Project Sponsor: Texas Historical Commission (THC)
Time period: 17th century (wrecked 1686)
Excavation: 1995-1996
Conservation: 1996-2016
Exhibit: Bullock Texas State History Museum
Site History and Fieldwork
La Belle was one of four ships that set sail from France in 1684 with the mission to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River, under the direction of Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle . Miscalculation of latitude lead the expedition to present-day Matagorda Bay instead. One ship had been taken by Spanish privateers before they arrived, the escort ship departed once the expedition arrived in the New World, and the last ship was grounded on a sand bar at the entrance to the bay and could not be retrieved. La Salle led several attempts to find the Mississippi before his men mutinied and killed him; they eventually made their way by foot to the Mississippi River and north to French colonies in Canada, but by the time anyone was able to return to the fledgling colony in the south, La Belle had wrecked in a storm and the remaining colonists were gone.
In the early 1990’s, THC conducted a magnetometer survey of Matagorda Bay to locate La Belle. When divers were sent down, the site was identified on the first day, when a diver happened upon the very distinct lifting handles on one of the bronze cannons. The site was only about 20ft deep, but there was no visibility. Instead of using divers to excavate, THC erected a coffer dam and removed the water, turning the underwater site into a terrestrial site.
Conservation Highlights
La Belle is sometimes referred to as “a kit for a colony” because the hull was packed with a variety of items that colonists would need to establish a home in the New World, from tools and weapons to items for trade.
Hull
Once all artifacts were removed, archaeologists recorded every plank and timber and disassembled the hull in the field. The pieces were carefully cleaned and reassembled in a specially-built tank at CRL, this time supported by a fiberglass frame and fastened together with synthetic rather than iron fasteners. During this process, archaeologists and conservators noticed something very interesting: the major timbers are all marked with Roman numerals, corresponding with marks on the keel. La Belle was not intended to sail across the ocean, but be stored in one of the other three ships and assembled in the New World. The markings are like the letters on a piece of flat-pack furniture, intended to allow non-shipwrights construct the ship.
Plans also changed in modern times. La Belle was originally intended to be conserved using a high concentration of polyethylene glycol (PEG), like Vasa in Sweden or Mary Rose in England. However, soaring prices meant that it was more cost effective to pre-treat the hull with a lower concentration of PEG and purchase a massive freeze dryer that could fit the keel intact. The hull was disassembled and each piece loaded into the freeze dryer. Once dry, the hull was reassembled one last time in the Bullock Museum in Austin, TX.
Bronze Guns
Except for minor differences in their measurements and markings, the three 4-pounder bronze guns are practically identical. Given their location on site, packed neatly in the hull, it is probable that they were intended to be used to defend the French colony rather than be used aboard La Belle.
They are also the most important artifacts from the site since they answer a common question for any shipwreck site: How do we know what ship this is? For many sites, archaeologists refer to “a preponderance of evidence”: while there may not be an artifact with the ship’s name on it, the archaeological evidence (which can tell us the time period of the artifacts, and where they were produced, perhaps even provide clues as to the route, depending on what artifacts are preserved) and archival evidence (naval or merchant records, newspapers, sightings of ships or wrecks in an area) provide enough information that researchers can determine it is more likely to be a certain ship than not. Before launching into a full-scale excavation, archaeologists will often remove just a few diagnostic artifacts from a site for analysis; for La Belle, one of these artifacts was a bronze cannon.
Even with a layer of corrosion products over the entire cannon and concretion covering it in patches, it is easy to see the distinct dolphins (lifting handles) and raised decorations. Beneath the corrosion layers near the vent, each of these three cannons are marked with their weight (in French livres) and a production number (No. 4, No. 84, and No. 85); these numbers and the cannon descriptions match an inventory of cannons that were cast at the Royal Foundry under the supervision of master founder Jean La Tache, and removed from the warship Le Faucon in September 1682 in Rochefort, France, just a year and a half before La Belle set sail. Additionally, two armorial devices can be easily identified on each of the cannons: a crowned “L” (a symbol of King Louis XIV), and a pair of crossed anchors with the text “LE COMPTE DE VERMANDOIS” in a ribbon over them.
Le Compte de Vermandois refers to Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, an illegitimate (later legitimized) son of King Louis XIV, born in October 1667, and named Grand Admiral of France in November 1669. He died of a fever in 1683. Up until his death, any cannons cast in royal foundries would bear some version of his armorial device. The symbol of Louis XIV tells us the cannons were cast at some point during his reign; the symbol of the Compte de Vermandois narrows down that time frame further; the production numbers, archival evidence, location of the wreck, and the amount of information gleaned from the rest of the artifact assemblage leaves little doubt that this ship is La Belle.
Bronze is a noble alloy of copper and tin, and while it does corrode in salt water, it corrodes much less than other metals. Once the concretion was removed from the cannons, conservators treated each using electrolytic reduction; they were rinsed and polished, then sealed with a clear acrylic.
Straight Pins
Straight pins were both ubiquitous in daily life in 17th century France (used to fasten clothing, a sewing tool, and for holding together papers), and were used in trade with Native Americans. So perhaps it should be little surprise that so many – 17,000 pins – were excavated. These two-piece pins were created from a drawn length of wire, with a small section of wire wrapped around the unsharpened end to create the head. It is possible that the two large coils of brass wire found during the excavation were intended to create more pins. Finished pins would be inserted into packets of paper that could easily be folded and sold. A trade cask fragment from La Belle contained 2000 pins still pinned in their original paper; though in other trade boxes and casks, they were stored in bags, not pinned.
Conservators had to remove these tiny artifacts from their containers, at first using mechanical methods like air scribes and dental picks, then chemical methods like hydrochloric acid to eat away at the concretion. They were treated using sodium sesquicarbonate rinses to help reduce the salts that drive corrosion, then polished, and sealed with clear acrylic.
Nocturnal
While the nocturnal is a simple device in make (circles of wood and an index arm attached by a brass hub at the center), the markings on the surface would have been determined by a skilled astronomer. The front, pictured here, is a nocturnal, primarily used to determine the time at night on a ship. With knowledge of the current date, the navigator would sight Polaris, then use either Ursa Major or Ursa Minor as reference points to determine the hour. On the reverse, the planisphere used the time provided to determine which constellations can be viewed on the celestial meridian. Additionally, the device could be used to determine longitude, which was calculated using extensive mathematical formulas prior to the invention of the marine chronometer.
There are a few known errors in the use of such navigational devices. Weather could obscure the navigator’s view of the sky, and a moving ship makes it difficult to align the device to the observed stars; an improperly incised line during the making of the device could throw off readings. Despite these potential shortcomings, most trained navigators could gauge the time to an accuracy of about 15 minutes.
This nocturnal was well-made, and still relatively accurate. It was likely custom made for the user, which wouldn’t have been strange for such instruments at the time: the stars are not named with the common names of the time; it contains the zodiacal year (not as useful for navigation) as well as the calendrical year; and the planisphere contains a set of numbers with unknown purpose, perhaps referring to a text.
For treatment, once the concretion was removed, the wood was conserved using silicone oil and the brass physically cleaned after.
Axes
Perhaps not the first item that springs to mind when one thinks of items for trade, no one can doubt the usefulness of an axe, and they have been found at colonial and Native American sites throughout North America. The collection on La Belle – 675 intact and fragmentary axe heads packed primarily in three casks – is unique in the amount of axes found on one site. All of the axe heads share features of the European felling axe, with some variation in size and shape, perhaps reflecting purchases from different blacksmiths.
103 axe heads had makers marks, including 50 with the letters “DG” or “DC”, 16 with a fleur-de-lis pattern (pictured), 14 with an asterisk, and 13 with the letter “M”. Unfortunately, the marks have not been traced back to specific manufacturers; and the distribution of the marks amongst the casks indicates they were acquired, then repacked for the journey. The packing method for the smaller of the three casks is interesting though: the eyes were placed to the exterior and blades to the interior, so that the axes were packed in a helical pattern that remained even hundreds of years later.
Some axes were intact and conservators were able to conserve them using electrolytic reduction. Others had corroded away, perhaps acting as sacrificial anodes that preserved other axe heads; many of these were encased in concretion that conservators were able to fill with epoxy to make casts of what was once there.
Onion Bottle
This type of bottle gets its name not from the contents, but because the shape resembles that of an onion; they were produced in England from about 1600-1730. The dark olive glass, sometimes referred to as “black glass”, was believed to prevent sunlight from damaging the contents — usually wine, but traces of other alcohols, paints, and oils have also been found in onion bottles from Colonial Williamsburg.
This intact bottle was found in the aft hold with a wicker basket and other cargo. Two partial bottles were found in the bow compartment with a large coil of rope and a complete skeleton of a crew member.
Marine encrustations were removed from the bottle’s surface with hand tools. While the most common damage to glass artifacts is breaking, over time in salt water, glass can actually begin to delaminate, like an onion. These separating layers were consolidated using the silicone oil process developed by Wayne Smith and Donny Hamilton.
Around CRL: Posters & Conservators at Work
Conservators at work on La Belle artifacts
External Resources
THC La Salle Archeology Projects
La Belle Exhibit at the Bullock Texas State History Museum
La Belle Shipwreck at Texas Beyond History
The most comprehensive resource discussing the project’s background, excavation, and artifact analysis is the book La Belle: The Archaeology of a Seventeenth-Century Vessel of New World Colonization, which includes several chapters by CRL conservators and NAP graduates.
