#shipreck

I'm out here, like a message in a bottle. Can't breathe, I'm sinking down the rock bottom.

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There are wrecks that are forgotten for a long time and are only rediscovered by chance. So it happened also with the so called pepper wreck. It sank at the mouth of the Tagus, near Lisbon, Portugal, and many sank in this region over the centuries. In the 1950's, research showed that there were many wrecks in this estuary. However, it was not until the late 1970s that the first archaeological investigations were carried out and resulted in finds, but the area was not protected, which led to it being plundered in the 1980s. In 1993 further excavations revealed the remains of an interesting wreck which was further investigated in 1999-2000. It was a piece of a hull and the investigation showed that it was a Nau.

The side plan in Journal of Archaeological Science 39

Her keel is almost 27.72 m long and the total length is about 38.25 m. The hull had been built from cork oak and stone pine, and the small size of the trees used forced the shipbuilders to assemble large structural parts from several small pieces of wood.

The remaining hull timbers in Journal of Archaeological Science 39

The abundance of cultural materials found here determined the excavation of an area of around 100 m2 that produced an important collection of artefacts. Among these were three astrolabes, of which two were found together with two dividers in an area of around 10m2.

One of these astrolabes bore the date 1605 and the maker’s mark of the famous Goes’ family workshop in Lisbon. A stack of seven porcelain dishes still with a layer of straw in between each and an iron gun that accreted the shards missing from a large porcelain platter fragment found nearby, were among many finds, including pewter plates, green and yellow Chinese glazed earthenware, Martaban stoneware, lead shot and cannonballs.

On basis of these artifacts and together with written reports it resulted in the Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, a Portuguese East Indianman who was on her way home after 9 months on sea. According to the reports the following happened : On 14 September 1606 a heavy storm forced Captain Manuel Barreto Rolim to drop anchor off Cascais, a small village a few kilometres from Lisbon. Here, the Nau Salvação, another returning Indiaman, was already fighting the storm.

When she sank, she spilled tonnes of peppercorns and the odd coconut across the sea floor

Dangerously dragging her anchors in the direction of the beach, the Salvação was too heavy to be towed against the wind by the galley that was sent to help. The next day, after seeing the Nau Salvação run aground on the Cascais beach, Rolim decided to head for the mouth of the Tagus River hoping to escape the tempest in the calmer waters of the estuary. However, getting past the sandbars was not easy. Two large sandbanks narrowed the entrances, making the waters run dangerously fast in both the northern and the southern channel.  Rolim headed for the northern canal, which by the early seventeenth century was already considered too narrow and shallow to lay anchor in, and too crooked for any galley to tow a large vessel out of.  In the middle of the passage, the Nau Mártires lost her headway and was dragged to a submerged rock. She sunk in front of the São Julião da Barra fortress in a matter of hours; soon afterwards she was broken up into such small pieces that witnesses commented it looked as if she had sunk long ago. Her main cargo of pepper that had been stored loose in small holds, spilled out upon wrecking, forming a black tide that extended for leagues along the coast and in the Tagus estuary.  A large amount of pepper was saved and put to dry by the king's officers.  The population also salvaged a notable quantity, as it was impossible for the soldiers to stop the locals who, despite the dreadful weather conditions, every night went to the sea in small craft to salvage what they could.

A possible distribution of the carg, by Audrey Wells 

During the subsequent summers, the officers of king Felipe III of Spain - who was also king Felipe II of Portugal - may have salvaged a great part of the cargo from the shallow waters, and they certainly rescued cables, anchors and guns.

A possible recontruction by Audrey Wells

4. Socks or Mittenssocks. always.

16. Reading or Writing?shit. um. I guess it depends on my mood. if I want to escape into a made up world, then read, if I want to create a world of my own, then write.

I was tagged by the lovely soypox ｡◕‿◕｡

i'm basically half vietnamese, half chinese

buuuuut i can't speak either - i speak khmer

i suck at sports

i went into my science exam unprepared and walked away w an A+

sometimes i put off replying to people for 99 years, not bc i dont like you but bc i'm a lazy fuck

sometimes i look 5, other times i look 18

i designed my own theme!!!!!!!! #proudasfuck

i love to read but i'm also super lazy

i manage to spend a shit ton of money w/o doing much

i am going to play sharpay in my school's production of hsm

i love love love to write

i'm too lazy to finish this sorry

i'm tagging: shipreck, mxllxn, dec020