Published - October, 12, 2007
History underwater
UWF to continue work on Emanuel Point II site
Sean Dugas
sdugas@pnj.com
After nearly 450 years lost in Pensacola Bay, another ship of Don Tristan de Luna has been discovered by University of West Florida archaeologists.
Sitting in 12 feet of water, the Emanuel Point II shipwreck is believed to be the second of Luna's 1559 Pensacola colonization fleet discovered in the bay, said Judy Bense, UWF director of archaeology.
The Emanuel Point II site, found in the summer of 2006, was located about 1,320 feet from the first Luna ship that was uncovered in 1992. But the ship's identity was only recently confirmed.
"Less than a dozen ships from this time period have ever been discovered," UWF maritime archaeologist Greg Cook said Thursday at a news conference. "This is the oldest wreck found to date in the state of Florida and the second oldest in America."
Luna, a Spanish military commander, is credited with being the founder of Pensacola, although he was actually the first to make an attempt to settle the area.
Luna's expedition to present-day Florida in 1559 was the most carefully planned of its kind ever attempted, said John Worth, associate professor of archaeology at UWF.
"Eleven ships came from Mexico with 1,000 colonists and 500 soldiers," he said. "Their settlement was intended to become a Spanish foothold in North America."
The fleet arrived in Pensacola Bay on Aug. 15, 1559, and one ship was sent back to Mexico to give news of the colonists' landing.
About a month after landing, seven of Luna's 10 ships were destroyed during a hurricane. Nearly all of the food brought from Veracruz, Mexico, by settlers was lost.
"It was important that the settlers were not dependent on the native people for food," Worth said. "When the food was destroyed, the colonists struggled for about two years to survive before abandoning the settlement."
The remains of the Emanuel Point II and the Emanuel Point wrecks were likely left broken and empty for centuries before being rediscovered by archaeologists, Worth said.
Discovering history
After UWF received a $203,368 grant from the Florida Division of Historical Resources, researchers began extensive underwater surveys of the bay near the first Emanuel Point wreck.
Using a magnetometer a large device similar to a metal detector UWF archaeologists and students began searching for Luna's missing fleet.
While the new machine was more advanced than previous equipment, finding the 16th century wreck was like searching for a cotton ball in a snowstorm.
"We found everything from pizza ovens to Volkswagens while searching," said John Bratten, UWF maritime archaeology associate professor.
But in the summer of 2006, after finding a Civil War-era ship in the bay, UWF archaeology students found an anomaly on the bay's bottom.
"About an hour after getting in the water, the students called and said they had found a pile of ballast stones," Bratten said.
Further excavations revealed that the stones were covering a well-preserved wooden hull. After artifacts from the site were analyzed, the wreck was confirmed to be one of Luna's lost ships, he said.
History speaks
About 600 artifacts have been recovered from the wreck, including pottery, lead sheeting from the ship's hull and wooden pieces from various parts of the vessel.
Brian Adams, a UWF graduate student, has been working at the site since the first find and said it's the most interesting thing he has ever done.
"Every day you go down, there's something new to see and do," he said. "We've found olive jar shards, rat skulls and obsidian blades."
As work at the site continues, archaeologists expect to find more personal items that would have been stored on the ship's upper decks and may have fallen near the ship's hull as it deteriorated.
Comparing the two Emanuel Point ships to determine how the vessels were constructed is also historically important because there are no detailed plans of 16th century ships, Bratten said.
"There are about 20 meters of the ship's hull that remain intact," Cook said. "The wood is so well preserved it's hard to put a nail into it."
Comparing of the vessels will allow archaeologists to accurately reconstruct how they looked. They can then share those findings with the public.
"Whenever we find something like this, we get to show it off," Bense said.
