The Yucatan Peninsula from Mexico is not only the place for the location of the Chicxulub impactor that killed the dinosaurs 60 million years ago. It’s now also the place where a team of researchers found a sailing ship on the ocean floor. More precisely, they had been exploring the coast of Quintana Roo and found a shipwreck named Manuel Polanco.
The researchers believe that the ship sunk more than two centuries ago. Laura Carrillo Márquez is an INAH archaeologist and head of the team that had been exploring the wreck.
The cannon and anchor are conclusive enough
The head of the study revealed that the anchor and cannon found at the site were revealing an 18th-century English ship. A statement issued by INAH said:
“Little by little, a sailboat from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century begins to reveal its history in the waters around Chinchorro Bank, in the Yucatan Peninsula.
“The underwater archaeologists theorise how the crew of that vessel made a last effort to avoid the catastrophic event.
“This is inferred from the discovery of an ‘activated’ anchor, that is, it was launched into the sea with the intention of attaching itself to the reef barrier to save the ship from running aground, and that today is fully outgrown with coral.”
INAH protects and investigates 70 shipwrecks in Chinchorro Bank, and the archaeologists believe that with each new shipwreck found people can learn more about the last five centuries of navigation within the American waters.
Manuel Polanco is the fisherman who first spotted the shipwreck and reported it to Mexico’s National Archaeological Institute. The head of the new study regarding the shipwreck admits that a lot of the needed details are unknown. Therefore, we could wait for further investigations, and let’s hope that we’ll get them pretty soon.
