- 6/13/2025
The culmination of a 20-year search for a ship lost under the command of the French explorer La Salle in the 1680s.
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00:00During the following program, look for NOVA's webmarkers which lead you to more information at our website.
00:17In the age of discovery, ships sailing to North America carried with them the dreams of would-be conquerors.
00:25None was more daring than the 17th century French explorer, Robert Cavalier de La Salle.
00:38La Salle's destination was the mouth of the Mississippi River.
00:43From there, he would push inland to claim the vast center of the continent for France and bring wealth and glory to himself.
00:55But La Salle would never reach his destination.
01:00And for over 300 years, the fate of his final voyage was lost to time.
01:06In a shallow bay hundreds of miles from the Mississippi, La Salle's ship has, at last, resurfaced, uncovering a tale of bold ambition and tragic failure.
01:21The remains of an expedition stopped by misfortune and foiled by the fury of nature.
01:31Now, brought to light after more than three centuries, are thousands of precious objects.
01:41For trade, colonization, and warfare.
01:46Cargo meant to build an empire that could have changed the course of history.
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03:08In Matagorda Bay, off the Texas coast, archaeologists from the Texas Historical Commission are on the trail of a legendary shipwreck.
03:18Somewhere in these 400 square miles, by the remnants of a vessel sailed by the famed French explorer, Robert Cavalier de La Salle.
03:32But La Salle's ship, lost since the 17th century, remains elusive.
03:38I spent the last 20 years of my career looking for this shipwreck.
03:43I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to find this old La Salle ship in my lifetime.
03:48It was 1995, and archaeologist Curtis Tunnell decided to give it one last try, sending divers down to explore a few promising sites.
03:59The first one the divers went down on, they began to find lead musket balls and fragments of wooden casks.
04:08And while that wasn't conclusive, we thought this just might be it.
04:11It was an astounding piece of luck, and the divers quickly headed down for another look.
04:21I was on the second dive of the day, and I was leading that team.
04:25And we were down there, searching around, and you have to understand, it's just, it's as black as midnight.
04:30I mean, there's no visibility at all. It's just so silty.
04:32And you feel around the bottom, you can't see a thing.
04:35You know, I put my hand on it, I knew, you know, it was something big, and I put my hand right on the dolphin.
04:40You know, as soon as I put my hand on that, the first thing I thought was, oh man, this, this is something.
04:49It seemed to be a dolphin-shaped handle, the tell-tale sign of a 17th century cannon.
04:57But in these murky waters, appearances are deceptive.
05:00Only by hauling it to the surface can the Texas Historical Commission be certain of their find.
05:12The massive crane needed for the job can't arrive soon enough.
05:17The cannon likely weighs nearly half a ton and must be raised with great care.
05:23Any false move could destroy other precious artifacts hidden in the water below.
05:35The divers move in to secure the crane's long cable to straps around the cannon.
05:42They know that when it breaks the surface, no longer supported by the bay water,
05:47the cannon will be at its most vulnerable.
05:53So on the other end, I'm going to have a explosion.
05:55They know that there is a mix of metal.
05:56I think about the
06:23Let's go.
06:53All right.
07:06Look at the decoration, highly decorated with the canvas leaf stuff here.
07:13There's a band of lettering that's mostly obscured here.
07:17Another decoration here, the lifting handles are actually in the shape of dolphins, cast
07:22in the shape of dolphins, with a lot of decoration on the breach, and this is just the style of
07:28gun that we would expect to have on LaSalle's personal ship.
07:34While heavily obscured, the bronze cannon appears to have a noble French heritage.
07:39But the archaeologists can't be sure that this is LaSalle's cannon until they can decipher
07:46its markings.
07:46Back in a lab in Corpus Christi, centuries of encrustation will be stripped away in an
07:59electrolytic bath.
08:03Months of cleaning reveals the crest of Louis XIV, the grand monarch of France in the late
08:1017th century.
08:11Another emblem narrows the window of time even further, the seal of the Comte de Vemondois,
08:20Admiral of the French Navy from 1669 to 1683.
08:26During this time, there was only one French expedition to the Gulf of Mexico.
08:30This cannon clearly belonged to LaSalle.
08:42Robert Cavalier de LaSalle was born in 1643 in Rouen, in northern France.
08:49Here he is memorialized for his exploits as a young explorer.
08:53At the age of 23, LaSalle left a cloistered life in the Jesuit order for more worldly pursuits,
09:02hoping to make his fortune in the new world.
09:04LaSalle was a very perplexing person.
09:15He was both a man of religion, he spent nine years with the Jesuits, and an adventurer, often
09:21accused of greed and treating his companions very badly.
09:28The young adventurer set off for the region of Canada, known as New France, where men could
09:34amass great wealth through the fur trade.
09:37Soon, he had his sights on another goal, to be the first European to chart the entire course
09:44of the Mississippi River.
09:46It took years, but in April of 1682, he reached the Mississippi Delta, and claimed it in the
09:53name of Louis XIV.
09:57It was an audacious move, for Spain had already staked its claim to the region.
10:01With LaSalle's expedition, France hoped to gain a strong position for competing with the two
10:10other great powers already established on the continent, with England and with Spain.
10:19King Louis was so pleased by the Mississippi conquest, that he agreed to back LaSalle's
10:24next, more ambitious endeavor, to establish a grand French colony at the mouth of the river.
10:34At the Cordery Royale, built by the King to outfit ships of discovery, preparations for
10:39the voyage got underway.
10:44Most of the people recruited for expeditions were professional sailors.
11:02They were picked from among the cod fishermen, who were used to this route westward into the
11:06Atlantic, and they wanted to obtain land.
11:12There were about 300 people in all, coming from diverse backgrounds.
11:18LaSalle's first voyage was a voyage of discovery and exploration.
11:24He had a team of well-trained, tough men on that trip.
11:29The second voyage was a voyage of settlement, and he had a town full of people who were not
11:35particularly trained or tough, and they had to have food and shelter and protection.
11:45At the port of La Rochelle, on the west coast of France, four ships were loaded with provisions.
11:54In July of 1684, they set off for a two-month voyage across the Atlantic.
12:04The Jolie, a French naval warship, was to protect the expedition.
12:10The Aimeable, a large merchant vessel, carried most of its supplies.
12:16The St. Francois, a small catch, was packed with food and live animals.
12:22And the Belle, designed to explore coastal waters.
12:27This shallow hull would make the turbulent ocean voyage even rougher.
12:33This kind of ocean voyage would have been difficult for trained seamen, but it was especially
12:38difficult for the colonists.
12:40They were living under incredible, cramped, miserable conditions.
12:45There were shortages of food and water.
12:48When they were sick, much of the time, there was fear about what lay ahead on the ocean and
12:53then when they made landfall in the New World.
12:58The voyage started well enough, as La Salle's young aide, Henri Jutel, noted in his journal.
13:07Only two of our men died among the more than 50 who were sick.
13:11The ship's officers said it had been a long time since they had had such a fortunate crossing.
13:17But as they neared the New World, their fortune began to change.
13:24The St. Francois, carrying food and livestock, was separated from the rest of the expedition
13:31and captured by pirates.
13:34The three remaining vessels continued their journey into the Gulf of Mexico.
13:40The mouth of the Mississippi was clearly but erroneously marked on maps of the period.
13:46These maps, although they measured latitude with sufficient accuracy, were entirely incorrect
13:55concerning longitude.
14:00And this caused serious navigation problems for La Salle, trying to locate the mouth of
14:05the Mississippi.
14:06The maps showed the river lying much further to the west, several hundred miles further
14:13to the west.
14:17His flawed maps led La Salle toward what is now the Texas coast, nearly 400 miles from
14:24the Mississippi Delta.
14:27That was his first and most fatal mistake.
14:32Upon sighting land, La Salle directed his three ships toward a large bay, which he believed
14:39was an estuary of the Mississippi.
14:41At least one of his ships would never leave these waters.
14:47Three hundred years later, archaeologists are trying to determine which of La Salle's ships
14:53lies wrecked in Matagorda Bay.
14:55The answer lies below, if they can locate and measure the outer edges of the ship's hull.
15:04In these murky waters, the divers can see little.
15:08The archaeologists on deck see even less.
15:11It was really frustrating at times to be on deck rather than in the water taking the measurements
15:16myself.
15:17The divers and I had a good working relationship, but still, you just kind of want to get in
15:21there and take the measurements and deal with it and get the information.
15:25But we realized that it was important to have the job divided into two parts.
15:30So the divers went down and did probing and did measurements, came up and reported that
15:33information, and then I recorded it.
15:36And bit by bit, we were able to begin to piece together the outline of the ship.
15:42We've been able to go along the west side and determine that we've got about 40 feet of
15:52articulated hull structure on that side, and about 25 feet of articulated hull structure
15:56on the east side.
15:58We're still trying to determine whether we've got the bow or the stern at each end, but we
16:03do have good narrowing of the hull, and we feel that we're very, very close to determining
16:07both the bow and the stern, although we're not sure yet which is which.
16:14Until the divers find both ends of the ship, they can't be certain of its length or its
16:20identity.
16:21Is it curving off at this radical angle?
16:25It is curving off at that radical angle.
16:26I think it is because that's where the hull is approaching the stern post.
16:30Yep, I agree.
16:31And I've tried to dig deep down, right where that screw eye is, so there's about three
16:38feet of the stern post there.
16:39Excellent.
16:40Gosh, we couldn't ask for better than that.
16:42I'm the hot dog.
16:45All right, Guy, well you were in the water for a while.
16:47Let's get you out.
16:50Locating the stern and later the bow, the team finds that the wreck is roughly 51 feet
16:56long.
16:57It may be enough information to identify the ship, if they can find this measurement in
17:02historical records.
17:05At the Cordery Royale, the Royal Shipbuilding Center, fragile documents from over 300 years
17:11ago are still preserved, including records of La Salle's sleek coastal vessel, the Bell.
17:18In this first register, we find the records of the commissions held in Rochefort concerning
17:25the construction of vessels, rafts and so on, beginning July 1, 1682.
17:33In the register, we find a reference to the Bell.
17:37Shipping capacity, 40 to 45 tons.
17:40We have the length of the keel, with the entire description of the ship.
17:53The length of the keel is 51 feet.
17:56Confirming that it is the Bell that lies shipwrecked in Matagorda Bay.
18:00The Bell was a small ship with shallow draft and La Salle intended to use it for exploring
18:07all of the channels and bays and inlets that he knew existed at the mouth of the Mississippi.
18:14Like the mouth of the Mississippi, Matagorda Bay is riddled by channels and inlets.
18:21It's easy to see why La Salle believed he had reached his goal.
18:27The waters of the bay are also murky and dark, causing problems for the archaeologists exploring
18:33La Salle's wreck.
18:35If the water visibility in Matagorda Bay had even been a few feet, we'd have been able
18:39to proceed with the standard underwater archaeological investigation.
18:44But a few inches of visibility makes that simply impossible.
18:47The other options would be, of course, to try to clarify the water.
18:50So you can do an underwater excavation.
18:52But the great volume of water that would be involved made that an unfeasible project as
18:56well.
18:57It is the oldest French shipwreck in the New World, in this hemisphere.
19:02But more importantly, it belonged to a very famous French explorer, La Salle, and because
19:06of that historical significance, we felt like we needed to do the finest quality, most detailed
19:11excavation that we could do.
19:14And our dry land excavation inside a coffer dam was clearly the way to go.
19:19A coffer dam is a 360-degree structure that isolates an excavation site within two concentric
19:27walls.
19:28When the space between the walls is filled with sand, the water inside can be pumped out.
19:41Over seven miles from the Texas mainland, the shipwreck lies in only 12 feet of water.
19:47The shallow depth makes construction of the coffer dam possible, but still not easy.
19:56More than 500 tons of loose steel pilings have been floated out to the site.
20:02They must be transformed into a solid and watertight structure.
20:11A series of pilings will be joined together using interlocking male and female ends.
20:19Each 60-foot piling is hoisted high above the site and carefully threaded together with its
20:24partner.
20:29This technology was originally developed for bridge construction.
20:36a specially designed machine called a vibratory pile driver clamps onto the
21:06metal pilings and forces them through the sediment.
21:11Only if they reach at least 40 feet down will the walls of the dam keep water from seeping
21:16under.
21:20Once the water inside is drained, the outer walls will be under tremendous pressure.
21:2711,000 tons of sand will reinforce the dam and prevent a collapse.
21:43The sand is transferred from floating barges to fill the space between the coffer dam walls,
21:48one clam bucket at a time.
21:58After three months, the construction of the coffer dam is finally complete at a cost of one
22:04and a half million dollars.
22:07Now, 385,000 gallons of water contained inside the walls must be pumped out and stay out.
22:2136 hours after the pumps are turned on, the bay floor begins to emerge, opening a window that
22:30will lead 300 years into the past.
22:34The stage is set for the excavation.
22:37You never know what you're going to find on an underwater site.
22:42Different weather conditions, different water conditions really do affect the preservation
22:47of a shipwreck.
22:48But when the water was pumped out of the coffer dam, I was thrilled when we went down there
22:53and looked around, and right there, on the surface, was this fragile piece of rope, just exposed
22:59and ready for collecting.
23:01I know that the students with me had no idea what a rare find this was,
23:05because although I'd hoped to find organics, I just never expected something as fragile
23:10and as unique as a piece of rope.
23:12The rope, peeking through a thick layer of mud, hints at what lies further below.
23:19If the bulk of the ship is buried and protected from the elements, it may still resemble a 17th
23:26century vessel.
23:32After a month of meticulous digging, the sunken ship resurfaces, its wooden hull remarkably preserved
23:41and intact.
23:46The fine silt of Matagorda Bay has enveloped the ship, blocking oxygen and the process of decay.
23:53I've been involved with archeological projects for 40 years, and the excavation of the bell
23:59was absolutely unique and one of the most extraordinary projects I've ever seen.
24:05Not only the excavation within the cofferdam, but the things recovered to find a big coil of anchor rope from that early time period.
24:17Rope typically doesn't preserve well in the warm Gulf waters. It just simply deteriorates away.
24:23On this shipwreck, we found actually several thousand feet, still coiled up the way it was probably loaded in the ship.
24:30Over 300 years ago in France, the rope had never been used, and yet it was in great shape today.
24:38Sailors in the 1600s needed rope for almost every aspect of their voyage, from rigging sails to loading and unloading cargo.
24:49But little rope from this era exists anywhere in the world. Such everyday goods of maritime life are priceless.
24:57So, as each new object is uncovered, it is precisely mapped.
25:04The archeologists shoot a laser beam from a fixed point on the cofferdam to a prism below, which reflects the beam back to the base station.
25:15Using an electronic data system on the site really allows us to quickly and accurately plot the location of every single artifact.
25:23Every single day we can download the locations of the artifacts.
25:27This makes it much easier to create an overall map of the site and to understand the relationship between the artifacts.
25:35The picture that emerges at even this early stage of excavation is that of a tightly packed ship,
25:42the top of the wreck crowded with wooden crates and rope stuffed into the bow.
25:48Outside the ship's hull, at the perimeters of the cofferdam, thick mud may have trapped objects that spilled from the ship.
25:58All the sediments that we excavated, all the mud, all the silt, we actually hauled up in buckets above the cofferdam
26:19and had a screening set up on the wall of the cofferdam.
26:22And the purpose of that was to get the little, small artifacts that existed in those sediments and recover them.
26:27And in so doing, we found a number of very important things.
26:30We found artifacts such as glass beads, the little pins, but we also found a number of other things,
26:35such as the bones of rats and mice and the remains of insects, such as cockroach aid cases.
26:43And all those were telling us a great deal about sanitary conditions on that ship.
26:47It's quite clear that that ship was infested with rats and mice and various kinds of insects.
26:58The buckets of mud also contain small tools for use on ship and shore.
27:05Brass dividers measure distances on maps. This one likely belonged to the ship's navigator.
27:12And once they reached land, La Salle's hunters might have used these tiny bells, called hawk bells.
27:20They help track and train birds of prey.
27:27Within the hull of the ship itself, signs emerged that some members of La Salle's group intended to cook and dine with style.
27:36That there are three cauldrons with inside this one, one of which is a colander with a very nice floral design at the bottom.
27:49Also along with this box, we found a ladle, which would have been used with these kettles.
27:57And two very nice candlestick holders.
28:02Because of what they are, we are under the impression that these probably would have been for the officer's mess or someone more important of the wreck.
28:08So this does give us an indication that there were more important figures on the boat
28:13and that these features probably would have been kept below deck and used at certain functions that would have been happening on the boat.
28:19The preservation of these is amazing, and this is just one small example of things that we're finding on the wreck.
28:26This project, because of the complexity of it, the fact that we basically have what is normally a marine archeological site, an underwater archeological site,
28:41that we made a dry land excavation because of the cofferdam, created a numerous number of complexities and problems that had to be dealt with.
29:03One of the main problems was water seeping through the sand.
29:15A number of sump pumps have to run continuously to keep the site from flooding.
29:22Keeping the water out didn't make this a dry land excavation.
29:25There was no way to make it a dry land excavation.
29:28In fact, we didn't want it to be completely dry.
29:30We needed the moisture in the site to help preserve and protect the artifacts that we were excavating.
29:36So it was challenging, and we had to adapt our methods for excavating from being completely underwater,
29:43or being completely on land, to being something sort of in between.
29:48And as a result, we tried some different methods.
29:51We used a wet vac to suck up some of the softer silts.
29:55And we used hoses to wet things down and put things sort of in solution,
30:00so that as we removed these layers of sand and silt, the artifacts would be uncovered in a very gentle way.
30:07In some cases, we ended up using potter's tools to help us excavate,
30:11because they were wood and would be less likely to damage the objects.
30:15Such careful digging uncovers an unusual artifact.
30:20The archaeologists realize it's a last, a cobbler's tool for making shoes.
30:27Finding a shoe last, I think, is unheard of on a shipwreck site.
30:32It certainly would be unheard of on a land site.
30:35The exciting thing about that find is it really brought home the importance of having a lot of different people with a variety of skills on this expedition.
30:43Certainly in Jutel's journal, they talk about the fact that they were very short of footwear,
30:48and they ended up using buffalo hides and how they would crack and chafe and tear at their feet.
30:54So having good footwear was really important.
30:58The carved initials may be those of the cobbler.
31:03All sorts of craftsmen would be needed to sustain LaSalle's colony.
31:11But at least one of the would-be colonists never made it off the ship.
31:17Amidst the tools and supplies of the expedition, the archaeologists find a complete human skeleton,
31:24enough to piece together evidence of who this emissary from the past might be, bone by bone.
31:34The skeleton is roughly five foot four, the height of the average man in the 17th century.
31:41The shape of the pelvis is that of a male.
31:45And the wear on one part of the pelvis, the pubic synthesis, suggests that this man was about 40 years old when he died.
31:53We know that this gentleman was at least 40 years old, which makes him pretty old for a common sailor,
31:58but not necessarily too old to be a carpenter, a cooper, or one of the officers on board the ship.
32:05Physical anthropologists, when they look at skeletal material, the skull for instance,
32:09you can determine a lot of characteristics about the individual.
32:12Dentition is generally poorer among almost everybody during the 17th century.
32:17This person had a very, very bad abscessed tooth in the first molar.
32:23In fact, the infection is so severe in the root that it's actually eaten through the bone.
32:29Most likely, he was hit with a right uppercut and he has a broken nose here along his left side.
32:36We also know that shortly or sometime shortly before his death, he had received a severe blow along the right side of his skull.
32:45There's a four-inch crack in the skull that's partly fused, but then also the upper part, two inches, have not fused together.
32:52Therefore, it's relatively recent, but he was in the process of healing, so it was not the cause of his death.
32:58If forensic science can't determine how he died, it can offer a picture of what he looked like in life.
33:11His skull is sent for a CAT scan, the first step in building a facial reconstruction.
33:17Here we go.
33:18Here's the preliminary image.
33:19Perfect.
33:20I'm amazed that this skull has been in water for over 300 years, and yet it shows up as a perfectly normal skull.
33:36The CAT scan creates images of the skull in one-millimeter slices.
33:43These cross-sections are then pieced together to build a three-dimensional picture.
33:51The same data used to make this virtual 3D skull on the computer can also shape something more tangible.
33:59On a stereolithography machine, guided by the CAT scan, a laser traces a path through a light-sensitive resin.
34:09What emerges is an exact replica of the skull, detailed down to bone thickness and muscle attachment scars.
34:18The forensic investigations have provided us something really unique.
34:22They've been able to give us a picture of what this gentleman looked like.
34:26It sort of brings the whole experience of LaSalle and the expedition and the artifacts that we're finding on the ship to life.
34:37While he remains anonymous, this man is now the human face of LaSalle's tragic voyage.
34:45He left Europe for the uncertainties of a new world.
34:49His dreams, like LaSalle's, were never realized.
34:54I think that skeleton actually brought to life and made more personal the excavation of this particular ship.
35:03When you see an artifact, you think about the artifact and where it was made.
35:06When you find a person, you start imagining if you were that person,
35:10what kinds of feelings and thoughts went through that individual's mind just before they died on board LaBelle,
35:15here in the New World with hostile Indians on shore,
35:18and all the difficulties that LaSalle and his men were encountering on board this ship.
35:26With his ships anchored close to land, LaSalle sent men ashore to hunt and search for fresh water.
35:32They shot marsh birds, wild pig, and other game.
35:39The herds of bison that roamed here encouraged LaSalle, for he had seen bison near the Mississippi.
35:46His young aide, Henri Jutel, wrote,
35:49The news of the bison delighted him, for he reckoned that the country he had earlier discovered could not be far.
35:57LaSalle set out to explore the maze of marshes along the coast,
36:01the first of many overland searches.
36:05As he moved on, he was disturbed to find that none of the coastal Indians spoke languages he remembered from his earlier travels.
36:13Hostilities soon broke out.
36:22And LaSalle's expedition was prepared to fight.
36:27Scattered throughout the cargo hold are thousands of lead castings,
36:32ammunition for their weapons.
36:34The larger balls may have been cannon grape shot.
36:38The smaller lead shot was for pistols and muskets.
36:43This is one of the muskets that we've found.
36:46So far we have two crates of muskets.
36:49It's a very exciting find for us, because we didn't really expect it.
36:52Even though the barrel is no longer here, you can see where it would have sat on the stock.
36:57This is the remains of the wooden stock.
36:59You have the butt coming down here, and even though the remains of the stock are not preserved,
37:06it would have been held in this fashion.
37:08The hammer assembly would have been on this side.
37:09It would have held a flint, of course, these are called flint locks.
37:13And when you squeeze the trigger, it would have dropped the flint, caused a spark,
37:17and then if your powder wasn't too wet, it would have hopefully discharged.
37:24State-of-the-art weapons for their time, really.
37:26Near the muskets in the Bell's Hold are crates filled with ceramic pots.
37:35They appear to be storage containers, sealed at the top.
37:41Further excavation and archival research revealed that they are actually weapons, called firepots.
37:54A wooden lid with a wick was fastened to the pot to ignite the flammable pine tar pitch inside.
38:00Within the pitch was a cast iron grenade to make the firepot even more deadly.
38:10The firepots were really horrible weapons.
38:14These were used in defense if another hostile ship came alongside.
38:19These would be tossed over onto the ship.
38:21They would immediately break open and the hot pitch would be scattered on the deck and onto the sailors.
38:32The grenade would explode and angular fragments of iron would go in all directions.
38:44These things would cause terrible burns and injuries to the sailors on the other ship.
38:48The injuries from the shrapnel, while they might not kill immediately, would cause terrible infections.
38:54And it must have been a little bit comforting to the sailors on the Bell
38:59to know that they had these horrible weapons to protect themselves.
39:05The sailors on board La Salle's three ships were constantly on the lookout for Spanish galleons.
39:12Spain and France were at the brink of war.
39:14La Salle ordered his main supply ship, the Amable, to be towed slowly into the safety of the bay.
39:24The captain of the Amable, long annoyed by La Salle's brash directives, instead hoisted sail in high winds.
39:32Uncontrollably, the ship blew fatally off course.
39:42It hit a sandbar, broke apart, and drifted into the ocean currents.
39:46La Salle accused the captain of mutiny and sabotage.
39:53His aide Jutel noted,
39:56According to everyone who was aboard the vessel, the accident was of premeditated design.
40:03The handiwork of someone.
40:05Enraged and suspicious, La Salle loaded his warship, Jolie, with all who questioned his authority,
40:15and sent it back to France.
40:19Now, only about 180 men and women remained on the Texas coast.
40:24To survive, they built a temporary camp in the marshy lowlands.
40:29They exchanged the shipboard life for living in stick and mud huts beside an alligator-infested creek.
40:38There were all kinds of snakes and animals that they were unfamiliar with,
40:42so they traded one kind of misery for another.
40:44Dozens of men and women died of smallpox, malnutrition, and Indian attacks.
40:53As La Salle went off again, searching for his river.
40:58La Salle understood that he had made a mistake,
41:03that he had not reached the mouth of the Mississippi,
41:07but he was convinced that it couldn't be that far away.
41:10So, he continued to search for it by foot.
41:15The dream of conquest was by now a dim hope.
41:21Of La Salle's four ships, only one, the Belle, was left.
41:28A small crew remained on board, with little fresh water or food, waiting for news from La Salle.
41:35Jotel described their decline.
41:40They began to fade, one after another.
41:43The longer they waited, the weaker their condition.
41:48The contrast between La Salle's grandiose plans and grim reality becomes ever more apparent.
41:55Deep in the hold of his ship are the goods which were to launch his colony and help it thrive.
42:04One box, fragile but mostly intact, contains what may have been the most important supplies of all.
42:12When we found this in the field, we partially excavated it, began to see what we had, saw how complex it was,
42:19and decided at that point it would be easier to bring it back intact to the laboratory where we have more time to excavate it more carefully.
42:27And I'm going to be curious to see what the condition is of the actual artifacts inside of the box and the condition of the box itself.
42:37I think what we do is we cut the burlap down either side, fold the burlap onto the top, and see if we can lift this plywood off in one piece.
42:44So we want to cut the burlap as low as possible, is that what you're saying?
42:49Correct.
42:51Back here, so you don't even have to cut it.
42:55Okay, let's see if I've got everything loose here, don't it?
42:58Okay.
43:04Here's an extra layer put in here for protection.
43:08Yeah, remove this carefully.
43:10Let me hold the rings.
43:12Make sure it doesn't pull up anything with it.
43:14Beneath the final layer of burlap, the archaeologists find hundreds of brass rings, mirrors, and combs,
43:23trade goods to buy favors and furs from Native Americans.
43:27Trade goods are found real commonly on Native American sites in the historic period.
43:32You find a few glass beads in one site, you may find an iron knife in another site.
43:36But to find a whole box of trade goods intact is extremely rare.
43:41And you can see there's a large, large mass of brass pins right in here.
43:46LaSalle needed a vast trove of trade goods to further his ambitions.
43:53With them, he intended to build allegiances and raise an army of Indian soldiers to attack Spanish strongholds in Mexico.
44:04And for the missionaries on LaSalle's expedition, these goods helped spread the faith.
44:08Thus far we've identified 14 different patterns on the rings.
44:13They usually have some sort of religious significance.
44:16We find some that look like they have Christ on them, then three X's, and then IHS and Hox Sigma,
44:21and then you find Loyola and various saints.
44:24So they all have religious connotations of one form or the other.
44:27With hundreds of rings and thousands of goods all together, this box could also have been the key to personal fortune.
44:40These things were very important to the colonists because a small brass ring that would be very inexpensive in Europe,
44:47by the time you got it to the New World, it could be traded for a large tanned animal hide,
44:52and a bundle of those hides or a shipload of those hides back in Europe could make people wealthy.
45:02But none of the members of LaSalle's expedition would reap these rewards.
45:09Near the end of the excavation, the archaeologists see the final clues to LaSalle's downfall in the deepest parts of the Belle.
45:17Here lie barrels of gunpowder and weapons that might have saved his struggling party.
45:26LaSalle was reserving this cargo for the Mississippi colony he still envisioned.
45:34The colony would be fortified by elaborate bronze cannons,
45:44now encrusted to the Belle's hull.
45:47The archaeologists used the force of the cofferdam crane to pry the cannons loose.
46:02In LaSalle's time, each of these weapons was as valuable as the entire ship itself,
46:16and a fitting symbol of the grandeur of LaSalle's dream of conquest.
46:20But he would never build his Mississippi colony, never expand French rule in North America,
46:27nor challenge Spain's dominion in the Gulf.
46:30The Belle, 50 tons, six cannons, shipyard where built Rochefort.
46:41Name of the carpenter, Honoré Malé. Draft, seven feet of water.
46:45Then we have this mention. Monsieur De LaSalle has taken her to the Gulf of Mexico from which she has not returned.
46:54And there is another mention about this voyage written in the margin.
47:00No crew to be assigned to this vessel because the pilot who has returned has stated that the ship no longer exists.
47:07The bell has sung.
47:19Exactly how the ship sank has long been a matter of speculation.
47:24Jotel describes a violent wind, but he was ashore and not there to see it firsthand.
47:30Was the ship capsized in a terrifying squall?
47:36Or did she simply run aground in the shallow bay and gradually sink to the bottom?
47:43The answer may lie in the remnants of the ship's hull.
47:48Some of the wood, pieces of bulkhead, mast and bilge pumps, lies broken and loose.
47:54Each unattached timber is carefully mapped, then removed up to vats on top of the cofferdam.
48:03For the rest, careful tracings ensure that research can continue even after the hull is dismantled.
48:13Well, we've excavated the contents of the ship out and now we're looking at actually trying to bring the ship itself out.
48:18We've decided to take it apart piece by piece in exactly the reverse order that the master shipwright built the ship back in France 311 years ago.
48:30And so what we're doing now is we're actually beginning that process, taking off the planks one by one.
48:39Even after three centuries in the mud, the oak planks of the hull are solidly attached.
48:45But once removed, the water-laden timbers are vulnerable.
48:58The team takes care to ensure that this rare 17th century vessel can one day be reconstructed.
49:06And the mystery of its sinking perhaps can be resolved.
49:12Now that the hull's been completely excavated, we can finally begin to understand how the ship sank.
49:27It's clear that it wasn't some sort of dramatic event that caused it to capsize, which is what we often think about when a ship wrecks.
49:34Rather, it was the slow accumulation of situations and circumstances that caused the hull to fill up with water.
49:40We can see that the ship is laying bow down and over to the starboard.
49:45So that suggests that the starboard side of the hull may have hit at some point and loosened the seams.
49:51And the more water that the ship took in, the less maneuverable it was, and soon it settled on the bottom.
49:57And so what happens as a result of something as wonderful a circumstance as this was for us and as horrible as it was for the settlers, we ended up with tremendous preservation and about 40% of the hull.
50:09The loss of LaBelle forced LaBelle to confront his failure.
50:17The wrecking of LaBelle changed the entire tenor of the expedition.
50:22They realized that they were trapped. They had no escape. There was no way to get back home. Their only route of escape was to find the Mississippi and go back to Canada. That was their only hope.
50:38LaSalle set out to do just that.
50:40But soon, his search was abruptly ended.
50:47A group of his own men ambushed and assassinated him with a shot to the head.
50:53Then, according to Jutel,
50:55They dragged LaSalle's body into the brush, stripped him of his possessions, even his clothes, and left his body to be ravaged by wild animals.
51:08Jutel, still loyal to the fallen leader, barely escaped with his own life.
51:15With a ragged band of six people, he eventually reached the Mississippi.
51:21They made their way up to Canada and back to France.
51:29On the Texas coast, all that remained of LaSalle's expedition was a camp of desperate men and women.
51:36Weakened by disease and with few weapons for defense, they soon fell victim to Indian massacre.
51:44Their makeshift settlement was burned to the ground.
51:47But the record of their journey was preserved through time, in a shipwreck at the bottom of Matagorda Bay.
51:57The archaeologists' tools are gathered up.
52:03The coffer dam will be dismantled in a matter of days.
52:06But it will take decades to fully understand the story of this voyage of doom, its leader, LaSalle, and his bold but thwarted ambition.
52:20People may think that archaeology is just the recovery of nice artifacts.
52:28But archaeology is not really the study of artifacts, it's the study of people.
52:32The little bits and pieces that you find of the past, each one of these things has a story to tell.
52:37When you take all of these pieces and fit them together, it forms a mosaic that gives you a much better picture of the LaSalle colonies.
52:50This expedition was really geared for success.
52:53They had plenty of supplies, manpower, weapons, trade goods, all of the things they needed.
52:58This wasn't a voyage of exploration, this was a voyage of permanent settlement to make a French stronghold in the Mississippi Valley.
53:06If LaSalle hadn't encountered all the difficulties, and if he hadn't perished, I think that France would have become a major player in the New World.
53:17And a lot of North America might be speaking French to this day.
53:22LaSalle's treasures. What other goods and tools were stocked aboard the Belle to colonize the New World?
53:48Explore the shipwreck and examine the artifacts on NOVA's website.
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