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Date Published: 23/04/2024

17th-century Spanish galleon to be pulled from the seabed in popular cruise destination

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A warship which is believed to have sunk in the Bay of Cádiz 300 years ago will soon be brought to the surface

17th-century Spanish galleon to be pulled from the seabed in popular cruise destination

Example of a wooden galleon

A private company in Spain specialising in underwater operations, Divership Servicios Subacuaticos SL, is planning to recover the wreck of a late 17th-century Spanish galleon that was discovered on the bottom of the Port of Cádiz in 2011.

Preparations have already begun to extract the galleon, which it is thought may have lain at the bottom of sea in this part of Spain for over 300 years. The work is estimated to last six months.

The Port of Cádiz is a busy sea port, with many cross-Atlantic cruise ships docking there on a weekly basis. It is located in the Bay of Cádiz, which also features the shipbuilding yards of Puerto Real and the US Naval Base in Rota.

The galleon, a wooden military ship which has been named ‘Delta I’ by modern discoverers, was first found under the seabed in February 2011 when work was happening on the port. At that time, however, the Delta I was not extracted from the sea, but was moved by Divership in November 2012 to an area adjacent to the work that had a lower draft and better visibility.

Thus, she went from being at a depth of between 12 and 16 meters to 5.5 meters. And there it was protected by covering it with geotextile and with the sediments that the coastal dynamics gradually contributed, thus leaving it in a similar state of conservation to before it had been moved.

Between May and July 2013, more than 400 dives were carried out to study the military ship in its new location, excavate its interior and extract all the archaeological material that was still inside it, including 27 artillery cannons and 5 anchors.

Now, 13 years after its discovery, it will be pulled up from the bottom of the sea for complete disassembly and study by the Centre for Underwater Archaeology (CAS).

Autoridad Portuaria de la Bahía de Cádiz

Divership has already been successful in carrying out several projects related to the extraction, cataloguing, documentation and conservation of underwater archaeological finds belonging to the wrecks of the Delta I, Delta II and Delta III, all of them located in the Bay of Cádiz and dating back to the 17th century.

The manager of Divership, David Rodríguez, has assured that all the administrative procedures have already been resolved correctly for the recovery of Delta I and that they are coordinating with infrastructure company Acciona, which in charge of the construction of the second phase of the new container terminal at the Port of Cádiz.

A floating jetty will be necessary to be able to bring the galleon to the surface, and this is already being assembled. Soon, Divership will be ready to begin dredging.

Over the next few months, and with a budget of almost 640,000 euros, Divership will have the task of removing the ship from where it is currently protected by a series of concrete blocks and moving it up to the port area. There, the Delta I will be placed on sandbags and covered over ready to be studied by CAS professionals. This will require dismantling different parts of the ship so they can be studied separately, while ensuring that they are properly protected to, perhaps, later be put back together.

Without a doubt, for Rodríguez, “this subsequent study is the most important part” of this entire operation.

All the underwater work will be filmed, and the photographs and video will be used to create a book that explains the entire process.

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