UWF: Pensacola Bay Bridge construction threatens 1559 Luna shipwreck excavation

Melissa Nelson Gabriel | Pensacola News Journal

Construction of the new Pensacola Bay Bridge is threatening the search for additional ships that were part of the Don Tristan de Luna 1559 fleet, a University of West Florida archaeologist said Thursday.

John Bratten, a nautical archaeologist with the UWF Archaeology Institute and chairman of the university's anthropology department, said he fears construction barges could destroy three ships that have yet to be located.

"They could drive a pole or drag a barge right on top of one of the ships," he said.

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Bratten said an initial survey was conducted to ensure that were no important archaeological sites in the path of the new bridge, but the survey didn't take into account all of the traffic from barges and other heavy construction equipment in the surrounding areas.

Donna Green, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Transportation's regional office, said in an email on Friday that the bridge work would not impact the Luna site.

"After speaking with our cultural resources coordinator, I found that the de Lulna shipwrecks are located outside of the project's area of potential effect and will not be impacted by the bridge replacement," she wrote.

The university is applying for a nearly $300,000 grant from the state's Division of Historical Resources to do additional surveys of the area surrounding the bridge. In the meantime, Bratten said he and other archaeologists will continue to keep an eye on the work.

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A team of underwater archaeologists from the university is diving near the bridge as part of the ongoing excavation of one of the three identified Luna shipwrecks.

Luna, a Spaniard, left Mexico with 1,500 soldiers, colonists, slaves and Aztec Indians in 11 ships. Their brief attempt to form a colony in Pensacola is considered the earliest attempted European colonization in what is now the U.S.

The colony ended after a hurricane struck, sunk six of the ships and destroyed the colonists' supplies.

In 2015, the university announced the discovery of the settlement's land site near a bluff overlooking Pensacola Bay in an east Pensacola neighborhood. Excavation work of that site is underway.

Bratten said the historic and archaeological importance of both the land and underwater sites are enormous.

"We don't know of any other site like this where you have a fleet of ships from the 16th century that includes different types of ships," he said.

"Now that we have the land site, we can compare it with the ships to tell a much more complete story of what 16th century colonization was like."