Galveston audience sees first composite photos of two historic shipwrecks

The discovery of three historic shipwrecks, most likely from the same event, is so unusual in the northern Gulf of Mexico that just about any information gained from their analysis will chart new ground, said a researcher on the project.

Amy Borgens, the state marine archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission in Austin, spoke Thursday at Galveston's Moody Gardens about the shipwrecks she visited with a team of scientists in July.

They were on the exploration vessel Nautilus, from which a remotely operated vehicle retrieved about 60 artifacts from a 200-year-old shipwreck.

The Nautilus docked in Galveston July 25, while the wreck, its identity and origin still unknown, remains in about 4,300 feet of water some 150 to 170 miles off Galveston.

The artifacts are soaking in water at a Texas A&M lab in College Station to desalinate them, so the processing work known as "conservation" hasn't started yet, Borgens said.

"Now is a jumping off point," she said. "We were hoping more would be going on with the artifact assemblage but we're not at that phase yet."

Frederick Hanselmann, chief underwater archaeologist at The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University in San Marcos, also spoke Thursday at Moody Gardens.

During their weeklong trip on the Nautilus, the researchers also visited two other shipwrecks within about five miles of the primary one and conducted the first remote video surveys of those sites.

Composite photos known as "photomosaics" of the two other shipwrecks were shown for the first time to the Moody Gardens audience, Borgens said.

The photomosaics give "incredibly detailed views of the shipwreck," she said.

The researchers believe the three ships were somehow involved in privateering but don't have proof yet, she said.

A privateer was a ship with a crew that had been issued a commission by a government, giving it permission to attack and capture certain vessels, such as merchant vessels from enemy nations, Hanselmann said in July.

Because the ships are all in such deep water, it makes it harder to figure out what happened to them, Borgens said.

"So many things are stacked on top of each other," she said. "Were some of those cannons cargo? Those are big questions."

Using the remote vehicle, the crew took a small sample of the main ship's wood hull. It will be sent to a lab to try to determine the ship's nation of origin.