The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Could locals have helped find the Santa Maria?
Last week, the news of the possible discovery of the shipwrecked Santa Maria was splashed all over the Internet, newspapers, TV and social media.
The flagship of Christopher Columbus, along with the Nina and Pinta, had set sail to the Americas in 1492, but on Christmas Eve of that same year the Santa Maria was grounded and went down off the coast of Hispaniola.
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For centuries, many had searched for it, but it took Western State College grad Barry Clifford and his son Brandon, along with a crew that included a couple of Crested Butte explorers, Nate Nash and Andris Zobs, to finally move in on the ship’s long-lost location.
Raised on Martha’s Vineyard, Brandon Clifford had family ties in the valley that led him and his artist sister, Jenny Clifford, to live in Crested Butte. He essentially grew up on his father’s exploratory boat, watching him search for the elusive pirate shipwreck, the Whydah (pronounced “widda”) off the coast of Cape Cod.
The Whydah went down in a raging Nor’easter in 1717, taking with it the 143-member crew and the ship’s treasures of silver and gold, but the history it unfurled was even richer.
Captain “Black Sam” Bellamy, an Englishman, had started out by looking for shipwrecks in Florida to salvage, but he turned to piracy. He captured the Whydah—originally a slave ship—and freed its cargo of slaves bound for trade because he and his crew felt all people were equal.
The captain’s girlfriend, Maria Hallett, had been tried as a witch and was exiled to the tip of Cape Cod. It is rumored that Bellamy had gone to visit his love, Hallet—the Witch of Wellfleet—and there he perished with the Whydah.
After years of searching, Clifford and his crew finally found the Whydah wreck in only 14 feet of water in 1984. It was at the time the only documented pirate shipwreck ever found, verified by its bell, which read “Whydah Gally 1716.”
Although the site is still being excavated to this day, the treasure and history it has revealed has been stunning—more than two hundred thousand artifacts, including 60 cannons, more than 10,000 coins, 400 pieces of Akan (ethnic West African) gold jewelry.
Beyond that, the wreck has totally altered the understanding of pirates, who, at least on this ship, weren’t so scruffy. These somewhat dandy pirates wore fancy shoe buckles and jewelry. There are thousands of artifacts still being brought up. Because pirates raided ships from every port and country, the artifacts are an unparalleled cross-cultural collection from more than 50 looted ships.
In 1996, Barry Clifford established Expedition Whydah Sea-Lab and Learning Center at the Whydah Pirate Museum in Provincetown, Mass. The collection, “Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship,” is currently on tour throughout the United States, courtesy of the National Geographic Society (whydah.com).
Barry Clifford has had a long successful career of finding shipwrecks, from multiple discoveries off the New England coast, including sites associated with the Boston Harbor Tea Party and the evacuation of Boston during the Revolutionary War, to South and Central America, and Ile Sainte-Marie, an island off the coast of Madagascar that was popular with 17th- and 18th-century pirates.
The senior Clifford tentatively identified several famous pirate shipwrecks that were featured in the History Channel documentary Pirate Island. By decoding cryptic rock carvings he had found and then using ground-penetrating radar, he also located and charted a tunnel complex possibly used by 17th-century pirates.
In 2003, off the coast of Haiti, the Clifford crew surveyed several wrecks in search of the Santa Maria and after much research and diving, one site started to fit the description of what they were looking for.
But how do you find centuries-old wrecks underwater when seas and weather change even the topography of land masses?
Brandon Clifford explains, “It’s difficult. Unless you have the right boat, equipment, and experience, you’re not going to find anything.”
Plus, he adds, there are years of historic research that go into these projects. “The ballast pile is the thumbprint of a wreck; the timber is underneath the mud,” he points out. The ballast, which weights a ship for stabilization, was usually rocks and cannon, which sat on top of the wrecked ship’s timbers, preserving the wood under the sea mud.
“The crew would hide personal effects in the pile,” explains Brandon. “A button may break off a coat and fall down to the bottom of the ship and end up in the pile. Sometimes the crew hid their stash in the ballast so no one would find it. It’s almost like a time capsule protected by the stones.”
The shipwreck that could be the Santa Maria rests in about 15 feet of water, and when the Clifford crew first surveyed the site, the cannon—a Lombardy—was still present on top of the ballast pile. However, since then it has been taken by other treasure seekers, and its whereabouts are unknown.
The Lombardy cannon is unique to the Santa Maria era. Brandon says, “It was very specific to those times. It looks more like a tube, eight inches wide. It’s different from the cannon on the Whydah. I was the first to dive on the wreck and took lots of photos of it. Those pictures are the only record.
“There are a lot of ways to identify a shipwreck,” he explained. “They can ID the stones, which is what they’re working on now. They can ascertain if the stones are from a particular place in Spain and they can carbon-date the wood. The next step will be working with University of Indiana archeologist, Charles Beeker, head of their Underwater Archeology Department. He’ll be conducting the archeological part of the project and identifying it.”
According to history, Columbus’ detailed diary and Brandon Clifford, the Santa Maria was stripped entirely by the crew in only one day after having been grounded on the reef.
Brandon questions, “That’s a lot of work to completely strip a ship in one day. So, when you look at a ballast pile there could be anything in it—coins, buckles, shoes. On a shipwreck like the one in Haiti, you have an untouched ballast. You have this account of the ship wrecking, then being stripped, then being used to build Fort Navidad. They had a lot of cargo on the Santa Maria.”
Brandon says they analyzed the time frame and the story, which was well-documented in Columbus’ writings.
Someone had given the tiller (steering) to the 14-year-old ship’s boy, which Captain Columbus had instructed the crew never to do. With everyone asleep, no wind, and tacking up the coastline of Hispaniola, the ship was caught in the currents, finally wrecking on the reef.
Brandon recounts the probable history of that night. “It’s there on the reef and they’re salvaging everything they can for the next day. You have this incredible navigator telling you where his ship wrecked. Columbus tells you exactly where it was.”
The Nina and the Pinta sailed on, but part of the crew stayed behind at the fort on Hispaniola. Eventually the native Tainos drove them out and killed them, having realized what the crew’s interests were.
Brandon notes, “The Tainos were great conch divers so they would have immediately taken anything of significance from the shipwreck. The crew and the Tainos would have gone back to salvage everything they possibly could, so the ballast pile we looked for wouldn’t have a lot on top of it. Columbus kept a detailed account of his expedition every day. He wrote about the winds and the seas, the evening it went down, all the details of the weather and the ocean, the proximity of the land, where the fort was built.
“So when you’re reading his account of the shipwreck and where it is,” Brandon continued, “in over 500 years, the geology changes, the shoreline changes, and so you look at the modern-day shoreline, maps as close to that time period as possible and Columbus’ account of where his ship went down. He wrote it was ‘X’ distance from point ‘A’ and point ‘B,’ he gives you bearings off different points. He tells you where the ship wrecked and then it’s a matter of looking at the different layers of clues. Then you go there and you see the shoreline, you see where the reefs are, maybe you have aerial photos of the reefs.”
Having now acquired all the permits to excavate, which are different from exploratory and survey permits, the Clifford crew is heading back in mid-June for the next step, to conduct an archeological survey of the wreck site that will most likely be identified as the Santa Maria. The History Channel will be there documenting the project, which will take quite a bit of time.
“We’ll be in Haiti to preserve the shipwreck and underwater cultural resources… that’s our goal. The artifacts will be preserved for Haiti and for the rest of the world to see,” Brandon says. Of the Sana Maria, he says, “As a shipwreck, it’s just an amazing piece of history, a cornerstone of history, a symbol of change.”
