Reconnecting with heritage long lost

摘要

Maritime heritage runs deep in some places. A poignant reminder of that fact recently crossed my desk in the form of a square padded envelope with a return address in Pasaia, Spain. It contained a copy of a film, sent by Xabier Agote, whom I had met the summer before while he was in Maine collaborating on a multinational Atlantic Challenge crew. Agote gets around. His central project, however, has involved preserving the boatbuilding traditions of his people, the Basques. The oldest European shipwrecks yet found in the Americas-at least so far- are not Spanish ships of discovery and conquest but Basque whalers, and they are not in the West Indies but in Labrador. In the 1970s, a particularly large one was excavated by Canadian divers at Red Bay. She is believed to be the SAN JUAN, a three-masted galleon 72' long with three decks, and probably with a two-tiered sterncastle and a fo'c's'le. The ship is known from archives to have sailed from Pasaia, and she came to grief in Red Bay in 1565. One of her small boats, a rarity in nautical archaeology, was recovered with her, pinned down and flattened by the larger ship but therefore uncommonly complete. The 26'LOA and 6'beam double-ended whaleboat is preserved and on exhibit in Red Bay; the ship's timbers themselves were returned to the bottom after close analysis.