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The National Museum confirms: Shipwrecks in Costa Rica are Danish slave ships
Investigations of ship timbers, bricks from the cargo and clay pipes found during underwater excavations in Costa Rica confirm that the site holds two Danish slave ships that, according to historical sources, were shipwrecked off the coast of Central America in 1710.
For the first time, it has now been documented that two shipwrecks in Costa Rica are two named, Danish slave ships from the 18th century.
This is revealed by scientific analyses from an underwater excavation in 2023, when marine archaeologists from the National Museum of Denmark and the Viking Ship Museum took samples of wood from one of the wrecks and from the bricks that were part of the cargo more than 300 years ago. Moreover, several clay pipes were found.
“The analyses are very convincing and we no longer have any doubts that these are the wrecks of the two Danish slave ships. The bricks are Danish and the same goes for the timbers, which are additionally charred and sooty from a fire. This fits perfectly with the historical accounts stating that one of the ships burnt,” says David Gregory, marine archaeologist and research professor at the National Museum of Denmark where he is head of the new maritime research centre Njord....
The bricks are of the same measurements as the so-called Flensburg bricks that were used in Denmark and in the Danish colonies. Analyses of the clay, carried out by Professor Emeritus Kaare Lund Rasmussen at the University of Southern Demark, show that the clay comes from Denmark – quite specifically from either Iller Strand or Egernsund. Both locations are situated by Flensburg Fjord which was, in the 18th century, home to a sizeable brick-producing industry.
The clay pipes have been identified as ordinary, Dutch-produced pipes that were also used onboard Danish ships. The size, shape and patterns of the pipes suggest that they were produced in the period right before the ships became wrecked in 1710. Clay pipes were rarely used for more than five years...
Oldest known domestic cats in the US died off Florida coast in a 1559 Spanish shipwreck
The 466-year-old remains of an adult and a juvenile cat are the oldest known in the modern-day United States, a new study finds.
The earliest known domestic cat in what is now the United States perished 466 years ago in a shipwreck off the coast of Florida, a new study finds.
The ship was part of a Spanish colonizing expedition led by the conquistador Tristán de Luna y Arellano, who was voyaging from Mexico under the Spanish crown. In September 1559, a hurricane in Pensacola Bay, wrecked several of the 11 ships, which had been anchored near the new Spanish settlement of Santa María de Ochuse. Researchers found one of these wrecks, known as Emmanuel Point II in 2006. This shipwreck holds the remains of an adult and a juvenile domestic cat (Felis catus), according to the new study, which was published April 14 in the journal American Antiquity.
Archaeologists had previously found domestic cat remains in other early Spanish settlements, including the Indigenous Taíno town of En Bas Saline in what is now Haiti, where Chistopher Columbus landed in 1492. But Columbus never made it to continental North America. Instead, "the Spanish expeditions in Florida were really the first opportunities for domestic cats to reach what is today the U.S.,"...
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| Source: SurfGuru.com. |