Pirates of the Caribbean, part 2 - National Geographic

This past week I was invited by the same IU crew that found Captain Kidd's ship to watch them excavate another wreckage site on the norhern coast of the island.  The wreck(s) at Bahia Isabela, wasn't that of a pirate, however, but that of the lost fleet of Christopher Colombus.  National Geographic had sent a film crew to cover IU's excavation efforts for a documentary they are producing on Columbus's first settlement and his lost fleet.  I always dreamed of working for National Geographic, so you can imagine my excitement over getting to tag along for a day!

A little bit about Columbus and La Isabela...When Columbus first sailed to the New World, he passed through the Bahamas and made landfall at a point on what is now Haiti's northern coast. There the Santa Maria sank, and the crew took its timber to create a fort called Navidad.  Columbus left a small group of his crew there to hold down the fort, then he left to return to Spain and make his claim of greatness. When he returned to Navidad several months later, he found the fort burned down and all of his men killed. So, he took his larger fleet of 17 ships, and continued east along the coast until he got to Isabela.  There he created a new settlement, which lasted for several years.  The bay, however, was not very good (it's shallow and not protected enough to make a good harbor) and in a relatively short period of time, Columbus lost several of his ships to hurricanes and other storms. That lost fleet is somewhere in the bottom of the bay, under a few meters of thick, gelatinous silt. Because of the poor quality of the bay, Columbus and his settlers eventually relocated to the southern coast of the island, to establish Santo Domingo.

Now back to my trip to La Isabela....Our day consisted of touring the ruins of the first settlement, which includes the first council building, the first church, the Admiral's house, and a graveyard for 44 Spaniards who were part of Colombus's crew. These ruins were originally excavated in the 1980s, and a museum was created on the site. Previous searches in the bay also yielded a collection of artifacts from one of Columbus's ships.  This collection of artifacts, the only of its kind, is being guarded under lock and key at the Isabela museum.  In addition to touring the ruins of the settlement, we joined the IU and Nat.Geo crews out on their boat as they filmed a group of underwater archeologists begin dredging the bay to uncover what they call "hot spots".  I'll forgo going into detail about how they search for these ship wrecks, but I find it all fascinating. There was also quite a bit of intrigue that made the day a bit surreal.

For example, when my colleagues and I got to the site in the morning, a group of local community members were there, arguing with the caretaker and the IU crew over authorization. The community was under the impression that the crew intended to excavate and remove artifacts from the wreckage site without their knowledge or approval.  Why would they think this? Well, because apparently the last foreign person/group that came to study the site TOOK one of the remains of a Spaniard with them. That's right, someone essentially grave-robbed from the first settlement in the New World.  Since the story kept changing, I won't go into further detail or speculate, but bottom line...the only completely in-tact skeleton of Columbus's crew is no longer lying in his grave.  R.I.P.   After a good 30 minutes of discussion, we finally convinced the community group that 1.) IU and Nat.Geo were authorized and had gov't reps and the Dominican navy with them, and 2.) nothing would be removed from the site, certainly not without their knowledge or consent.

As if that weren't enough excitement for the day...I soon learned that UNESCO had had a meeting a few years ago to make the Isabela site a World Heritage site, but the various entities within the DR who have a finger in this pie (so to speak) have to speak with one voice in order for that to happen.  A few years later, and that remains a challenge. In the meantime, the artifacts and the ruins, as well as the museum itself, all need to be better taken care of.  Hopefully the situation will improve, and soon.

And there's more....Were you aware of treasure hunting as a perfectly legit business? That's right. For a cut of the profit, a private company will go find that sunken pirate ship for you, since they've got the equipment and the expertise to do so.  On the one hand, that sounds like a pretty exciting job to have, but on the other...it brings up the question of who really owns these sunken ships, and who has the right to benefit from them?  Approaching the excavation and preservation of a wreck like IU did with Captain Kidd (and is doing with La Isabela's lost fleet), means that there is local expertise and buy-in, efforts are taken to protect the environment, and a scenario is created for a country to profit from sustainable, eco-tourism.  I don't know how the private companies do it, so I'm not trying to insinuate that they pillage the environment or anything, but they do take a cut of the profit, which could go to that country instead.  With all the wrecks that remain waiting to be found (like Captain Morgan's HMS Oxford, off of Isle de Vache in Haiti), it will be very interesting indeed to see which approach gathers more support. But considering how much the local, regional and national economies could be helped by successful, sustainable eco-tourism and the fabulous diving that goes with it, I sincerely hope we see more living museums of the sea. 


(PHOTOS: top - sunrise at the beach at Luperon, near La Isabela; second - film crew out on the water; third - La Isabela Museum; bottom - view of Bahia Isabela, and the little blue launch they used to dredge up the silt)