Scuttled in a Sea of Mystery

Warren White and his son were swimming just off the beach when they saw it.

About 16 feet below them, a mass of coral and rock reared up from the sandy bottom. On top, in plain view, sat two coral-encrusted cannons.

“Look at those guns,” White thought. “Those things are ancient.”

So ancient, in fact, that White and a handful of scholars have come to believe that the wreck is one of Christopher Columbus’ ships, the Vizcaina, abandoned in 1503 during his last voyage.

The indications are intriguing. The location seems to match a description of the scene of the Vizcaina’s scuttling. The cannons are from the right period. So is a piece of pottery.

If true, it would be the first time anyone has found one of the nine ships Columbus lost during his four expeditions to the New World, controversial passages that opened a new continent to exploration and exploitation.

Despite years of research, scholars still aren’t sure what Columbus’ ships looked like, what they carried or how they managed their long voyages. Everything that is known about them comes from written accounts or bureaucratic records sorely lacking in details.

That’s why White’s discovery may be so important. Whether or not it is the Vizcaina--and there is skepticism--the wreck is almost certainly one of the oldest found in this hemisphere.

“There is a big gap in knowledge,” said John de Bry, director of the Center for Historical Archeology, a Florida-based nonprofit group that specializes in ships of the Spanish colonial era. “We know more about the construction of Roman ships than the ships of exploration.”

That also explains why so much controversy now surrounds the wreck, and the people exploring it.

A private group backed by U.S. investors who call themselves “treasure hunters” is excavating the find. While promising to respect the wreck’s historical worth, the group is clear in its intention to make money off it, either through film rights or the selling of artifacts.

Marine archeologists, however, say the group already has badly bungled the recovery, carelessly yanking up artifacts, botching preservation and perhaps destroying evidence that could help solve the mystery of the ship’s identity.

“Maybe it will turn out to be a ship that can be identified with early explorers and conquistadors,” said Donald Keith, an underwater archeologist who has spent years trying to find Columbus’ wrecks. “Whatever it is, it’s important--and we can learn a lot from it, but only if we do it right.

“None of these people know what they’re doing, and they’re shooting themselves in the foot.”

The controversy places White’s discovery squarely in the middle of one of the biggest legal questions of the modern era: the ownership of treasures held by the sea.

There are thousands upon thousands of wrecked ships on the world’s sea bottom, ranging from ancient Greek vessels to the Titanic. As undersea technology has improved, more and more of them have been opened to exploration. Just last month, shipwreck hunter Robert Ballard claimed to have found John F. Kennedy’s World War II patrol boat in the South Pacific.

That means more wrecks have also been exploited for plunder. The problem has grown so serious in recent years that the United Nations launched a drive to better protect shipwrecks. Last year, the U.N. General Assembly gave preliminary approval to the archeological underwater convention, the first of its kind.

In many ways, the controversy over the wreck found in Panama is similar to the one that has attached itself to Columbus: the nature of discovery.

What counts as a discovery? What rights does a discoverer have? Who else shares in them? And what happens to the people or things discovered?

“The storms continue to pursue Columbus’ ships,” said Rafael Ruiloba, director of Panama’s National Cultural Institute.

*

By 1502, Columbus was on his last legs. He was 51. He was suffering from gout. He had failed to find riches or a new route from Europe to the Indian Ocean.

And so he decided to make one more voyage to the Americas from Cadiz, Spain, in four vessels: the Gallega, the Vizcaina, the Capitana and the Santiago. The trip would prove a disaster.

He lost one ship, the Gallega, in the Belen River on Panama’s Caribbean coast as he fled a band of natives angry over his crew’s pillaging of local gold and the imprisonment of their leader and his family.

Columbus headed south, but the Vizcaina was leaking badly, the victim of sea worms that had destroyed its hull. Columbus decided to abandon the Vizcaina. Later, he was marooned in Jamaica and had to abandon his last two ships as well.

Columbus wrote that he scuttled the Vizcaina in Portobelo, the Spanish colony near Playa Damas through which all the gold taken from the Inca empire in Peru would one day pass.

The ship disappeared, literally and figuratively, into obscurity. Five hundred years later, the mystery of its whereabouts would become White’s obsession.

White, a hobby diver and amateur historian, comes from a family of salvagers. His great-uncle, for one, worked for an insurance company, pulling wrecks off reefs in the Florida Keys.

By 1995, the native Floridian had retired from his job as a policeman, moved to Panama and begun nurturing a dream of discovering the Vizcaina.

Given the ambiguous geography in early records, White thought that the ship might have actually been abandoned near modern-day Nombre de Dios, a town near Portobelo that boasted a more convenient harbor to flee from in case of danger.

The quest for the Vizcaina became grist for late-night conversations with friends.

“We’d clink our glasses and say, ‘Nombre de Dios,’ ” said White, whose white hair and portly belly make him resemble a kindly grandfather more than a treasure diver.

At first, White found nothing. Then he noticed a cove near Nombre de Dios called Playa Damas, about 14 miles east of Portobelo. It was similar to the description of the place where the boat was scuttled, on a reef behind two small islands.

In May 1998, White and his son were exploring the cove when White decided to make one last pass in search of lobster for dinner. Instead, he saw the shipwreck. Although White recognized the characteristic straight lines and bulk of an undersea wreck, the cove’s isolation had apparently kept the wreck secret for hundreds of years.

He contacted the Panamanian government but got no response.

“They said they weren’t interested in an old Spanish wreck,” White said.

The wreck seemed destined to be abandoned a second time.

That’s when Marine Investigations of the Isthmus came into the picture.

*

Last October, White bumped into Nilda Vasquez outside the sailboat he lives on near Portobelo.

Vasquez had run a diving tour business in the area for years and worked as a volunteer for the local office of the cultural institute.

White’s story interested her. She, too, had Vizcaina fever, having looked for the wreck intensively during 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the New World.

She immediately thought that Marine Investigations, which had hired her son as its local representative, might be able to fund the exploration.

The group, backed by U.S. investors, was very interested in finding treasure off Panama’s coast. It had signed a deal to do so with the cultural institute in May 2000.

If the group found treasure, the Panamanian government would get 35% of the proceeds. The government could also opt to buy anything the group found, provided that it paid fair market value.

But the group’s investors suddenly realized that a Columbus shipwreck would be a bonanza.

The investors said, “ ‘So what if it’s a Columbus ship?’ I said, ‘If it is, we’ve got the richest ship in the world,’ ” said Isaac Nunn, who represents the investors.

Nunn, who called the investors “treasure hunters,” declined to identify them or say how many were involved. He would say only they were a “wealthy group” able to put up as much as $2 million for the excavation, including site security and preservation tanks to hold any artifacts.

He portrayed the exploration as good for the Panamanian government. The investors put up the money, he said, while the government reaped the benefit.

“It’s a good deal,” Nunn said.

That’s not how many Panamanians saw it, however. News of the discovery and the deal behind it caused an uproar once it became public in December.

The local press questioned whether Vasquez had any undue influence in obtaining the contract for Marine Investigations. She denied having any.

There were also questions about the terms of the deal. How to determine the worth of a cannon from one of Columbus’ ships? And where would the state get the money to buy back the artifacts?

Later that month, Ruiloba’s government cultural office declared the site a cultural patrimony. Nothing of historical value would leave.

But that declaration hasn’t dissuaded the company from believing that it still can force the government to pay the group for the artifacts it wants to keep.

Nunn said the investors are confident they can work out a deal on any disputed items. And he dismissed concerns that historical artifacts would be sold off. He said the group was focused on making money from film rights.

He didn’t rule out, however, that the group might sell off surplus artifacts--for instance, if 10,000 gold coins are found, some will go to a museum and the rest will be sold.

White, who is a partner in the group, also said that extra items could be sold off.

White, Vasquez and Nunn all said they were doing everything possible to excavate the site in an archeologically sound way, noting that they had built preservation tanks for the artifacts and were working with the cultural institute.

*

Playa Damas is a beautiful, isolated place. Waves scud against the beach, surrounded by palms, sea grape trees and a few homes.

The wreck, which lies about 100 feet offshore, has yielded evidence that it could be Columbus’ ship.

First, the ship had a large number of early 16th century cannons, some of them loaded, as if on the defensive. White believes that they might have been stripped from the Gallega. Second, the anchors appeared to be resting amidships, as if they had been placed there to weigh down the vessel to scuttle it.

Rigging chains also indicated that the ship was square-rigged, as it is believed the Vizcaina was. Also, stone cannonballs and a bronze canister that served as a loading charge were used in the 16th century.

The strongest piece of evidence may be a small shard of pottery that appears to date the wreck to at least the first half of the 1500s.

“I am convinced,” Ruiloba said. He said he had already been offered money for a cannon, which he turned down.

Others are more skeptical. Keith, a leading expert in the field, has visited the site and seen some of the artifacts.

He said he’s doubtful that the ship is the Vizcaina, although he can’t rule it out without further investigation.

The most damning evidence is a neck from a recovered ceramic vessel, shaped in a way that didn’t appear until toward the middle of the 16th century.

Keith said the excavation operation was poorly planned and executed. A detailed site plan wasn’t drawn up. Artifacts were prematurely pulled from the sea floor. Preservation tanks were inadequate, leading to the possibility that some artifacts might decay.

“Extravagant claims require extravagant evidence,” Keith said. “If you want this to be a particular ship, you have to prove it. They have absolutely nothing, not one piece of evidence, that says this is the Vizcaina.”

White, however, has no doubt that he has found the object of his long obsession.

He hopes that most of the artifacts will find their way to a museum, and that his find will be the latest discovery attached to a ship whose history of discovery stretches back 500 years.

“To be able to put your hands on a ship of exploration. Think of that,” he said. “These ships are the reason we’re here.”