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" Another eighteenth-century British ship, "
seemed to be a common exclamation among the 1992 field crew as the
Columbus Caravels Archaeological Project (CCAP) continued the methodical
search for Columbus's last two ships in St. Ann's Bay on the north coast
of Jamaica. So far, six
eighteenth-century British ships have been found in the bay, all within
a small area just west of Reader's Point, which pushes out from the
center of the bay's shoreline. Finding
only British vessels has been frustrating though not surprising since
the British were present in the area much longer than the Spanish. Columbus first visited Santa Gloria, as he named
present-day St. Ann's Bay, on his second voyage of exploration in 1494.
He was forced to return during his fourth voyage when his ships
became too unseaworthy to continue sailing and was marooned for over a
year before being rescued in 1504.
Later, in 1510, the Spanish established their first settlement in
Jamaica near where Columbus had beached his two remaining ships on his
last, fateful voyage. By
1523, the Spaniards were disillusioned with the area and moved to St.
Jago de la Vega, now called Spanish Town, on the south coast of Jamaica. The British, soon after capturing Jamaica from the
Spanish in 1656, established several sugar plantations near St. Ann's
Bay. The bay was
commercially important to the British for the rest of the seventeenth
century and throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Sugar cane was the area's most important crop during this time. In Jamaica, the cane was processed into raw sugar, molasses,
and rum and then exported to England.
This period of British activity, spanning about 240 years, far
outlasted the 14 years of Spanish occupation at St. Ann's Bay.
Consequently, we expect to continue finding British artifacts and
hulls; but we have not lost hope for our original goal. There is no doubt that Columbus's ships are lying somewhere
beneath the sediments of the placid bay.
During the 1992 field season, 21 sites (including
Sites 14, 16 and 23, previously tested in 1991) were investigated over a
three-month period that began on May 20 and ended on August 20, 1992.
The sites investigated were numbered 2 through 10, 12 through 18, 23,
and 27 through 30. With the exception of Sites 27 through 30, a chirp
subbottom profiler had targeted all sites in 1990 and 1991 (for a
description of these surveys, see INA Newsletters 17.4 and 18.4).
Sites 27 through 29 were detected during a magnetometer survey in
1992. Site 30, which
appeared to be two stone ballast piles, was discovered before Hurricane
Gilbert in 1988. Sites 2, 4, 6, 14, 17, and 18 were tested by probing
and coring. Sites 3, 5, and 30 were examined with small test trenches,
while Sites 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 23 were subjected to
larger-scale excavations. Sites
27, 28, and 29 were tested by limited coring.
Of the sites tested in 1992, three turned out to be
the remains of British ships, eight contained cultural debris, and seven
were natural phenomena. Three
others have not been examined fully. The sites were dated by analyzing associated
artifacts. The artifact
assemblage for each site was classified by material type and date.
Only a small portion of each site was test excavated, so the
quantity of artifacts recovered was small.
The diagnostic artifacts, i.e., ceramics, glass, and pipes,
allowed us to establish the probable country of origin, as well as the
date, for each ship site tested. Our study of Sites 7 and 8 typifies the procedures and methodology used to test sites that probing and coring indicated might be ships. The two sites are located near each other in 10 to 22 feet of water on the southwestern edge of a bathymetric depression just west of the old British wharf complex. This was constructed around 1670 and reportedly used until the late 1960s.
The subbottom profiler originally detected sites 7 and
8 in 1991. Site 8 is
located under the steeply sloping edge of the depression, which drops
from 5 to 20 feet below the surface.
Site 7 rests at the bottom of the slope in approximately 22 feet
of water. In 1992, probing of the sites indicated a hard layer
that suggested the presence of wood at 8 to 10 feet below the sea floor.
Coring was difficult due to a hard layer that could not be
penetrated or, when penetrated, held the core tubes so that they could
not be removed. The sites
were further tested by excavating a north-to-south, 5 by 15 foot trench
to determine the nature of the hard layer.
Excavation revealed that the first 3 to 5 feet of
sediment was soft silt with concentrations of flakes from Halimeda,
a marine alga. A layer of
black stream-worn cobbles was found near the 5-foot level.
A modern plank and several coconut palm tree segments were
located in the upper soft sediment.
Numerous eighteenth-century materials were found among the
cobbles. Silty clay, sand,
and small cobbles continued down to a depth of 8 feet.
Charred barrel staves and badly decomposed boards were
encountered in the southern half of the trench at approximately 7 feet
below the sea floor. The
amount of cultural material found decreased significantly at 8 feet,
where a dense concentration of cobbles, large shells, and shell
fragments was encountered. This
material was resting on an extremely hard deposit of clay, shell, and
coral fragments. Below this level, at 10 feet, the strata became increasingly
dense until the clay gave way to a hard calcium carbonate layer.
This material stopped further probing attempts and
most likely accounted for the trapped cores and "wood" layer
sensed by earlier probing. The
two sites most likely represent an accumulation of debris from river
runoff and storm activity. They
are located at the end of a slump in the sea floor that forms a natural
trap for drifting debris. The
diagnostic remains from the area include two pocket knives with etched
and encrusted bone handles. The knives resemble a knife and fork
illustrated on page 182 of A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (1969)
by Noel Hume; these are dated ca. 1750.
A late eighteenth-century case bottle neck fragment and a pipe
with a "TB" maker's mark on the bowl were also found in the
area. The diagnostic artifacts recovered from Sites 7 and 8 suggest a
mid to late eighteenth-century date for the material deposits.
Other sites were tested during the 1992 season through
probing, coring, and, in some instances, limited excavation. For the complete report on the 1992 season order INA Quarterly 20.1 (1993)
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| Citation Information
James Parrent and Maureen Brown Parrent
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| Edited by Ralph K. Pedersen |
Design and map colorization by Ralph K. Pedersen |
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