A large part of the possible wreck of La Fortuna, on a beach of North Carolina.
Four wrecks of the colonial era were discovered on the coast of North Carolina. One of them is the famous “La Fortuna”, a Spanish ship that exploded during an attack in 1748.
Archaeologists of East Carolina University (ECU) They discovered four 18th century wrecks off the coast of North Carolina in eastern US.
The wrecks were found near Brunswick Town, an important colonial port on the southern coast of North Carolina. The city was the first successful European settlement in the Cape Fear region (Cape of Fearname attributed due to fears of the sixteenth century sailors).
As explained Cory van Heesgraduate student, in, archaeologists were not waiting to find those artifacts.
Van Hees was lost during the dive and came across wooden beams to stand out from the mud: “I didn’t realize what it was about at that momentBut I knew it should communicate the wooden structure to the faculty, ”he said.
The leaders of the ECU project, Jason Raup and Jeremy Borrellithey say that one of the wrecks, which consists of 47 pieces of wood, is Fortune.
Historical records indicate that two Spanish ships were lost off Brunswick Town after an attack that the September 4, 1748. One of them would be La Fortuna, who exploded and sank.
The project team found two main tracks that the wreck is indeed La Fortuna: wooden and the artifacts found nearby, including Spanish ceramics.
Some of the wood used in the construction of the ship came from a kind of native cypress from Central America. This suggests that naval builders used raw materials of a Spanish colony of the cariban to build the ship.
“Two fragments of 18th-century Hispanic-American ceramic are another track that supports the preliminary identification of La Fortuna,” Borrelli told statements to.
In addition, La Fortuna is the only Spanish ship known to have sunk in this area.
The other three wrecks remain a mystery. All have construction and artifact details that suggest that they were used in the eighteenth century, explained Borrelli. This means that they are probably associated with the 50th anniversary of the colonial port of Brunswick Town.
“It is highly unlikely that any of the other wrecks found in Brunswick Town is a Spanish ship, but we can’t rule out anything right now,” said the Marine archaeologist.
