El Triunfante: The Biggest Shipwreck Ever Discovered In Spain | Triunfante | Timeline

[Applause] [Applause] in the middle of the 18th century under the rule of King Fernando the sixth a major reform of the state begins the Navy is the key to the Spanish colonial rule and it needs the technological renovation in order to compete against England the struggle for global hegemony is disputed in the seas [Music] the Gulf of roses two centuries later an archaeological expedition is aimed at studying the vestiges of a great ship founding exporters [Music] vitas the boat from the center for underwater archaeology of Catalonia is the base of operations for the excavation this time it is very close to the coast in front of the beach of San para Pescador in the site that could be that of the triumph and in a Spanish ship of the line that sank at the end of the 18th century [Music] let's go excavation of the Triomphe ante was carried out during the years 2008 2009 even 2010 the goal was to carry out a study of naval architecture we knew that the ship was built using the system of Jorge Kwan and we wanted to study through archaeology this constructive system it had never been done before and we had the fortune of having a boat built with this system sunk in the Gulf of roses if this is actually the triumphant a it will be the first study of a ship built following the groundbreaking designs of one of the most important ship designers the 18th century more developer the memory of the existence of the tree Infante was present among the fishermen and divers from the Gulf of roses directly to the other category but the archaeological institutions began to be aware of this archaeological cycle in the beginning of the 1980s when some local divers communicated it to the center for underwater archeology of Catalonia [Music] however many years before communicating the presence of the ships of the archaeologists local fishermen were already aware of its existence in the Gulf of Roses three friends from roses had a leading role in its discovery Salvador Guerra pack or Falco and Carlos Panama in lasagna Singh went now in the 1950s my father talks with the fishermen from roses in order to point out all the sunken ships in the bay which they knew because of the hooks and then a fisherman from some ferry Pescador told him about the tree Infante he already knew that the ship was a tree on funding and gave the signs to my father then we started to check history books and my father realized that the tree Infante was a very important ship along to the Admiral gravina muy important from the stuff where tourism company with the help of a colleague from Brussels the son of a historian and collector he found plans and objects at home and after discussing it with his father he told me that it was possible that an important ship from the Spanish Navy was something that on the beach so one day we took a small plane and we examine the entire Bay and then over the beach we saw a large dark patch in samples and we thought that it could be the tree on fancy the sky at that time fisherman or divers like myself has no GPS or similar devices so we had to use signs on the ground or nothing else we took some signs from a small plane and then we went to sea with one of my fishing boats and we were stunned by what we saw that evil kamma sparrows we're located on ilha there were plenty of talons who'd counted about fourteen there was even one that was starting over tikal and I said this will be useful to lure the boat cool a very middle of this year old boy the first news I had of the trip on tape was related to my longstanding friendship with Salvador Guerra his father is David Arizona because we had documented all the hopes that the fishermen were reporting his elemental that hindered the tasks of trolling in setting the nets and fishing lines under some volcano see the kilometer shows us polymers or for Vollmar Miguel de Brad our garlic we tell Levi practices official archaeologists but the people to seal the Girona asked sabado to take photographs of the elements from the tape over the years those elements one element was the country's house on ass Castilla in cantos where the excavations had discovered some important iberian archaeological remains and the other element was a ship to Infante in front of some map tiempo es to be exactly located from the playable demos before that time we didn't know for sure where it was located salvador guerra asked me i could take photos of these two important with my cameras photos like it's those all immense important so we did see if the SE means this site was already known we knew that there was a big sunken ship in front of San Beda Pescador and thanks to the sign of pakka Falco and Salvador Guerra we relocated the ship and started the excavation one of us is a scholar field teenager with them yes people it [Music] many of the sunken ships in the costa brava have been plundered tourism and lacks legislation made these boats and easy prey until the 80s of the 20th century oh three Infante very close to the coast is the paradigm of this plundering wonder when we located the ship again in 2008 we found a spectacular ship a large vessel with all its building systems but at the same time a very plundered ship you just consider that it was a ship with 68 cannons and we have only been able to document a single Canada during the three excavation campaigns the Triomphe and it has been the target of neighbors tourists and above all collectors from all over Europe eager to get their hands on all of its objects for years it suffered from plundering and despite the board of underwater archaeology as Coronas maritime province requesting more surveillance and even applying for a license for archaeological intervention of the site the problem was not resolved amateur divers kept on plundering it rough anos offended during the sixties and seventies the wreck of the tree Infante suffered an intensive extraction of archaeological material by local ferryman and divers there are fauna in the early eighties archaeological expeditions knew about the existence of this ship and the first prospecting was carried out using a new electronic device which had just been purchased a magnetometer that allowed the ship to be located with precision of their turf under the periodicals for the first time Salvador and I'd touch the trim phantom with our hands but they are none we'll be going to the beach with all the equipment's of lucky you know damn bees and swimming from the shore to the shape of a bludger fiends law particle being quite precarious conditioners popular in gaddy's when we dived there we saw some sort of hole and we could touch some Roman numerals we saw that it was evidently the proud and the or in the same way on exploring the site with our limited equipment we saw the stern dollar we saw a bronze piece finished in the shape of the sphere standing out of the sand and later we learnt inevitable that it was the Stern's Lantern posterior Amenti later on in 1977 we carried out regular visits to check the state of the wreck paseo en Casa Tatiana star II continued I mean and we always found people and tourists swimming over the angles window guests arrived and we realized that the ship was being plundered we are going to run defend in an under usually undergo civilian FEMA in Northeast it was then that myself Falco and several local divers decided to communicate it to the City Council use your local money EE on them we went there recovered two cannons and delivered them to the City Council the cannons are now in the Citadel of roses nervous every time we went there and we extracted one cannon well we got four cameras five six or seven explorations I don't know exactly we often went there because we like to be there in that environment it's very exciting for a diver to be over a ship with cannons propellant we enjoyed that a lot but we stopped taking chemical because we also noticed that no one in the town specified what had it be done with those cannons at the end of and I said that they were going to get lost or legally valid I saw how some of them ended up in a public library so I thought that maybe they were better conserved under the water and we could always go there to see them as long as it didn't tell the 1970s a sunken ship that was considered a deposit of archaeological material and it was thought to belong to the discovery dealer controller with the arrival of sport diving from the 1950s a trafficking business of archaeological pieces began and some of them were auctioned abroad converse orinda when you realize that a piece you've touched and that you think it is very important and well-protected by mud I nature speed auctions in Germany it generates a feeling of frustration but there is a frustration already felt many years ago and already the conscience that we were living in a very backward country in what authorities are indolent and don't take responsibility of protecting our heritage it creates a feeling of helplessness in a malasada it is sad that our country does not care for what it's part of our history by law not a studier change of mentality took place at the end of the seventies in the early eighties when the sunken ship began to be seen as a historical document or more there for me as a crucial and essential instrument in order to know our history and therefore our culture do not fear and so as a historical document it's a public ownership earlier in 1974 the first official intervention in the ship was performed the Navy diving center brought the salvage vessel Poseidon in order to explore and evaluate the archaeological remains posterior mente in later on in 1974 the Poseidon ship came and carried out the first campaign over the trim phantom this is your Daniel at that time I used to have a Land Rover and I remember that I helped them by providing materials from the beach because they had to use machines and many things had to be carried from the beach because the boat was close to impossible Sidon was a tugboat with a depth of 5 meters and the tree Infante was 4 meters deep and for this reason Poseidon could not reach it no be placed over the size yes again I supported them by guiding them to the site teaching them everything I had seen and then helping them with my fishes on these markers carrying people and objects that had to be moved from the small boat to the ship and this was our support [Music] the annual philosopher of archeology has clearly shown us the plundering that a ship has suffered over the years we have to bear in mind that the entire prow was torn off what game was undeveloped all of them but we could even document the nails that were used to fix it Delilah's honor the whole area of the mast has also torn off probably to preserve materials of the compartment explosives which we were easily able to document with the Lord there via archeology showed the great harm that the wreck of the Triomphe ante has suffered since I can be that were invited to be there we thought we were privileged yards we saw the entire operation as an absolutely professional location and naturally we felt the thrill of seeing a big piece emerging we didn't know if they tore it off or if it was part of a loose piece Malibu members who had no idea they extracted that piece in the same way that the cannons were extracted it was a pity that the Stern's Lantern was not extracted as well after exhibiting the four sides Stan land the rest of the pieces in Cartagena in June 1975 the Navy get on to the maritime museum of Barcelona [Music] but what was the tree Infanta doing in roses what was the reason behind its tragic ending January 1795 the war of the convention between Spain and the revolutionary France began one year ago the French armies have occupied vegara and they are besieging the Citadel of roses [Music] the only support comes from the sea where a naval squadron commanded by lieutenant general Federico Gravina is trying to break the siege for several weeks the squadron has endured numerous storms and battles that have produced much damage on the ships [Music] one of these ships is the Triomphe ante the night of January the 5th to the 6th 1795 they experienced the largest storm and the triumphant a loses its mooring lines and has to seek refuge in the open sea since it doesn't have any anchor left look at me damn it captain Yaya Vincente young yes is not on board he's infinity KO Gravina shimmer and the captain in charge decided to seek refuge on the high sea has he in the wind and storm push it along the coastline of the Gulf of roses and he finds that the course takes the ship towards the coast in Mont Greek a rocky coastline where the ship and crew will almost inevitably be lots of young exactly like you therefore the solution is to run aground on the beaches some parry pescado Livan analyst on the morning of January 6th 1795 Raveena sees from roses how the three Infante has run aground on the beach of samba de pescador and commands that everything must be disembarked from the ship cannons ammunition etc you know me woman as the tree Infanta was thinking of the army began to recover every possible thing vessels and carriages carried the objects weapons were brought to Cartagena thus the ship was abandoned with the abandonment of the ship a process of degradation began storms sea organisms and the inhabitants of the area were the main causes slowly the sea swallowed it [Music] Olivia Pope the ship suffered significant plundering during the 60s and 70s furthermore see this ship is 6 meters deep run aground in the sand and this means that the storms cover and uncover it with sand which generates mechanical effect on the remains infamous for the plundering and the mechanical effect left the ship in deplorable conditions in the details but despite this fact it preserved its entire structure virtually its entire length and breadth I may be Escobar Theon during the excavation and precisely on December 26th of the year 2008 a very strong storm occurred along the entire coastline of Catalonia see what well but it moved all the sediment lengths of all the sand of the sea bed in laniel in the year 2009 I went to do the field work we found that two meters of sand had settled over the site where we had worked the previous year but at llegada our union to get to the site and annexed the archaeological level we had to use some industrial grudges in order to remove the great violence and to be able to document the ship which had been is so easy to work on a year before [Music] in order to remove the vast amount of sand the archaeologists used an industrial dredge adapted to archaeological work in this way they drew out the three meters of sediments and deposited them far from the site it took nearly two weeks of digging to reach the remains of the ship [Music] working six hours a day two teams of four archeologists collaborated to operate the dredge that had to extract all the sand from the site [Music] when the first remains appeared they began to work with suction hoses these hoses enable the sediments that cover the architecture of the ship to be carefully removed in order to discover the archaeological objects they are also necessary to keep the site free of the sand that the sea currents deposit and you ended off in terms of fieldwork this ship allowed us to perform a lot of team work as it is a very big vessel Yoga Thea was set up and what we did was to remove the sediments that cover the remains we wanted to study as any hockey or just would do and then document these two teams work together one removing the sediments and the other documenting the object since the size of the ship allowed us to do that [Music] and I think that the Center for underwater archaeology of Catalonia we work with suction houses the technique is very simple from the ship CETIS pressured air is sent to the working depth level of the site again theta this air reaches the working depth level the earlier and reaches an expansion chamber Yoga nadir also else and this air as you know increases its volume when it loses depth against that area the boiler if we Lock this ascending air inside a tube [Music] then we generate the stream of suction that we need to remove the set amount of speed as the suction hose system runs this way we need to direct this suction for that we use a flexible tube which helps us to direct the suction and thus extract the sediment within the site algorithm what's going on now that you've seen out suction hoses work let's see the trimming panty the ship where we'll work today will make to diving drugs the first team in which Roberto DK and Paul who work an hour and a half of work even someone and the second Maria Jose as we are IDO an amazing also an hour and a half of work okay don't Manila doesn't feel we have to suction hoses to put one at the junction between the frames and the or log deck Paola that by all case on obvious avail they are and you know with the original floor of the ships holes allow availa promising I think with a Ramona another star Allah then we'll unload the sediment far from the side facing the portside okay II walnut laminar and another hose with clean spaces between the frames in Phyllis whatever I've endured by prefer out with you and let us here we must clean very carefully now let me Apollo bumper yeah if we find archaeological material it will be precisely right here by in these spaces between the frames always start from the keel and work towards the ends of the bottom okay [Music] if you funky is Buttrey infancy is a ship from the Enlightenment period water a ship that was launched in 1755 as a result of a new policy of the Spanish state which was aware that the Spanish Armada had become obsolete in other the renewal plan of the Navy Minister Marquez Diller Ensenada counted on the best scientists in the country among them the most prominent was jorge quani santa Celia known in Europe as the Spanish sage Jorge Quan was considered the most important Spanish scientist at the 18th century member of the Order of Malta and trained at the academy of marine guards of Cadiz he was an engineer a mathematician and a great navigator in the year 1749 Marquez Villa Ensenada Minister of Finance and the war of King Fernando vi commissioned jorge juan a delicate espionage mission in the british arsenals he sent scale models drawings books and machinery from london but above all he recruited 80 english and irish technicians for the spanish crown these people with their families moved clandestine lee to spain in order to work in the new naval program okay Kwan and su misión during his espionage mission in London Jorge Huang adopted different identities the first known identity is that of a French book seller called Monsieur Hodler honk lassie will Nala second out of a Sephardic Jew mr. Joshua and and the third would probably be that of a menorquin sailor and at that time Anoka was under British rule for the weddings Luther is one introduces a new way of conceiving and building ships in Spain under stream Fanta is one of the first vessels created with this new philosophy with this new naval engineering knowledge largely imported from England so it marks a milestone for shipbuilding inspections in our list [Music] now listen you little particles of logic 141 design of ships is his own design view but in fact one might speak of a hybridization unit of Spanish and English dimensions and sheikhs English it is the result of his espionage mission in England but also of his dialogues with Ricardo root in order to develop his designs whole cake one had the collaboration and experience of Richard Routh this important builder recruited in London became the director of naval construction in the shipyards of Baron headland fronting a from Marvel Cahokia Kwan conceived the triumphant a ship based on the English model builder and this is the great contribution of this ship cinnabar : however the infighting and the political situation the project meant that later on this english project were also adopted contributions from the French and Spanish native tradition I mean the dodgiest there are details that are not reflected in the documentation for example the arrangement of the tree now is to attach the frames with the skin or for example the way the keel is built Alice in archeology documents it will meander locally that the documentation of trium Fantine had two aspects on one side the documentation of the large ship one of the biggest ships started in the country and at the same time it had to be a very precise dosia was thought as we wanted to fully understand jorge Hawaiians constructed system and we need to keep in mind that this ship was built in 1755 but sank in 1795 and jorge kwan system was used for a short time especially during the time of construction of the ship so we had the research how the early system of the boat was at the same time during its active life some parts of it were remade factored at the dock of party generally finna so we also had a document them archaeologically and separate them from Jorge Juan's constructive system for the scale presentation or plan imagery they first marked the parts of the ship this marking allowed them to have a reference that identifies and distinguishes each of these pieces laburnum a very acceptable anymore drawing method was chosen for planimetric this was done using a drawing structure a frame of six meters by four meters which covers an area of 24 square meters this allows the simultaneous work of two archeologists carrying out the floor plan in the case of sections and elevations which along with the floor plan give us the three-dimensional information about the remains of the shin we used an underwater laser system this is a similar system to the one used on land but applied to the aquatic environment our main problem was the large size of this wreck about 50 meters of preserved length by more than 10 meters frets this makes a study area of 670 square meters of open exact video that required moving the drawing frame of 28 times settlement then follow this table of Mithila subsequently all this documentation manually compiled in the field is digitized and vectorized using a computer drawing program this allows later on to study the naval architecture and to create three-dimensional reconstruction of the ship has been the focal component then in photography was also used as a complement to the manual drawing method we photographed all the rest' ages of the ship with metric references this enabled us to compose a photo mosaic of the entire site in addition detailed photographs of distinctive or characteristic items will also take 200 years later some items still remain at the site one of the challenges will be their recovery between the Timbers of the holes floor one of the archaeologists has found the remains of a musket a layer of buildup produced by the interaction of ions corrosion and sea organisms covers the weapon and keeps it attached to the wood it must be extracted very carefully at the same time the second group of archaeologists continues the planetary of floor plans and sections the archaeologists actually hit the layer of build up in order to separate the musket from the wood sudden moving could break it once detached it is immobilized for transport using a lifting balloons - archeologists bring a musket to the surface [Music] [Music] [Applause] when it reaches the port one of the most delicate moments of the excavation begins the transport of archaeological material once extracted from the site the pieces should be always kept in water momentarily for the transfer some objects can be removed from the water but they should be kept moist until their arrival of the laboratory in the harbor logical most people think that our archaeological work is mainly underwater but in fact it's divided into three stages of logical fieldwork when we indeed work underwater which is 40% of the total archaeological work then the authority work and then the library research and study of the pieces which completes the work put it upside down the big on the top that's it the laboratory of the Center for underwater archaeology of Catalonia located in Girona is a model for the study and restoration of archaeological pieces here the restorers carry out different processes of restoration of the different objects found during the excavation campaigns I live in front engine control at the dream fan page we have some various objects from the crew a few weapons moment or objects belonging to the ship aya Chris there are organic objects such as wood and leather and rosewood and non-organic objects such as iron bronze and lead archaeological objects arrived at the lab with different problems due to the long period of time that they have been submerged some are covered with a layer of very hard build up or having crustaceans of different into vertebrate organisms that cover its surface the forever novelist's one of these into vertebrates are mollusks that live in the wood and perforate it creating large limestone galleries that destroy the structure of the ships the conservators carry out chemical and mechanical cleaning of the part in order to remove the deposit on its surface they use different cleaning instruments from precision tools to household objects [Music] the pieces remain submerged for months in freshwater tanks where the conservators get information about the desalinization process through regular checks of the salt concentration the salsa cumulation over so many years will slowly dissolve archaeological wood after centuries under the sea has lost all the cellulose that originally held its structure now only water retains the shape of the wood organic materials are preserved until the present time because they are saturated with water if we remove them from the water they suffer irreversible degradation using different techniques the conservators perform a controlled drying in order to ensure the preservation of the piece and its subsequent exhibition in museums one of the procedures for drying organic material such as wood is liable ization archaeological pieces are frozen and later introduced into a vacuum chamber where the frozen water of the piece goes from the solid state to gaseous state through a sublimation process this way the shape of the object is preserved another conservation process is the PDG saturation the pieces are immersed in a solution of water and synthetic wax polyethylene glycol to a temperature close to 60 degrees Celsius the concentration of this wax will be increased gradually thus the resulting solution replaces the water inside the wood and preserves the shape of the object for the treatment of the ferrous materials of the 3m fan thick they use electrolysis which consists in applying low-voltage electricity through the piece in order to remove the layer of buildup and stop the oxidation process [Music] once the different processes of restoration and conservation are completed the objects extracted from the Triomphe and they are ready to be exhibited as one alt-rock a Quan creates a new construction masks are placed on the combination of the English building system and the French Spanish building system of view it's a different building system that takes the best of each technique and makes a revolution you're creating different and better ships in within the building tradition of the 18th century of Italy yet the telescope giving the English construction details breaking up with the Spanish tradition are on the one hand the joints of the different pieces in the keel changing its horizontal disposition into a vertical one the addition of a great piece that goes from the prow to the stern on the top of the keel which is called dead wood may be the removal of the empty spaces between the frames resulting in a much more solid and compact construction I mean and also of the spaces between the different elements of a frame just look at the addition of filler pieces that they call raucous invertible theoretically speaking it the only can indeed see these big different ways but what we aim to do in our study of the three Infante was to understand archaeologically at the practical level how this construction system was implemented or throws it as other construction details are mediating the half timber and the prow and the stern because instead of floor timbers from the stern for my big pieces in the shape of a V assorted other one so I mean do sir and then above all the use of tree nails instead of iron nails said early loosely secure the sheathing of the hull amid the closing the most criticized object by Spanish builders is it illigal it was difficult to implement jorge qualms construction system in the spanish shipyard in any way that it was offensive that we should bear in mind that for cake one brought a group of British shipbuilders from England many of them Irish who only spoke English or gaily or neuronal in water but not any language at the Iberian Peninsula olara days regard Gordon young Cosette laws were cautious than we were this made it very difficult to explain the methods of the new construction systems for the master builders opinion Cavallo seqable I stole my soda Rivera working on the ships with their own hand if they spin light up pretty but mean this system mainly followed an English construction sister Phyllis business Sofia so it used three nails to attach the pieces nicely the reader and the master-builders at the spanish shipyards were used to working with nails a union of wood with wood was not typical at the Iberian Peninsula noreda bravia they love Anita lately originally and following the English construction technique imported by Korsak one the most important pieces of the Triomphe and they were attached by tree nails and can still be found at the site political and technical changes caused the replacement of these three nails with iron nails in some parts of the ship the iron nails have disappeared due to oxidation with regularly distributed holes allow us to detect them to make the planimetric easier we have to highlight them using marking elements listen Yoda Facundo selected precursor Hawaiians general design was not criticized Lucas in principle it was good so the targets of the criticism were the English constructive details good wine guna anything because they break up with the Spanish tradition of construction and my strands a conservator the union of the master builders had to get used to a new way of buildings illest with your study of the vessel shows that the term Fanta was conceived using the English model of amalgam but also that throughout the construction process and during the 40 years of its life until the sinking in 1795 it underwent significant changes that the Cavia both as I said during the construction and hull shaping as well as after the reforms made throughout its active life some in katakana for example they added a copper sheathing the important parts of the wooden sheathing were changed as well as some structural parts archaeology shows this development was regarding the concept and the maintenance of the ship why was a system that provided important technical innovations not consolidated what happened why did it fall into disuse I mean there's a miss at the center in middle 1754 and Marquis de la Ensenada falls out of favor mr. Biddle omean and the critics of the minister and of the English construction system in bathin try to change this new structural tradition in Spain from doing this but for them music therefore in 1755 your changes begin a reversion back to the Spanish methods and an abandonment of some English practices and above all in the year 1763 Francois Gautier arrives from France to take charge of Spanish shipbuilding in and he removes all English practices and imposes the French methods of construction with the fall of the Marquess Jorge Quan and his naval program will be progressively discarded faced with this situation he decides to go back to Cadiz and resume his duties of the director of the Academy of the marine guard if your funding in the tree Infante is a failed project of the Enlightenment it's a project that sought to build a new Spanish Armada with completely new techniques essentially imported from England in embargo and then however was not a complete because it became a hybrid work of all the French and Spanish systems of construction we were very similar underwater archaeology identified which of his parts belong to each of these traditions that wasn't a problem of this construction system was its implementation we have to consider that it was a progress that people of that time were probably not prepared to accept me [Music] today the trim faulty remains protected by sea sediments even though there are still many sites to explore in our Coast many ships many stories that are waiting to surf it's a game Sunday you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 783,914

Keywords: Netflix for history, Spain, Timeline - World History Documentaries, ancient artifacts, ancient ship construction, historical display, historical maritime wreckage, historical naval battles, historical ship excavation, historical shipwrecks, historical significance, history service, maritime culture, maritime excavation, maritime exploration, maritime treasures, museum displays, naval warfare history, underwater excavation methods, underwater preservation, underwater recovery

Id: oZUfkWau6zE

Length: 50min 56sec (3056 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2017