So you have a home restoration project and you think you have troubles? Consider the plight of the marine archaeologist, who has discovered a historically-significant wreck and has to decide whether and how to restore it.

Start at the beginning. You have found a wreck – a historically significant one. A lot of shipwrecks discovered in the Gulf of Mexico are found when a site survey for a planned oil well is done. Alternatively, it was found because a historic wreck was suspected to be in the area, and scanning of the ocean bottom was done. Either way, your wreck is under water. In fact, much of what remains is under the sea bottom by the time you find it. What does it look like?

Figure 1: Remote Sensing Survey Results

Kind of like the image in Figure 1. A magnetic resonance scan reveals the ship, largely through the various lumps of metal remaining.

The next question to ask is can you raise the shipwreck? This depends on its depth. If it is in water deeper than 100 feet, unless the vessel is uniquely important, forget about it. The technical challenges and costs are too great. There are exceptions. Monitor was raised from 230 feet of water, but that had the backing of the US government, and the US Navy in particular. Plus, it was the Monitor, truly a one-of-a-kind vessel. A run-of-the-mill important shipwreck will not be raised unless it is in much shallower water, typically less than 30 feet. Often dives are done to recover artifacts, not the entire ship.

Let’s say it is important, and is in shallow water. Some examples include the 1554 treasure shipwrecks, La Salle’s ship La Belle, and the Civil War blockade-runner Denbigh. (Denbigh’s wreck is even occasionally above water.) What is left that can be raised?

Quite often, very little. Wood, leather, paper, food – anything organic – disappears with time unless buried. Organic artifacts are snacks for various kinds of marine organisms, including single-cell critters. A century of snacking, and those objects are gone, eaten. Even metal dissolves. Seawater is tremendously corrosive. Given enough time, that metal object becomes salts. (Although in those cases conglomerations occur, which offer a promise of restoration.) After a century the only things left on the surface are ceramics and glass.

Buried stuff fares better. The lack of oxygen stops both oxidation and critters snacking on your shipwreck. Which means the part of the ship that got buried is likely preserved.

Figure 2: Shipwreck Preservation

What is left is likely the hatched portion of Figure 2: the lower hull, keel, and cargo in the hold. Not that that stuff is unimportant. It is just the most recognizable parts, the upper decks, forecastle, quarterdeck, and poop – along with everything on and in them – are gone.

Assume the ship is important enough to raise, Monitor important. (Otherwise, I stop here and the story ends.) On the Texas Gulf Coast that includes any of the 1554 Treasure Fleet wreck or one of the ships in the La Salle Expedition. Those were in shallow water because they ran aground. They are really important, too. The difficulty is finding one to restored.

There were three 1554 wrecks – Spanish treasure ships carrying silver, gold, and cochineal from Mexico to Havana. Caught in a gale off Cuba, they were blown back to Texas. Three of four ships in the treasure fleet ran aground off South Padre Island. One, Santa Maria de Yciar, was destroyed in the 1950s when the Mansfield Cut was dredged, straight through the wreck. It was discovered when bits of wood and a few silver pieces came up in the dredge spoil. Then it was too late. Only an anchor remained. The second, Espíritu Santo, was destroyed in the 1960s by treasure hunters intent on salvaging its silver. Only the third, San Esteban, survived to be restored, and time dealt with most of it. (It was recovered, and what remains is on display at the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History.)

There were two wrecks from the La Salle expedition off the Texas Coast, storeships L’Amiable and La Belle. No one knew where either was until the late 1990s. Then, while searching for L’Amiable, La Belle was discovered. It was a small ship and in relatively good shape. The Texas Historical Commission decided to raise the ship. The question was how?

Simply getting the ship off the ocean bottom was a challenge. It was under only 12 feet of water (3.7 meters for folks from nations that did not put a man on the Moon), but excavating it would be difficult under water. Instead, a cofferdam was built around the wreck.

Figure 3: The Cofferdam

Once the cofferdam was completed, water was drained and a careful excavation of the remains was made. Remember I said it was in relatively good shape? That meant almost everything above the orlop (lowest) deck was gone. On the other hand, virtually everything buried in the sand had been preserved almost perfectly. This included all the artifacts necessary to start a colony in New France.

It took eight months to retrieve the remains of the wreck from the ocean bottom. Everything was gridded and tracked, so it could be examined in context and reassembled later. It was a nerve-wracking eight months because a chunk occurred during hurricane season. A hurricane would have destroyed everything. Excavation was also complicated by the discovery of a human body – the skeleton of one of the crew, killed by a fall when the ship sank.

Figure 4: La Belle Exposed on the Sea Bottom

Guess what was done with the objects once removed from the sea bottom? They were put back in water. They were kept wet while on site and had to be stored in water afterward. Otherwise, they would disintegrate. This was discovered back in the when a medieval boat was excavated, put together and displayed. The ship fell to pieces over time. Beam and ribs crumbled into jigsaw puzzle-sized pieces.

What happened? Long immersion destroys wood’s cellulose. Cellulose is necessary for structural integrity. Even wood buried under the ocean bottom is immersed in water. Unless something is done to preserve the wood, as it dries out is assume the texture of papier-mâché and disintegrates. You cannot restore the wreck by cleaning the wood and putting it back together.

Something must be added to substitute for the cellulose. The wood was put in a big tank with water mixed with polyethylene glycol (or PEG). PEG is used in laxatives for the same reason: it preserves wood. It substitutes for fiber. A massive La Belle-sized tank was built at Texas A&M University’s ship restoration laboratory and the wood was soaked in PEG-saturated water. That took two years.

Figure 5: The Immersion Tank

Then the water had to be removed from the wood. Quickly. This was done by removing the now-plasticized wood from the tank, and freeze-drying it. The freeze-dry chamber was the size of a cargo container. Despite the size of the chamber, freeze-drying the wood took another two years.

Figure 6: The Freeze-Drying Chamber

Figure 7: Wood in the Freeze-Drying Chamber.

With the wood preserved and process what is next in the renovation process? Deciding what level of restoration desired. With a historic ship like the frigate Constitution, restoring the ship to its original condition is appropriate. Yes, there is a touch of George Washington’s hatchet to the Constitution. (The handle has been replaced seven times and the head three times, but other than that, this is the original hatchet George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree.) Restoration and refitting have been part of its life and history throughout its existence. There was little left of the wood used to build the ship even by the 1860s when it was still an active warship.

La Belle is different. The original wood is what makes the ship significant. Want a La Belle restored to its glory as a working ship? Build a replica. (This was done.) With the timbers from the sea bottom, restoration means assembling them.

Although not a simple task, it was relatively straightforward. The location and relative position of each piece of timber was recorded when the ship was removed from the sea bottom. Better still, La Belle was a kit ship. It was originally intended to take the ship to the New World in pieces on another ship, to be assembled at Tortuga. As a result, the frames and keel were marked with numbers (Roman numerals, for class) much as would be seen in an Airfix or Revell model. Erect frame XII next to the XII on the keel. The expedition grew before it left France. (Government projects always do, even in 17th-century France). They built La Belle in Europe, to carry more cargo both on the original ships and from extra capacity on La Belle. The markings remained on the ship’s timber, though.

Figure 8: Timber Markings

They took the timbers to Austin and reassembled La Belle with the pieces they had. The result, 40 percent of the original hull, is now on display at the Bullock Historical Museum there. The cargo and other artifacts found aboard the ship are exhibited near the ship. (Except for the body of the sailor found there. He was interred on February 4, 2004, in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.)

The resulting restoration looks a bit ragged if you are expecting something like the pristine restoration of a World War II PT boat at the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, TX. Yet, to quote Johnny Cash “she’s in good shape, for the shape she’s in.”

Figure 9: On display at the Bullock Museum.

If you are ever in Austin, drop by the Bullock Museum for a look. The total renovation took nearly 20 years from discovery of the wreck to its placement in a museum. That puts the kitchen project you have been sweating the past 10 months in perspective.

To learn more about restoring shipwrecks, or just more about Texas shipwrecks, get a copy of my book, Texas Shipwrecks. You can buy it at Amazon, or the publisher’s (Arcadia) website. Just click the links.