(apologies if this story appeared in GNet earlier) At the bottom of the Arabian Sea, a 500-year-old shipwreck from the fleet of Vasco da Gama. It was a dark and stormy night! The wreck uncovered off the coast of Al Hallaniyah island (on Arabian Sea) is almost certainly da Gama’s ship Esmeralda, which sank with its captain and da Gama’s uncle, Vincente Sodré, on board in 1503. David Mearns’s shipwreck salvage company, Blue Water Recoveries, returned to conduct a full excavation of the site in partnership with the Ministry of Heritage and Culture in Oman. Pushed around by high-energy wave surges the divers called the washing machine, the ship and its riches had been buried deep in sand at the bottom of the sea. Among those armaments are a bronze ship’s bell dated 1498 — the earliest ship’s bell to be discovered, a copper alloy disc bearing the Portuguese royal Coat of Arms and thought to be part of an astrolabe and, rarest of all, a tiny silver medallion known as the ghost coin of Dom Manuel I. The coin, minted by Portuguese King Dom Manuel in 1499, was an indio, specially made for trade with India. It is a ghost because, until now, only one has ever been found. The discovery of the second ghost coin hints at what the ill-fated Esmeralda was doing in the Arabian Sea in the first place. Esmeralda had been part of a massive armada led by da Gama in order to conduct trade — and in many cases, wage war. The fleet followed the route famously pioneered by da Gama four years earlier: a circuitous, 24,000-mile voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and up Africa’s eastern coast that took the better part of a year and killed the better part of da Gama’s crew. Nevertheless, his carreira da India provided the first link between Europe and the spices of the East that didn’t depend on overland routes controlled by Arab traders and Venetian merchants. To 15th century Portugal, eager for trade riches and finally some flavor in their food, da Gama’s new route was a very big deal. That first successful voyage was a turning point in world history: the beginning of the ages of exploration, imperialism and globalization, with all their change and brutality. And what happened on da Gama’s second voyage, including the demise of the Esmeralda, was a grim harbinger of the violent centuries that lay ahead — for both the colonized and the colonizers. The armada set out in 1502, the fourth such fleet to be sent by King Dom Manuel. Its predecessors hadn’t fared well — the people of Calicut (now Kozhikode, on India’s western coast) didn’t take kindly to being bossed around by entitled Europeans, and the Portuguese had responded by bombarding the city to shreds. So da Gama’s fleet was well-stocked with weaponry and given broad license to use it. He tried (not entirely successfully) to subdue uncooperative Indian kingdoms and attacked any other ships he encountered in the Indian Ocean, including one carrying Muslim pilgrims on their way back from Mecca. Da Gama burned the boat along with its 300 passengers. When he headed back to Portugal in early 1503, da Gama left behind a squadron of five ships led by his two uncles — Vincente and Brás Sodré. The goal, according to the Nautical Archaeology report, was to forcibly control and dominate the spice trade. The Sodré brothers had their own ideas, though. Rather than patrol the Indian coast, they set out for the Gulf of Aden, which was full of lucrative opportunities for piracy on the high seas. They spent the next several months capturing Arab ships, plundering their cargo and killing their crews. By April, monsoon season had arrived, and one of the ships was in need of repairs, so the squadron retired to Al Hallaniyah for some rest and trade. The local fishermen warned the Portuguese that their choice of port — on the exposed windward side of the island — was a poor one, but the Europeans were recklessly confident in the strength of their iron anchors and hulking ships. They moved the squadron’s smaller ships to the other side of the island, away from the fiercest winds, but left Vincente Sodré’s Esmeralda and Brás’s São Pedro where they were. Their haughtiness proved deadly: When the storm came, both vessels were dashed against the rocky shore. Vincente went down with his ship, and Brás died not long after of undetermined causes. Five hundred years later, it seems that the ship that bore Vincente’s ambitions and loot has finally been found. But the Sodré brothers — and the 100 or so crew members who died with them — are still missing. According to National Geographic, a survey of Al Hallaniyah island revealed dozens of burial cairns that are thought to be non-Islamic (they’re oriented differently than burial sites for Muslims). But when the sites were excavated, researchers couldn’t find any human remains. It’s likely that the buried bodies deteriorated from prolonged exposure to animals and the elements. It was those missing men that Mearns thought about during his long search for the Esmeralda. “A shipwreck site is not a pretty thing,” he told National Geographic. “It’s the scene of a tragedy … it’s a place you have to treat with respect because many people died there.” Pics: http://www.esmeraldashipwreck.com Full story: http://esmeraldashipwreck.com/history/ >From WAPO MD