Rare find in Rota shipwreck

ROTA — Now into the third month of their third season of underwater excavation on the Manila galleon Santa Margarita, the salvage firm of IOTA Partners has been rewarded with a very special find: two unique pieces of religious art.

These traveling triptychs have been rescued along with thousands of other artifacts after 400 years of being encrusted in the seabed.
The project is a joint partnership between the CNMI government and the Seattle-based IOTA.

The firm has been conducting archaeological excavation of the 16th century shipwreck off the coast of Rota since 1995. Their search has taken them through time and technology — from clues given in the fragile, 400-year-old handwriting of a Franciscan priest found in the archives of Spain to a mind-boggling integration of high-tech equipment and international experience.

Now after more than 10 years of planning and research, the IOTA team is excavating within a large concentration of ballast stones.
According to IOTA archaeologist Roger Dooley, this indicates that they are in the main ballast or central area of the ship.

“In a shipwreck you look for three basic things: anchors, cannons or ballast. We can calculate where the ship should have sunk by counting the ballast. These stones are put in the hold as stabilizers,” said Mr. Dooley.
“They are an indication of the location because they’re part of the ship. The artifacts are most likely found near the ballast.”

What are the most exciting and significant finds from the Santa Margarita to date? They are two ivory bas relief sculptures called “traveling triptychs,” religious symbols carved in delicate detail. Wedged under and between boulders, which should have shattered them into a thousand pieces during typhoons, these fragile works of art miraculously survived the last 400 years intact.

“Your recovery of these two traveling triptychs are marvelous. They are the ‘San Jeronimo’ (Saint Jerome) and the ‘Virgen del Rosario’ (Virgin of Rosary),” said Beatrix Sanchez Navarro de Pintado, president of the vice Royalty Museum of Mexico.

“The triptych of the Virgin of rosary is very rare. I have only seen this type of composition in ivory plaque of Portuguese origin of the XVI century. But, yours is definitive Chinese origin, because among other characteristic, you can see the fine carving of a Chinese artist’s hands.”

Described as “very impressive” by CNMI Division of Historic Preservation officials, the Saint Jerome triptych depicts the hermit saint represented as a penitent. “It is a beautiful artifact,” said Historic Preservation Officer Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero in a letter to IOTA.

Thanks to IOTA Partners, the ivory sculptures will be given a second life.  The triptychs must be handled with extreme care until IOTA has completed their restoration. An expert in conservation from the Museum of the Philippines joined IOTA’s operation yesterday to help decide the method of conservation that is best for these and other Santa Margarita artifacts.

As work on the wreck continues, the underwater excavation must necessarily move slowly so that piece by piece, data is carefully captured on each artifact. Every find is recorded daily in accordance with a grid map, meter by meter, with control numbers and then entered into a computer database. “It is complicated and difficult work to conduct professional underwater archaeological excavation.  That’s the way it should be. We are not just making holes there. We take pictures, video, make drawings and control the environment,” said Dooley.

From the point of view of archaeology, the Santa Margarita is a very difficult excavation because it is very close to the reef. All the years of surf and wind and current have taken their toll on the shipwreck and the artifacts are buried under sand and rocks.

“This is a complex operation. In the world there are only a few like this — shallow water near a beautiful reef, but very limited days out of the year that we can work there.
The visibility is constantly changing with the current, so this is not an easy job,” said IOTA Partners chief executive officer Jack Harbeston.

Bound for Acapulco dangerously overloaded with gold, spices, porcelain, textiles and Asian manufactured items, the ill-fated ship sailed from Manila in July 1600.

Of the 300 people on board, only 50 survived as the ship strayed more than 1000 miles off course and wrecked near Rota eight months later.  There the once magnificent galleon wrecked and her cargo was buried by hundreds of years of wave action and tropical storms.

In April 1993, IOTA Partners, a Seattle-based firm, entered into a contract with the Commonwealth government to search for several Manila galleons that were shipwrecked in the Marianas between 1575 and 1815. This contract allows the CNMI to obtain the benefits of galleons salvaged, but without financial risk to the CNMI. IOTA is responsible for all costs and management of the project.

The proceeds of any sale of recovered artifacts will be shared by the CNMI (25%) and the firm (75%), with the CNMI having first choice of the artifacts. This compares favorably with other states with similar contracts such as Florida, where the norm is only a 20% share for the government. IOTA has spent approximately $3 million on the Santa Margarita project to date, which has in large part helped the economy of Rota in the three years of operations.