ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609160063
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ABOARD THE BELLE, GULF OF MEXICO
SOURCE: MICHAEL GRACZYK ASSOCIATED PRESS
EXPLORER LASALLE'S ship is being retrieved from Matagorda Bay's mud.
To archaeologists excavating the wreck of one of the explorer LaSalle's ships, success is finding tiny things like blue glass beads or bronze pins.
But on a really terrific day, like one last week, the hand guard of an officer's rapier appears out of the mud that shrouds the ribs of the Belle, and an archaeologist can touch 310 years of history.
``You may be able to see the object in a museum, but you can't touch it,'' says Toni Carrell. ``Archaeology gives you the opportunity to actually touch an object and to make that contact that I think we all want, to make that connection with the past.''
Carrell, a doctoral student from Scotland's St. Andrews University, is one of more than a dozen archaeologists excavating what is left of the wooden supply ship, which went down in a storm in 1686 while LaSalle and his men were trying to establish a colony in southeastern Texas, where they faced steamy, mosquito-and snake-infested swamps, hostile Indians and a shortage of provisions.
Sucked into the mud of Matagorda Bay, about 150 miles southwest of Houston, the ship largely withstood decay and is now being retrieved, piece by piece, in a $4 million project of the Texas Historical Commission. Divers confirmed the find last summer by recovering a bronze cannon encrusted with mud, shellfish and stones.
It is considered the oldest French shipwreck discovered in the Western Hemisphere. The dig is expected to last about six months.
The dig is surrounded by an oblong steel cofferdam. Engineers sank its pilings into the seabed and pumped out the water, exposing the sea floor for the first time. It's the first use of such technology in such an open body of water.
``The cofferdam is letting us do careful digging that we simply couldn't do in zero visibility,'' says Barto Arnold, head of the team. ``We also can do it in one season.''
The two-masted, square-rigged Belle, 80 feet long and 19 feet wide, weighed 65 tons and carried 30 to 40 people. ``We're still trying to find out which end of the boat is which,'' says assistant director J. ``Coz'' Cozzi.
Archaeologists believe about 20 percent of the ship is left, buried in 5 to 6 feet of mud.
Like the Belle, and like the Texas colony, Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle came to a bad end, murdered by his own people.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB