San Juan (ship, 1565)
The San Juan was a whaler who was lost in December 1565 in front of the then whaling base Red Bay on the Labrador Peninsula . It was a Basque three-masted galleon that had torn itself from its anchor in a storm and sank with a full load of 900 to 1000 barrels of whale oil .
The extensive underwater investigation of the wreck from 1978 to 1985, which required 14,000 hours of diving in the icy water, showed that the ship, made mainly of oak , represented a high point of Basque shipbuilding. The 14.75 meter long T-shaped keel was made from one piece and goes directly into the keel passage . It has been preserved, as has the one-piece keel , the mast base , the stringers , deck beams and planks . An eight-meter sloop from the San Juan was recovered and is on display in the Red Bay Whaling Museum. The investigation report comprises a total of 3,000 pages.
Three other galleon wrecks were found nearby. A wreck of a very similar design was found in the bay of Angra do Heroísmo ( Azores ).
The San Juan is the oldest European ship whose wreck was discovered in America north of Florida .
A replica of the ship has been under construction in San Sebastian, Spain, since 2013 .
literature
- Robert Grenier: Basque Whalers in the New World: The Red Bay Wrecks. In: G. Bass (Ed.): Ships and Shipwrecks of the Americas. London 1988, pp. 69-84.
- Robert Grenier, Willis Stevens, Marc A. Bernier: The Underwater Archeology of Red Bay. Parks Canada: Ottawa 2007.
Web links
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 51 ° 43 ′ 48 " N , 56 ° 25 ′ 48" W.