Archaeological Legacy Institute News Release

 

For Immediate Release

 

 

FATE OF POSSIBLE COLUMBUS SHIP EMERGING FROM STORMY WATERS

 

23 November 2003

 

For Further Information, Contact: Richard Pettigrew (541) 345-5538, arlegin@aol.com

 

 

EUGENE, OR. Agreement may soon be reached among contending parties regarding the disposition of a Panamanian shipwreck that some identify as La Vizcaina, abandoned by Christopher Columbus on his fourth and final voyage in 1503.  According to Carlos Fitzgerald, National Director of Cultural Heritage of the Panamanian National Institute of Culture (INAC), a cooperative agreement for further research is expected between the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) from Texas A&M University and Marine Investigations of the Isthmus (IMDI), a for-profit group that recovered the first artifacts from the wreck in 2001.  This agreement will clear the way toward initiation of a research program to investigate one of the earliest shipwrecks yet found in the Western Hemisphere from the period of European exploration.

 

The shipwreck, discovered at Playa Damas near Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean coast of Panama in 1998 by amateur historian and diver Warren White, an American expatriate living in Panama, has involved the interests of several groups with overlapping interests.  One of the first was IMDI, a salvage company formed by White with Nilda Vasquez of Panama and a group of investors and technical specialists, which removed the first artifacts from the site in 2001.  Subsequently, White became estranged from IMDI and has publicly charged that the shipwreck is threatened by IMDI plans to remove more artifacts from the ship.  White states that his biggest concerns for the site are “bureaucratic and governmental mis-management.”  In interviews with Archaeological Legacy Institute Executive Director Richard Pettigrew, Vasquez insisted that IMDI has a legal Panamanian government permit to conduct archaeological exploration of the wreck, but Fitzgerald responded that IMDI’s permit covers production of a video documentary but not archaeological excavation.

 

Vasquez admits that IMDI lacks the archaeological expertise by itself to conduct a proper excavation.  INA, a leading nautical archaeology research institution with the necessary archaeological credentials and a pledge of funding support from German media corporation Der Spiegel, has been in discussions with INAC regarding full-scale archaeological exploration of the site.  Although Fitzgerald reports that IMDI has no legal right to explore the wreck or remove additional artifacts, Dr. Filipe Castro, INA project manager for the Playa Damas site, has submitted a formal proposal for collaboration to Ernesto Cordovez, head of IMDI and Nilda Vasquez’s son.  The proposed plan calls for a cooperative research program by which INA and IMDI both would have a role in the project.  According to Vasquez, the last sticking point before agreement can be reached is IMDI’s insistence that artifacts not be allowed to leave Panama.  However, Fitzgerald believes that resolution of this matter soon will be reached.  This agreement would avert a confrontation between INAC and IMDI, which has threatened court action if not allowed to pursue research activities on the wreck.  Such a confrontation could cause a scandal with potential impact on the Panamanian national election to be held in 2004.

 

Circumstantial evidence, including radiocarbon dating and wood analysis conducted by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the German media corporation Der Spiegel, suggests that the ship could be La Vizcaina of Columbus’s fourth fleet.  All parties agree that, regardless of whether the ship is La Vizcaina or some other ship from the early or mid-1500’s, it is a priceless artifact that promises to reveal new insights about the Age of Exploration.  Dr. Donald Keith of Ships of Discovery, a nautical archaeology nonprofit group associated with the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and Industry, who has inspected the cannons, ceramics and wood objects recovered from the wreck, is not convinced that the ship is La Vizcaina, but agrees it has extreme research importance.

 

The Playa Damas shipwreck already had been declared a National Heritage site by the Panamanian government before Panama signed a UNESCO convention protecting historic shipwrecks.  Panama passed legislation in August 2003, based on the UNESCO convention, declaring shipwrecks National Heritage sites.  Fitzgerald believes that the site is well protected, in part because the people of Nombre de Dios, near the bay where the wreck was found, support the perservation of the site as well establishment of a local museum where its artifacts could be displayed.  Local police officers patrol the area around the site, which by all accounts has not been vandalized..

 

Recovery of artifacts from the wreck by IMDI in 2001 was documented by a video now shown on The Archaeology Channel website at http://www.archaeologychannel.org.  However, Fitzgerald says that Panama never gave IMDI a written permit to excavate or salvage the site, but instead granted verbal permission to salvage individual artifacts that were thought to be threatened by theft.  An apparent misunderstanding regarding the granted pemission threatened a confrontation between IMDI and INAC, the Panamanian government agency responsible for heritage sites in Panama

 

INA archaeologist Dr. Castro, in an interview with Dr. Pettigrew, explained that INA is interested in this shipwreck because it looks like an early 16th century Spanish shipwreck and “we nautical archaeologists know very little about early 16th century Spanish shipbuilding and find it immensely interesting as a scientific subject.”  Castro went on to explain that “ships are very important artifacts of the Age of Discovery.  Most of them have been ripped apart by treasure hunters in search of valuable artifacts to be sold at auction.  This is a great opportunity to analyze the state of this complex technology that is so poorly understood, the technology used to build Columbus ships, as well as Vasco da Dama, Magellan, etc.”  Castro said that he would like to make a “full, scientific, pristine, state of the art excavation of this shipwreck, treat all the artifacts, not just the ones with market value, train my students together with a team of South American students, and publish it in a manner that allows the world, including the scholarly world and the general public, to enjoy our discoveries.”  INA previously has excavated numerous historic shipwrecks in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and elsewhere in the world.

 

Fitzgerald considers this important site a test case for the new cultural preservation laws in Panama.  In his view, the proposed collaborative agreement for research on the Playa Damas wreck will help establish a new approach toward underwater heritage sites in Panama that will benefit the people of Panama and the world rather than a few individuals seeking to profit from discoveries.