(Panama Digest) A team of U.S. scientists, led by archaeologists from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, discovered cannon that might have once belonged to infamous Welsh privateer Henry Morgan.
“The type of gun, the date range, and the location of the weapons on Lajas Reef suggest a shipwreck of the 16th to 17th century, and the possibility of an association with the known wrecks of Morgan’s ships in 1671,” according to the Institute’s 2008 annual report.
Back in the 17th century, Morgan and his pirates were traveling towards the entrance of the Chagres River, on their way to sack Panama City, when several of the ships wrecked against the reef and sank, including Morgan’s flagship, the Satisfaction.
This is where divers found the iron cannon, dispersed in 10- to 18-foot deep Caribbean waters.
The non-disturbance survey for submerged cultural resources was conducted under the terms of an archaeological permit issued on January 21, 2008 by Panama’s Instituto Nacional de Cultura and supported by the Waitt Institute for Discovery of La Jolla, California. As stated in the 2008 annual report, “the most notable artifacts were eight iron cannon of various (small) sizes.”
The team returned in 2010 to recover six of the cannon, still exposed and at risk, which will now be restored at the conservation facilities of the Patronato Panama Viejo. Two of the guns remain buried deep in the sand, Dr. James Delgado, one of the lead scientists on the project, confirmed.
Delgado and his colleague, archaeologist Frederick Hanselmann, were in town this week to announce the finding, and this is just the start of a much larger project, they say.
