© 2007 Atocha Treasure Company LLC All Rights Reserved
© 2007 Atocha Treasure Company LLC All Rights Reserved
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Explorers
find long-lost ships By JULES CRITTENDEN The remains of what
may he a long lost fleet of warships and pirates sent by the French to
attack Curacao were discovered last week by explorers Max Kennedy and
Barry Clifford near a Caribbean reef where the ships went down 820 years
ago. “I’ve seen a lot
of shipwrecks and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Clifford,
who found the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah off Cape Cod in 1984. “It
is just an incredible archaeological site. It just blew me away.” The two Cape Cod
men, accompanied by a local conch fisherman, crawled over a razor-sharp
coral reef through rushing surf Monday to get to the wreck site when bad
weather prevented them from going by boat. it was the last day
of their five day trip to the remote isle of Las Ayes, to find and map the
wrecked fleet Venezuelans have talked about for three centuries. As they slid into
the crystaline blue water beyond the reef, Kennedy, the son of the late
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, spotted a massive anchor 20 feet long lying on the
sea floor. “It was just huge.
I couldn’t believe how big it was,” Kennedy said. |
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“The pile of
cannon looked like someone had picked them up and dropped them. Another
cannon was balanced on a coral head, like it was just poised, ready to
fire,” Kennedy said. “I floated up, and all of a sudden I realized
that the entire area around me was a wreck site.
Everywhere I looked there
were unnatural structures covered with coral. “My first thought was the realization of that terrible
night for those crews, and what they must have gone through,” Kennedy
said. “At the end of it all, you’re strung out on a reef, 100 miles
off Venezuela and your ship is going down.
This is hallowed ground, where hundreds of men met their death.”
Kennedy said the site has
long been known to local fishermen, who didn’t know what the old wrecks
were. “Angel (the
group’s fisherman guide)
knew where the wrecks were.
His father know where they were. His grandfather knew,” Kennedy said.
Claiming discovery “is a little like Columbus saying he discovered
America,” Kennedy and
Venezuelan friends are in negotiations with the Venezuelan government
for permission to excavate the site. Ultimately, they want to build a
museum in Caracas to house the artifacts. |
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Estrys’ flagship,
Le Terrible, struck the reef first and began firing its cannon to alert
the other ships. But they apparently thought the flagship had engaged the
Dutch and rushed into the action. As many as 18 ships are believed to be
wrecked there. About 1,200 men made
it to bug-infested Las Ayes Island. Over the next three months, about half
riled from hunger and disease. The rest were take prisoner by the Dutch
and exchanged for Dutch prisoners. Clifford said he
expects to be able to locate the other ships hi the fleet fairly easily
since they sank within a halt-mile of one another. He plans to return to
Venezuela in August with large research vessels. English pirate
expert David Cordingly expressed excitement at news of the find, adding:
“All these wrecks that involve ships of that period tend to be
accompanied by a considerable amount of treasure.” |
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From The Archives Of
The Search For The Atocha |
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