200 Year Old wreck Found in Gulf



Sea explorers have discovered a shipwreck that could have sunk up to 200 years ago in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Experts with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the 19th-century wooden-hulled vessel was first flagged as a potential shipwreck site after an oil-and-gas survey for Shell Oil last year.Jack Irion, a maritime archeologist with the Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), said the ship's age was estimated with the discovery of a ceramic plate, popular between 1800 and 1830; glass bottles, some with the contents still sealed inside; cannons; and a stove.
"A rare ship's stove on the site is one of only a handful of surviving examples in the world and the second one found on a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico," Irion said.
Scientists travelled to the site, about 320 km off the coast of Louisiana, aboard the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer. A team of experts from the NOAA and BOEM used underwater robots with lights and high-definition cameras to explore the copper-lined ship — submerged under more than 1,200 m of water.
The discovery is one of four ships found on a recent 56-day expedition in the region in March and April, but experts said this ship is the most "interesting and historic."
"Shipwrecks help to fill in some of the unwritten pages of history," said Frank Cantelas, a maritime archeologist with NOAA's office of ocean exploration and research.
“This discovery was part of a larger mission to look at unknown or poorly-known areas in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Cantelas.
According to NOAA, “the 56-day expedition that ended April 29 was exploring poorly known regions of the Gulf, mapping and imaging unknown or little-known features and habitats, developing and testing a method to measure the rate that gas rises from naturally-occurring seeps on the seafloor, and investigating potential shipwreck sites.”
Using sonar technology, researchers had a first look last fall at the shipwreck.
According to Cantelas, Shell Oil Company was conducting an oil and gas survey required by the government to be sure none of its projects are disturbing anything sensitive in the ocean.
“The site is in over 4,000 feet of water and we knew nothing about it — we just had a fuzzy image from a sonar recording, which is like a camera but uses sound instead of light,” Cantelas said. “But we wanted to see what it was because it was shaped like it could be a shipwreck.”
So NOAA partnered with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which issues permits for bottom-disturbing activities related to oil and gas exploration, to find the 200-year-old shipwreck.

The ship used telepresence technology to transmit what was happening on the ship live.
“Telepresence provides the ability to bring a lot of different specialists, who have various expertise, to the table during the dive,” said Fred Gorell, public affairs officer for NOAA’s office of Exploration and Research. “They could actually look at the wreck sites while it was happening. And this way research is not limited by the number of people who are actually on the ship.”
“Artifacts in and around the wreck and the hull’s copper sheathing may date the vessel to the early to mid-19th century,” said Jack Irion in a NOAA statement.
“Archaeologically, this is a very significant find,” Cantelas said. “It appears to date back to the early 1800s and a lot was going on in the Gulf of Mexico around that time. You have the Louisiana Purchase, the Texas Revolution, the Mexican-American War — a lot of conflict in that region…So this research will hopefully help us fill in the blank pages of history. It will provide information hat we don’t really have about the history of the Gulf region.”