Since the 15th century, countless ships have been sunk around The Bahamas, but nobody knows exactly what lies beneath the waves. The Bahamas Lost Ships Project intends to find out…
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In early 2023, Allen Exploration (AllenX) – founded in 2017 by scuba diving philanthropist and underwater explorer Carl A Allen – launched The Bahamas Lost Ships Project, in collaboration with maritime historian and author of In Search of Shipwrecks, James Jenney.
The concept arose while Allen and his team were investigating and documenting the famous wreck of the 17th-century Spanish galleon Maravillas, which sank in 1656 laden with silver.
‘Tripping over wreck after wreck’ during their dives, however, Allen created The Bahamas Lost Ships Project to explore the fate of the lesser-known vessels that were wrecked along the Old Bahama Channel – once the sea lane of choice for Spanish galleons travelling to and from the Americas.
‘For decades, The Bahamas’ lost ships have been silent phantoms,’ said Allen. ‘So many ships of war and trade sailed through and sank in these waters. Finally, we’re figuring out their names, stories and the excitement of what’s still down there.’
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Merchant vessels and materials onboard
The Bahamas Lost Ships Project identified 176 maritime casualties in historical sources between 1526 and 1976, all of which lie off the western Little Bahama Bank, the southern shore of Grand Bahama Island, and Gorda Cay, on the southwest shore of Abaco Island.
Most of the ships were lost during the 19th century, but some of the wrecks have been dated to as early as the 16th and 17th centuries.
Both military and commercial ships were found among the records, including two warships, two frigates, two privateers, two slavers and a whaler. The majority of the wrecked ships are merchant vessels, however, with a total of 251 different types of cargo identified between them, dominated by lumber, sugar and molasses.
Valuables such as money, silver and gold were listed on the manifests of eight vessels, and although most were salvaged at the time of the ship’s loss, some were carrying materials that could still be preserved underwater, such as bottled brandy, cochineal for dye-making, coconuts, Madeira wine, military provisions, whisky and rum.
America, Britain and Spain saw the greatest losses, with 25 other destinations listed on the records, including Antigua, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and West Africa
‘Only by peering into the historical records can we hope to bring the vanished trade back to life,’ said Jenney, the project’s Director of Research, who scoured more than 68 national and local broadsheets and newspapers during the project’s archival investigation.
‘The new picture is astonishing. There are tales of the unexpected, like the loss of the 108-ton whaling ship the A. Nickerson from Provincetown, Massachusetts, stranded on the Matanilla Reef on June 14, 1852 with 110 barrels of whale oil.’
Legacy of the transatlantic slave trade
Some of the most profitable cargoes during the 19th century were cotton from the American South, and sugar from Cuba, industries which forced the researchers to confront the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade.
‘Fifty-five consignments of sugar, molasses, cigars, coffee, tobacco and timber on 28 wrecks are tied to the transatlantic slave trade between West Africa, the Americas and especially Cuba,’ said Dr Michael Pateman, Director of The Bahamas Maritime Museum. ‘Seventy-one per cent of these ships sailed after 1820, when the Spanish slave trade in Cuba was supposedly illegal.’
Two large slavers were stranded on Mantanilla Reef during a storm in January 2017, and two years later, on 24 March 1819, the Celeste, a ship inbound from West Africa with 170 enslaved people, was wrecked off the west of Grand Bahama Island after being seized by the Patriot privateer.
‘The lost ships held shackled Africans, timber to install slave decks in merchant vessels, and boards to make crates for exporting the sugar and cigars produced by slaves in Spanish Cuba,’ said Dr Sean Kingsley, project collaborator and editor of Wreckwatch magazine. ‘By 1862, 437,000 enslaved Africans were forced to work on 2,430 sugar estates in Cuba.’
Local wreckers salvaging lost ships
Although the Bahamas is well known for the hurricanes that cross the islands, most of the lost ships were stranded on reefs and island shores, making retrieval of their cargo a fairly easy proposition.
‘The lost ships were not hard to salvage,’ according to James Sinclair, Director of Archaeology for Allen Exploration. ‘So much so that ‘wrecking’ – diving or ‘fishing’ to salvage cargoes – became the lead profession in The Bahamas’ economy.’
The Bahamas Lost Ships Project found that 60 ships were salvaged by local wreckers between 1656 and 1908, who took between 45-66 per cent of the value of cargoes saved, most commonly cotton and sugar, followed by lumber, molasses, staves, gold, silver and specie (coins).
Many of the names of the forgotten boats have also been revealed, including the Experiment, Triton, British Queen, Avenger, Spy, Lady of the Lake, Thetis, Struggle and Adeline.
The Bahamas Lost Ship Project’s future
To date, Allen Exploration research has located 19 wrecks from the 176 discovered in the archives. At the project’s disposal are a fleet of dive boats, his 53.3-metre Damen-built support ship, Axis, 50m Westport yacht Gigi – named after his wife – and his 24.4m Viking-built luxury yacht, Frigate.
AllenX also has a Triton 3300/3 submersible to assess targets down to 200m, a small Icon A5 aircraft, plus a team of forty divers – 80 per cent of whom are Bahamian – who are also trained in database management and marine archaeology.
The Bahamas Lost Ship Project is set to expand in scope and document all maritime historical losses in The Bahamas, making the country the first in the Caribbean to have a master database of total wreck casualties.
‘The gap between the 176 maritime casualties seen in the historical record and 19 wrecks AllenX has discovered so far highlights the area’s true potential,’ said AllenX Director of Fieldwork, Dan Porter. ‘89 per cent of the total inventory is still out there, waiting to be discovered.’
‘The large number of ships identified in dusty archives has created the first master map of the region’s immense maritime legacy,’ said Carl Allen. ‘It’s a fresh historical treasure to add to the shiny treasure we’ve been discovering.
‘We hope this will help The Bahamas manage its unique underwater heritage. The potential for maritime archaeology in The Bahamas is extremely bright.’
The Bahamas Lost Ships Project: Maritime History & Archaeology off the Little Bahama Bank by James Jenney, Carl Allen, Sean A. Kingsley, Michael P. Pateman, James Sinclair, Dan Porter and Kenton Dickerson (Allen Exploration Ocean Dispatches 2, 2023) is published by The Bahamas Maritime Museum, which will be launching the project’s results as an interactive display on launching on 6 June 6 2023.
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