Hidden treasures: Spanish archaeologists discover trove of ancient shipwrecks in Bay of Gibraltar | Archaeology

SSpanish archaeologists exploring the bay that winds between the southern port of Algeciras and the Rock of Gibraltar have documented the wrecks of more than 30 ships that ran aground near the Pillars of Hercules between the 5th century BC and World War II.

Over the millennia, the bay, located at the northern end of the Strait of Gibraltar that separates Europe from Africa, has swallowed up everything from Phoenician and Roman ships to British, Spanish, Venetian and Dutch ships, as well as rare aircraft.

A three-year project led by the University of Cádiz has now identified 151 archaeological sites in the bay, including 134 shipwrecks. To date, researchers and their colleagues at the University of Granada have worked to document 34 of these wrecks.

The oldest is that of a Punic era ship dating from the 5th century BC, while other finds include 23 Roman ships, two late Roman ships, four medieval ships and 24 ships from the early modern period.

Between them, the cast objects – including a nimble and formidable 18th-century Spanish gunboat and the engine and propeller of a 1930s aircraft – tell the story of war, trade, exploration and colonization in and around one of the world’s most strategically important waterways.

Felipe Cerezo Andreo, an archeology professor at the University of Cádiz who led the investigation, called Project Herakles, said the area had long been an aquatic crossroads.

“It’s one of those bottlenecks that ships have always had to pass through, whether on trade routes, voyages of discovery or due to armed conflict,” he said.

“There are really few places in the Mediterranean that have this kind of concentration and such a variety of archaeological remains, especially in terms of different cultures or different nations. We have Dutch, Venetian, Spanish and of course English ships – ships of virtually every nationality – because they all passed through the strait, whether heading to the Atlantic for trade or entering the Mediterranean from Northern Europe or other areas.”

Cerezo said researchers were particularly pleased to have documented three medieval ships that could shed light on shipping during the late Islamic period in southern Spain.

Although the team encountered large ships from the 16th and 17th centuries, one of the most interesting finds was the wreck of the Puente Mayorga IV, a small gunboat from the late 18th century, of a type used for quick, stealthy attacks on British ships of the line around Gibraltar. Attacking boats often disguised themselves as fishing boats before casting their nets and firing their bow-mounted cannon at their enemies.

Although frequently mentioned in contemporary reports, these boats have been little studied by archaeologists.

Cerezo himself was delighted to stumble upon one of Puente Mayorga IV’s less obvious treasures during a dig. What he initially thought was a miraculously preserved book turned out to be a book-shaped wooden box with a hollow space inside.

“At first we thought it might be used to hide documents, and we thought it might have something to do with espionage,” the archaeologist said. “Was the officer wearing it mapping the position of an enemy ship?” Unfortunately no. Upon careful examination, the box was found to contain a pair of wooden combs, suggesting that the officer may have been more concerned with grooming than spying.

Cerezo and his colleagues hope that the Andalusian regional government and the Spanish Ministry of Culture will act to preserve and protect sites in Algeciras Bay – known to English speakers as the Bay of Gibraltar – that are threatened by port development, dredging and dock construction. The climate emergency already poses a threat, leading to both sea level rise that alters layers of sediment and exposes archaeological sites, as well as invasive algae that grows on rocks and shipwrecks.

In order to share their findings and raise awareness of the importance of preserving them, the researchers have created virtual models and 360-degree videos of the sites, which they share with the public online, in museums and local town halls.

“We bring these goggles so people who don’t dive can put them on and have a dryland diving experience,” Cerezo said. “Even though people sometimes imagine they’re going to see a destroyed treasure ship like the Unicorn in Tintin, the sites tend not to be very well preserved. Their condition can sometimes be a little disappointing, but it’s important that people know what’s going on. And showing people that creates a demand for protection of these sites.”

The bay’s waters provide an unprecedented microcosm of thousands of years of maritime and cultural development, Cerezo said.

“Here we have a very small space which allows us to analyze the evolution of maritime history in practically the entire Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.

“It tells us a story that we sometimes forget, which is that maritime societies, or peoples who lived in coastal areas, had a very intense relationship with the sea and lived on the sea. And being able to study these types of archaeological remains – to document them, to know them in situ and not only through the objects that sometimes end up in a museum, but to understand them in their context – allows us to carry out this reconstruction process and tell the story of these people.