy: Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac as was the Cadillac automobile.
Cadillac founded Detroit in 1701.
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