Turks and Caicos expedition finds wooden shipwreck
Thursday, September 23, 2004
TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS: The Turks and
Caicos National Museum in collaboration with Ships of Discovery have confirmed
the existence of a wooden shipwreck near Breezy Point on East Caicos.
The announcement has been made following a
two week expedition surveying inside and outside the reefs on the Northern
shore of East Caicos in search for Trouvadore, a missing slave ship that has
been described as ‘the Plymouth rock of the Turks and Caicos Islands’.
The wooden remains have been described as “a
promising discovery” by Dr Donald H Keith, lead marine archaeologist for Ships
of Discovery. The wooden shipwreck was found
by chance when towboarders decided to pass between two coral heads and saw
pieces of a wooden skeleton of a ship, the keel and some of the exterior hull
planking lying on the sand between Black Rock and Breezy Point. In addition
divers found some stone ballast and part of what appears to be an ornate brass
letter or number in the vicinity of the site.
Dr Toni L Carrell, a wooden ship specialist
explains “the ballast, the timbers and the dimensions point to the wreck being
from a wooden ship contemporaneous with Trouvadore.”
Land archaeologist and Director of the Turks
and Caicos National Museum Nigel Sadler is delighted with the find. “Even if
the wreck turns out not to be Trouvadore, it does prove that other wooden
hulled vessels of this period could still be preserved in TCI waters. The iron
shipwreck is an unexpected find, worthy of further investigation and exciting
because every shipwreck tells a story.”
Records found in the Americas, Bahamas, UK,
Cuba and Jamaica confirmed the existence of Trouvadore – a ship that wrecked
off East Caicos in 1841. Its cargo of 193 Africans, captured to be sold into
slavery, miraculously survived the wrecking.
As slavery had been abolished in the British
overseas territory at the time of the wrecking, all the Africans were found
and freed in the Islands. The crew was sent off to be prosecuted for illegal
slave trading and shooting one of the women survivors on the beach as she
tried to escape.
On the last day of the survey, Nigel Sadler
and James Hunter located a stone cairn, a manmade stone structure used to mark
boundaries or burial areas near Black Rock directly south of the wooden
shipwreck. More work will need to be done on the cairn to ascertain whether it
is related to the shipwreck or the Trouvadore story.
Over 30 possible finds worthy of further verification, many objects related to
the iron shipwreck, and two anchors were found by marine archaeologists
supported by the crew of the M/V Turks and Caicos Explorer.
The finds were identified through an arduous
schedule of towboarding, snorkeling and scuba diving outside and on the reef
as well as in the shallows close to the sandy and iron shore of the large
uninhabited island.
After assessing the data found during the
Trouvadore expedition, the Turks and Caicos National Museum hopes to apply for
a further licence to continue the work to uncover the underwater cultural
heritage of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The
arrival of Trouvadore survivors in 1841 increased the small population of the
TCI by 7%. The Museum believes that such a sharp increase now means that all
Turks and Caicos Islanders are linked by blood or marriage to this one
incident. Emmy Award-winning documentary-makers Windward Media have been
captivated by the story and the search and are making a documentary for PBS.
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