Spanish Ship Uncovered in Pensacola

Navy construction crews have unearthed a rare Spanish ship that was buried for centuries under sand on Pensacola's Naval Air Station, archaeologist confirmed Thursday.
The vessel could date to the mid-1500s, when the first Spanish settlement in what is now the United States was founded here, the archaeologists said.
But the exposed portion looks more like ships from a later period because of its iron bolts, said Elizabeth Benchley, director of the Archaeology Institute at the University of West Florida.
"There are Spanish shipwrecks in Pensacola Bay," Benchley said. "We have worked on two - one from 1559 and another from 1705. But no one has found one buried on land. This was quite a surprise to everybody."

Construction crews came upon the ship this month while rebuilding the base's swim rescue school, destroyed during Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
The exposed keel of the ship juts upward from the sandy bottom of the pit and gives some guess of the vessel's form. Archaeologists estimated the rest of the ship is buried by about 75 feet of sand.
During initial work to determine the ship's origin, archaeologists found ceramic tiles, ropes and pieces of olive jars. The settlement was founded in 1559; its exact location is a mystery. The Spanish did not return until more than a century later in 1698 at Presidio Santa Maria de Galve, now the naval station.
The French captured and burned the settlement in 1719 but handed Pensacola back to Spain three years later. Hurricanes forced the Spanish to repeatedly rebuild.
The Navy plans to enclose the uncovered portion of the ship, mark the site and move construction over to accommodate archaeological work, officials said.
"We don't have plans to excavate the entire ship," Benchley said. "It's going to be very expensive because it's so deeply buried and we would have to have grant money," she said.

14th Century Shipwreck found in Stockholm

Archeologists have found a shipwreck from the late 1300s buried in the mud of a bay in central Stockholm, officials said Thursday. They are now awaiting permission to excavate the wreckage - one of the oldest ever found in the Swedish capital - hoping it will shed light on shipbuilding techniques and trade in the 14th century.

Experts say they might be able to bring the ship up on land, as was done with the 17th century warship Vasa, which is now housed in a museum that is one of Stockholm's main tourist attractions.
Parts of the wreckage are protruding from the brackish sediment at a depth of about 30 feet in the Riddarfjarden bay leading into the heart of Stockholm, National Maritime Museum officials said.

Archeologists found it last year when examining the planned site for a new train tunnel. They have now dated the ship to between 1350 and 1370, and believe it sank sometime in the 1390s.
"This is really exciting," said Marcus Hjulhammar, project leader for the museum.
"What is so special is that it is under water, here in Stockholm," he said. "That makes it much more likely that it is well-preserved than if it had been on land."
Shipwrecks have a decent chance of being well-preserved in the low-salt waters of the Stockholm archipelago because of the lack of wood-eating shipworms.

If the entire ship - the size and type of which are unclear - is still intact, its cargo could give historians a better idea of trading that took place in the area at the time.
There is a large crack in the hull, which had been covered by a piece of leather that had been nailed to the boards, Hjulhammar said.
"That is a sign that this ship was very worn down, and it is possible that this repair work is part of the reason it sank," he said. "My spontaneous reaction was that the repair was rather clumsily done."
The museum is awaiting permission from the county government to dig out the remaining parts of the ship, Hjulhammar said. They would then decide whether it is possible to bring it up on land.
"But it depends on how eroded it is," he said. "It may turn out that it is better to let her lie."
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