Search To Resume This Summer
Last Updated on 3/19/2010
Published on 6/26/2008
Written by Jason Lesley
South Carolina State Underwater Archeologist Chris Amer, who has spearheaded the effort to find the Spanish supply ship for the past three years, says the search will cover eight square miles this summer. Since 2005, searchers have covered 64 square miles of ocean near the entrance of Winyah Bay.
Amer recently told a group of people interested in the search that the Capitana pre-dates the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Fla., and its discovery would be monumental for Georgetown. The Capitana is the first European ship to wreck on the North American continent.
It was loaded with 3,000 casks of olive oil, livestock and provisions for establishing a settlement in what is near present-day Pawleys Island.
"North Island and South Island would have presented the Spanish ships with the illusion of a solid wall of breakers as it prepared to enter Winyah Bay on Aug. 9, 1526," Amer said. "The main cargo vessel ran aground and was lost."
The wreck of De Ayllón's lead ship struck a fatal blow to the proposed settlement. Historians say that, rather that establishing the settlement here, the Spaniards marched south to the Georgia sea islands. That crude settlement suffered greatly during the first winter and failed after the death of 450 settlers, including De Ayllón himself.
This was the first European colony in what is now the United States, preceding Jamestown and the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth Rock by almost 100 years, and St. Augustine (the first successful colony) by almost 40 years.
De Ayllón was originally sent to the coast of South Carolina by the Holy Roman emperor Charles V (King Charles I of Spain) to search for a water route to the Spice Islands (in the Pacific Ocean). Although he failed, De Ayllón landed near Cape Fear in 1523 and explored the area.
Before this disastrous venture at colonization, De Ayllón had sailed to the West Indies from Spain in 1502 to be a judge in Hispaniola (Santo Domingo). He later mediated the dispute between Hernán Cortés and Diego Velázquez in Mexico (1520).
The search for the lost Spanish ship has been extensive and painstaking. Amer, who is with the Maritime Research Division of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA) of the University of South Carolina, and his dive team will criss-cross the ocean floor towing a magnetometer -- they call it "mowing the lawn" -- in an effort to find the remnants of the ship.
"What we're looking for is not a ship but a ballast pile," Amer said. Spanish ships would have had iron fasteners, anchors, hinges and weapons.
"We don't know for certain where the entrance to the Bay was 500 years ago," Amer said.
In fact, Amer is not even sure that the Capitana is still underwater.
The construction of the jetties around 1900 caused a change in the flow of Winyah Bay's channel. Sand from North Island swirled around the rock formations and was deposited on South Island.
"North Island is four kilometers shorter than it was in 1526," Amer says. "It's possible that the wreck is buried on South Island."
The search for De Ayllón's ship is funded in part by a grant from SCIAA's Archaeological Research Trust. The Trust funds various archaeological projects across South Carolina and derives much of its funds from donations from South Carolinians who are interested in the state's pre-history and history.
Lee Brockington, a senior interpreter at Hobcaw Barony, is enthusiastic about sharing the story of the search.
"We are planning to have Dr. Amer at Hobcaw for a guest lecture this summer to raise public awareness in Georgetown County. Just the story of the search is amazing, but imagine how proud we'll be when we find evidence of the ship in our own Winyah Bay waters."
