What might be one of the world’s greatest archaeological treasures nearly slipped through Barry Clifford’s grasp.
Back in 2003, Clifford, an underwater archaeological explorer, and his crew discovered a tantalizing shipwreck off the coast of Haiti. The wreck sat in exactly the spot where Clifford reckoned Christopher Columbus’ flagship, the Santa Maria, had sunk on Christmas Day in 1492, less than three months after Columbus reached the New World for the first time.
Archaeologists “eliminated the site as not being what we were looking for,” Clifford told USA TODAY. He went on to make an exhaustive survey of the waters off Haiti, “spending a small fortune … (and) eliminating every other possibility, to the point where I threw my hands up in the air, and I don’t do that very often.”
A few weeks after returning to the wreck, Clifford, who discovered the pirate ship Whydah, said he thinks there’s strong evidence his team has indeed snagged one of the most sought after archaeological sites in the history of human exploration. He says the once-scorned shipwreck is the Santa Maria, the slow, tubby but solidly built rental vessel that carried Columbus and his men on the voyage that revealed the existence of the New World to the Old.
“This shipwreck altered the course of human history,” Clifford said. “We’re very excited.”
The team’s return to what could be the bones of the Santa Maria sprang out of a late-night revelation about nine years after the team located the wreck. Clifford, who’d been studying 15th-century ordnance, bolted awake to the realization that a tube his son had photographed in the wreck in 2003 was a lombard, an open-ended cannon popular during Columbus’ Day.
He and his team returned to the site a few weeks ago, only to find it looted of the lombard, several wheels that would’ve been used to maneuver the cannon and a piece of the rudder mechanism.
One outside expert says Clifford may be onto something.
“There is some very compelling evidence from the 2003 photographs of the site and from the recent reconnaissance dives that this wreck may well be the Santa Maria,” Indiana University’s Charles Beeker told The Independent, a British newspaper.
© 2014 USA TODAY. All rights reserved.
