{"id":7826,"date":"2019-09-13T15:55:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T19:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transy.edu\/1780\/?p=7826"},"modified":"2020-07-14T14:32:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T18:32:42","slug":"transylvania-anthropology-professor-helps-solve-underwater-shipwreck-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transy.edu\/1780\/2019\/09\/transylvania-anthropology-professor-helps-solve-underwater-shipwreck-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Transylvania anthropology professor helps solve underwater shipwreck mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Anthropology professor Chris Begley (front right) helped identify a 19th-century shipwreck off the coast of El Salvador.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Previously known only to a few fishermen, a shipwreck lies under\n35 feet of murky water just off the Pacific coast of El Salvador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The circumstances behind the wreckage \u2014 what kind of ship it was, when it sank and what it was carrying \u2014 made for an underwater mystery until Transylvania University professor Chris Begley \u201988 and his colleague Roberto Gallardo braved the intense, washing-machine-like currents and surges to investigate the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After some initial dives, Gallardo invited the Transylvania\nanthropology professor to look at the site a few years ago. (Begley and\nGallardo, who is with El Salvador’s Guzm\u00e1n National Anthropology Museum, had previously\nworked together back when Begley was grad student at the University of Chicago.)\nThe two dove down to the wreckage and discovered pottery from the 1850s and a\npiece of textile from a blue, woolen garment \u2014 perhaps a maid’s uniform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMuch of the site was buried in sand, and visibility was\njust awful \u2014 which it often is in the Pacific,\u201d Begley said. \u201cIt was very hard\nto get a sense of what you were looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The cargo included many pottery vessels and plates.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Conditions at the site improved somewhat when they revisited\nthe wreck this past winter while Begley was on sabbatical. A hurricane had\nblown through in the interim and shifted sand that had been covering a lot of\nthe cargo. This time Begley and Gallardo \u2014 along with the British ambassador to\nEl Salvador and his wife \u2014 found and mapped large, iron water pipes and lead\ningots, which would have been used to seal the pipes. “This was all very\nexciting,” Begley said. It was, in fact, one of the first investigations\nof a shipwreck in El Salvador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A big reason for his excitement is that the 1850s cargo told\nhim something about El Salvador after it had recently gained its independence\nfrom Spain. It provided hints to questions like: \u201cHow were they identifying\nthemselves, what were they using to create their identity, how where they presenting\nthemselves, what were they buying, consuming,\u201d Begley said. For instance, the English\nStaffordshire ware ceramics they found would have been fancy for the time, but\nthe article of clothing, not so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the transition from colonialism to\nindependence in Central America, this was the dawn of the Industrial Age in the\nAmericas. And the cargo of the ship was largely industrial \u2014 pipes, cables and\nchains, maybe for a water system or other construction projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lead ingots were stamped by a smelting works in Runcorn, England, near Liverpool, where Begley believes the ship left from. He thinks the vessel \u2014 measuring about 150 feet long and 30-40 feet wide \u2014 sailed around the tip of South America and was headed north. It wouldn\u2019t have been carrying an industrial cargo from the north, because there wasn\u2019t yet heavy industry on the West Coast. There was, however, a gold rush going on in California. That\u2019s why when National Geographic TV called Begley to talk about his other work in Honduras and the topic of this shipwreck came up, so did the question: “Is this carrying gold?” Nope. Headed the wrong way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Researchers designed a computer model of the site \u2014 note the iron pipes.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The next part of the investigation was to pore over historical documents. The big break came when Gallardo found a newspaper article from mid 1851 \u2014 A wooden, brigantine ship named the Thetis had been sailing from Liverpool when it sank in the vicinity of what is now the wreckage site after dropping off part of its cargo in Nicaragua. It was headed to ports in El Salvador and Guatemala when it likely encountered a strong current in an area with numerous sand bars less than a mile from shore. Begley thinks it struck a sand bar, broke open and filled with water while the crew \u2014 all of whom survived \u2014 tried to save as much cargo as possible. (The newspaper said they managed to haul off some sacks, but didn\u2019t go into detail.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Begley and Gallardo shared their work on the site in El Salvador and in the U.S. at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology. They also Skyped about it with a Lexington, Kentucky, elementary school classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They plan to one day return to the shipwreck. But their next work in El Salvador may be a much more ambitious adventure: locating two of conquistador Pedro de Alvarado\u2019s ships from 1534.<\/p>\n\n\n\n