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The bee's wax wreck
Cool story.
Hunting for the past
"Beeswax Ship" researchers want to separate the legend from the truth
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
RICHARD L. HILL
The Spanish galleon rode low in the water as it sailed out of Manila Bay 300 years ago on an arduous voyage to Acapulco. But the trading ship, heavy with Chinese porcelain and prized Philippine beeswax for candles, never made it to Mexico.
Perhaps blown off course by a storm, the galleon wrecked on the Oregon shore near the mouth of Nehalem Bay. Any survivors might have been the first Europeans to make contact with Native Americans in the Northwest.
In the years that followed, Native Americans and 19th-century settlers made use of the shattered ship's teak timbers and abundant beeswax. Folklore included accounts about treasure from the ship being buried on nearby Neahkahnie Mountain.
As the legend grew, so did the questions. What ship was it and when did it sink? Were there survivors? What impact did it have on the native people? Are there remnants buried under the dunes or just offshore on the ocean floor?
Last week, a research team began the quest for answers with the first extensive archaeological study of the "Beeswax Ship" wreck site at Nehalem Bay State Park.
"This is a well-known wreck that has received a lot of attention in the past 150 years," said Scott Williams, an archaeologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Olympia who is leading the project in his spare time. "But there are a lot of differing accounts and opinions about the shipwreck, so our goal is to separate fact from legend."
Finding the wreck is challenging as the shoreline and dunes have continually changed. Chunks of beeswax are found occasionally on the beaches -- a surfer found three pieces two years ago -- but the last sighting of large pieces of the ship onshore was 80 years ago. The last reported view of offshore pieces was more than 100 years ago.
Williams said the galleon is believed to have broken into two parts, with the upper half swept by storms onto the beach. The heavier lower half, which would have carried cannons, sank.
Researchers began the hunt last week with sophisticated sensing instruments.
Sheldon Breiner, a geophysicist from Menlo Park, Calif., who has participated in other archaeological projects, used a magnetometer a device that detects irregularities in subsurface magnetic fields. He found five potential sites for the ship offshore, but none on the beach.
All five of the magnetic anomalies on the seafloor appear to be ships," Breiner said. "One of the anomalies may be cannon from the galleon, which would easily be detected with this device. The data will require more analysis, but I am very excited about what we found."
Williams said the team hopes to investigate the offshore sites later this summer with divers or with remote-controlled underwater cameras.
In another study last week, Curt Peterson, a geology professor and tsunami expert at Portland State University, used ground-penetrating radar to look below the park's surface. Peterson and his colleagues are looking for signs of the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that struck the coast in January 1700.
Peterson said preliminary data appear to show areas that were affected by the quake and tsunami as well as possible debris from the wreck, but further analysis and research are needed.
Evidence of the tsunami may help determine which ship wrecked at Nehalem Bay, Williams said.
Records of missing galleons and other evidence has narrowed the vessel's possible identity to two ships: the Santo Christo de Burgos, which disappeared in 1693, and the San Francisco Xavier, which vanished in 1705.
If the ship is the Santo Christo de Burgos, then the 1700 tsunami would have washed sections of the wooden-hulled ship over the dunes and deposited beeswax and other artifacts into Nehalem Bay and across a wider area than those from the San Francisco Xavier.
The researchers are using the expertise of historian Eb Giesecke of Olympia, who has been investigating the shipwreck for more than 50 years. The Portland native began interviewing older Nehalem Bay residents in 1954 to record what they recall about the wreck and where it was located. They told him about children playing in the wreck remnants on the beach as late as the 1920s.
"It's nice to see all this scientific interest in this wreck," said Giesecke, whose findings are in a book -- "Beeswax, Teak and Castaways" -- published this year by the Nehalem Valley Historical Society.
The project, supported by the Naga Research Group, a nonprofit archaeological organization based in Hawaii, has attracted the interest of more than two dozen scientists, including specialists in Chinese porcelain and underwater archaeology.
Williams is co-leader with Julie Schablitsky, an archaeologist based at the University of Oregon who is known for her Donner Party research; and her husband, Robert Neyland, who heads the U.S. Navy's underwater archaeological branch in Washington, D.C.
"This isn't a hunt for treasure," Williams said. "This is a hunt for finding out about this coast's past."
Richard L. Hill: 503-221-8238; [email protected]
kenb
Cool story.
Hunting for the past
"Beeswax Ship" researchers want to separate the legend from the truth
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
RICHARD L. HILL
The Spanish galleon rode low in the water as it sailed out of Manila Bay 300 years ago on an arduous voyage to Acapulco. But the trading ship, heavy with Chinese porcelain and prized Philippine beeswax for candles, never made it to Mexico.
Perhaps blown off course by a storm, the galleon wrecked on the Oregon shore near the mouth of Nehalem Bay. Any survivors might have been the first Europeans to make contact with Native Americans in the Northwest.
In the years that followed, Native Americans and 19th-century settlers made use of the shattered ship's teak timbers and abundant beeswax. Folklore included accounts about treasure from the ship being buried on nearby Neahkahnie Mountain.
As the legend grew, so did the questions. What ship was it and when did it sink? Were there survivors? What impact did it have on the native people? Are there remnants buried under the dunes or just offshore on the ocean floor?
Last week, a research team began the quest for answers with the first extensive archaeological study of the "Beeswax Ship" wreck site at Nehalem Bay State Park.
"This is a well-known wreck that has received a lot of attention in the past 150 years," said Scott Williams, an archaeologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Olympia who is leading the project in his spare time. "But there are a lot of differing accounts and opinions about the shipwreck, so our goal is to separate fact from legend."
Finding the wreck is challenging as the shoreline and dunes have continually changed. Chunks of beeswax are found occasionally on the beaches -- a surfer found three pieces two years ago -- but the last sighting of large pieces of the ship onshore was 80 years ago. The last reported view of offshore pieces was more than 100 years ago.
Williams said the galleon is believed to have broken into two parts, with the upper half swept by storms onto the beach. The heavier lower half, which would have carried cannons, sank.
Researchers began the hunt last week with sophisticated sensing instruments.
Sheldon Breiner, a geophysicist from Menlo Park, Calif., who has participated in other archaeological projects, used a magnetometer a device that detects irregularities in subsurface magnetic fields. He found five potential sites for the ship offshore, but none on the beach.
All five of the magnetic anomalies on the seafloor appear to be ships," Breiner said. "One of the anomalies may be cannon from the galleon, which would easily be detected with this device. The data will require more analysis, but I am very excited about what we found."
Williams said the team hopes to investigate the offshore sites later this summer with divers or with remote-controlled underwater cameras.
In another study last week, Curt Peterson, a geology professor and tsunami expert at Portland State University, used ground-penetrating radar to look below the park's surface. Peterson and his colleagues are looking for signs of the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that struck the coast in January 1700.
Peterson said preliminary data appear to show areas that were affected by the quake and tsunami as well as possible debris from the wreck, but further analysis and research are needed.
Evidence of the tsunami may help determine which ship wrecked at Nehalem Bay, Williams said.
Records of missing galleons and other evidence has narrowed the vessel's possible identity to two ships: the Santo Christo de Burgos, which disappeared in 1693, and the San Francisco Xavier, which vanished in 1705.
If the ship is the Santo Christo de Burgos, then the 1700 tsunami would have washed sections of the wooden-hulled ship over the dunes and deposited beeswax and other artifacts into Nehalem Bay and across a wider area than those from the San Francisco Xavier.
The researchers are using the expertise of historian Eb Giesecke of Olympia, who has been investigating the shipwreck for more than 50 years. The Portland native began interviewing older Nehalem Bay residents in 1954 to record what they recall about the wreck and where it was located. They told him about children playing in the wreck remnants on the beach as late as the 1920s.
"It's nice to see all this scientific interest in this wreck," said Giesecke, whose findings are in a book -- "Beeswax, Teak and Castaways" -- published this year by the Nehalem Valley Historical Society.
The project, supported by the Naga Research Group, a nonprofit archaeological organization based in Hawaii, has attracted the interest of more than two dozen scientists, including specialists in Chinese porcelain and underwater archaeology.
Williams is co-leader with Julie Schablitsky, an archaeologist based at the University of Oregon who is known for her Donner Party research; and her husband, Robert Neyland, who heads the U.S. Navy's underwater archaeological branch in Washington, D.C.
"This isn't a hunt for treasure," Williams said. "This is a hunt for finding out about this coast's past."
Richard L. Hill: 503-221-8238; [email protected]
kenb
