La Belle (ship) - Modern Discovery

Modern Discovery

The wreck lay forgotten for over three hundred years in the dark murky waters of Matagorda Bay. In the 1970s, Kathleen Gilmore of Southern Methodist University analyzed historical accounts of the La Salle shipwrecks, and gave general guidance of where they might be found. In 1977, the Texas Historical Commission (THC), asked an independent researcher to search the archives in Paris for information on the shipwrecks. She found original copies of maps made by La Salle's engineer, Jean-Baptiste Minet. Before Minet returned to France aboard the Joly, he had created detailed maps of Matagorda Bay and the pass and had marked the spot where L'Aimable had sunk. Other researchers discovered additional historical maps, including several that marked La Belle's resting place.

In 1978, Barto Arnold, the State Marine Archaeologist for the Texas Antiquities Committee (predecessor to the Texas Historical Commission) proposed a ten-week search for La Salle's ships. In a magnetometer survey of the area of the bay deemed a high probability to be La Belle's location, the expedition found several more recent shipwrecks. A lack of funding for the next seventeen years stymied further attempts to locate the Belle.

In June 1995 the Texas Historical Commission organized a second magnetometer survey to search high-probability areas not included in earlier surveys. The most important technological development since the original survey was the advent of the differential GPS positioning system, which made navigation and the relocation of targets considerably easier and more accurate. This survey lasted the entire month and utilized a Geometrics 866 proton precession magnetometer which identified 39 ""magnetic features that required further investigation". These were prioritized, and on 5 July 1995 divers were sent to the highest priority location.

During the initial diving operations, a prop-wash blower (metal pipe fitted over the propeller to deflect its force down to the seafloor) was used, ostensibly to improve water visibility by forcing surface water down towards the bottom. It was later decided by the archaeologists that the blower should be turned off as it was visibly damaging the delicate material of the cargo remains. It is not known exactly how much sediment covered the shipwreck at the time of its discovery because the prop-wash blower was deployed before sending divers down. The first team of divers reported feeling musket balls on the seafloor along with loose fragments of wood moving in the current created by the blower. These materials strongly suggested that this was indeed a shipwreck site. During the second dive, archaeologist Chuck Meide discovered a bronze cannon which, when subsequently recovered, proved that this shipwreck was indeed that of the Belle. The cannon was ornately decorated, and bore the crest of King Louis and the Count of Vermandois, the Admiral of France. An illegitimate son of Louis XIV, Vermandois served as Admiral of the French fleet until his death in 1683, meaning the cannon would have been cast no later than 1683, the time when La Salle was preparing for his voyage. This was considered strong circumstantial evidence that the ship was the Belle. A serial number on the gun (and two others found in 1997) was later matched in a French archival record discovered by Dr. John de Bry with the numbers of four bronze cannons that had been loaded onto the Belle, providing definitive proof of the wreck's identity.

The shipwreck may have been known to one or more local watermen before its discovery by archaeologists. During the 1996 excavations, Texas Historical Commission archaeologists observed direct evidence that one of the four bronze cannons known to have been on the Belle had been removed from the wreckage some time before the 1995 discovery of the wreck, possibly decades earlier. It was surmised that this may have been the action of a local shrimper who may have accidentally snagged and recovered the gun in his nets. The whereabouts of this cannon remain a mystery, and no other clear signs of prior artifact recovery were observed on the wreck site.