Wreckage of Mexican-built ship helps archaeologists understand

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- The wreck of a 50-gun Spanish frigate in Pensacola Bay is giving marine archaeologists a rare look at a ship built in the New World three centuries ago.

Most vessels they have been able to examine from that era are of European origin. The Nuestra Senora del Rosario, however, was built in Mexico only about five years before it sank during a storm in 1705.

The ship seems to have been privately built and then purchased by the Spanish government, said John Bratten, who is overseeing excavation work on the wreck for the University of West Florida Archaeology Institute.

During each of the last four summers, archaeologists and students have uncovered bits of the ship in shallow water near Civil War-era Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island. The vessel is estimated to be about 120 feet long.

State archaeologists located the Rosario in 1992 under tons of silt. For six years, however, it took a back seat to an older wreck of a Spanish galleon in another part of the bay.

Known as the Emanuel Point wreck, the galleon sank in 1559, when Pensacola was first settled by Europeans, making it the oldest shipwreck yet found in Florida waters. The galleon, part of an expedition led by Tristan de Luna, was partly excavated and artifacts, including a huge iron anchor, were removed before it was reburied in 1997.