On July 24, 1684, an expedition led by René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, an explorer of the Mississippi and Louisiana, left France for the Gulf of Mexico. The group consisted of four hundred men, divided into four boats, including a small frigate called La Belle. Their mission was to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. Once there, several trade routes would be created through New France (east of present-day Canada) and a base would be established from which to attack the silver mines of New Spain (in the south of present-day United States). Eight months ago, Louis XIV had declared war on Charles II by invading Luxembourg.
However, the trip did not go as expected. Spanish privateers captured one of the ships in the West Indies (Antilles and Bahamas). A second ship ran aground and sank. And a third, a warship, mutinied and returned to France. But that was not the worst.
Due to several navigation errors, La Salle surpassed the Mississippi delta. When he realized his mistake, he stopped at Matagorda Bay, in what is now Texas. Aboard the only boat he had left, La Belle, he continued searching for the mouth of the river. But it was in vain. The explorer knew he had missed it, but he did not know that he was more than six hundred kilometers west of his target.
In February 1685, after a violent storm, La Belle was shipwrecked. Despite this, and having the crew decimated and against, La Salle continued searching for the river by land. Until, in 1687, his own men murdered him during a mutiny.
That same year, Spanish expeditionaries also arrived in Matagorda Bay. Charles II had been warned of La Salle’s expedition and of his belligerent intentions. During the exploration of the area they found the sunken remains of the frigate. They rescued several cannons, the anchor and the masts, which they used to make oars.
La Salle’s failure served to make Spain aware of the danger that the expansionist plans of the French posed to its colonial interests. Hence, from that moment on, its presence in the region increased considerably.
La Belle remained forgotten for more than three hundred years, until, in the seventies of the last century, Texan researchers began to gather information about the shipwrecks of the La Salle expedition. In 1978 the search for the ships officially began. A magnetic survey was carried out and it was determined that, most likely, one of the wrecks detected corresponded to La Belle.
Due to funding problems, we had to wait until 1995 to continue the research. After a new exploration, which provided much more precise data, thanks to the use of a differential GPS, the Texas Historical Commission, a state agency for the preservation of the history of this state, organized a diving operation to find the remains of the ship. sunken. They soon found a profusely decorated bronze cannon.
Upon examining it, the archaeologists observed that it had the Sun King’s shield engraved on it. It was not conclusive proof, but it was very clear evidence that this could be the frigate they were looking for. The definitive proof was found weeks later. After recovering two more cannons, investigators checked their serial numbers against records in a French archive. The figures coincided: they were the artillery pieces loaded at La Belle in 1684.
The historical relevance of the discovery, one of the most important in the United States, provided the necessary financial and academic impetus to carry out the excavation work. The poor visibility of the bay’s waters, too dark for divers to work, forced archaeologists to look for an alternative.
And they did it in a big way. They decided that the best solution was to build a cofferdam (a fence to stop the passage of water) around the ship. No sooner said than done. Once the works on the spectacular dam, made up of double steel walls, were completed, its interior was emptied of water. La Belle emerged after several centuries buried.
The helmet, having remained under the mud, was preserved almost intact. The first thing the team of archaeologists did was explore its interior. In the warehouse they found a large quantity of weapons, tools, supplies and numerous goods to trade: ceramics, bronze ornaments, wooden combs and thousands of glass beads.
The remains provided valuable information about the type of supplies needed to carry out a colonizing mission at the end of the 17th century. Investigators also located the skeleton of a middle-aged man. Analysis of him revealed that he was part of the crew and that he suffered from arthritis. The remains were buried in the Texas State Cemetery.
Once the hull was completely empty, the boat was dismantled. Each recovered plank was sorted, scanned and subjected to conservation treatment. The wood, greatly weakened by erosion and corrosion from seawater, was treated with polyethylene glycol, useful for removing moisture. The drying process continued with a slow and expensive freeze-drying treatment.
All the pieces were placed in the chamber of a gigantic freeze dryer, built by the University of Texas at an air base. There they were frozen at a temperature of up to 60 °C below zero. All air was then removed until a vacuum was reached. Then, for several months, heat was provided so that the frozen water evaporated. The aim was to prevent the remains from contracting or deforming during the process.
Once this phase was completed, the hull was completely reassembled within the same freeze dryer and dried again. In total, it would take a decade to recover and preserve the frigate.
In 2014, the entire ship was assembled at the Bullock Texas State History Museum, in a reconstruction that was carried out openly so that visitors could observe the progressive assembly. The process ended the following year. Since then, the frigate and the artifacts found on it have been the star attraction of the institution.
This text is part of an article published in number 564 of the magazine Historia y Vida. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
