Archaeologists mount search for lost French fleet of 1565
Hunt expected to wrap up in August
By Matt Soergel Thu, Jul 10, 2014
Portrait of Jean Ribault Wiki Commons
Wiki Commons
Portrait of Jean Ribault
ST. AUGUSTINE | A team of archaeologists unveiled plans Thursday for an oceangoing expedition to find the lost French fleet of Jean Ribault, which sank 449 years ago in a history-changing hurricane off Florida’s Atlantic coast.
And they have a pretty good idea where to look.
Period French artifacts found in the early 1970s on a remote beach at Canaveral National Seashore provide proof that Ribault’s shipwrecked men were there — likely not too far from their ruined ships, which they scavenged for materials.
Finding the fleet would be momentous, said Chuck Meide, the expedition’s principal investigator.
“It is Florida’s origin story, so it is also the story of the birth of our nation,” he said at a press conference under the live oaks outside the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum.
Meide, 43, a maritime archaeologist with the Lighthouse Archeological Maritime Program, will lead a crew of four on the search, which begins this month. They’ll spend up to six days at a time on a converted shrimp boat, using sonar to look above the seabed and a magnetometer to search for metal — cannons, cannonballs and other artifacts — under the sand.
In 50-foot swaths, they’ll cover a five-mile stretch of near-shore waters. It’s not a given anything will be found, Meide said, but it seems promising: Documents show that Ribault’s flagship, Trinité, for example, carried with it 24 cannons and 977 cannonballs.
Ribault led a fleet of seven ships to the New World in 1565 to support the struggling new Huguenot French colony of Fort Caroline, in what is now Jacksonville. That colony alarmed and angered the Spanish, who quickly founded St. Augustine just down the coast to prepare for an attack on the French.
The French tried to strike first as Ribault sailed his four largest ships to make battle in St. Augustine. His plan turned disastrous as a hurricane pushed his fleet even farther south, scattering it and then wrecking it.
“It was a storm that literally changed American history,” Meide said.
With Ribault out of the picture, Fort Caroline was vulnerable to an overland attack by the Spanish, who marched through the wind and rain and wiped out the colony.
Meanwhile, Ribault and other shipwreck survivors, bedraggled and likely thirsty and hungry, trekked north back along the beach toward Fort Caroline, whose fate they could not have known.
But they could go no further when got stuck at the inlet later known as Matanzas — Spanish for “slaughter.”
It earned its name: The Spanish, led by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, twice marched from St. Augustine to wipe out separate groups of survivors, more than 200 men in all, including Ribault himself.
The doomed fleet’s location has been a mystery since.
Meide said the events were part of an epic clash between the Catholic Spanish, who had claimed the land for Spain, and the Protestant French settlers, whom they thought of as interlopers and heretics.
“It’s a bloody story, but it’s our story,” said Meide, who quoted Mendendez on the conflict: “In his own words, ‘To fight them with blood and fire, to burn and hang the heretics.’ ”
The search will be done from a research vessel, guided by historical research by the expedition’s co-principal investigator, John de Bry of the Center for Historical Archaeology in Melbourne.
It’s expected to be wrapped up in August. If a wreck is discovered, its location will be kept secret to prevent looters. Divers will pull up just a few artifacts to be studied and documented. But any find will then be returned to its original location in the ocean, at least for now.
“They’ll be safe down there,” Meide said. “They’ve been down there for 450 years.”
The expedition is a partnership of the Lighthouse Museum, the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, the National Park Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the state of Florida, the Institute of Maritime History and the Center for Historical Archaeology.
Meide said a state archaeological crew, on a separate expedition, will be looking for the fleet as well, about 20 miles south of his group.
The superintendent of Canaveral National Seashore, Myrna Palfrey, made the trip to St. Augustine for the announcement. She said her park is eager to be able to learn more about its place in early American history — and perhaps later will be able to show some of the artifacts to Canaveral’s visitors.
“As I told Chuck earlier: ‘Everybody’s excited and all that. But no pressure, no worry,’ ” she joked.
