CANNONS RECOVERED FROM WRECK : FRENCH EXPLORER LA SALLE'S SHIP SANK OFF TEXAS 311 YEARS AGO.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Two 800-pound, bronze cannons were recovered Saturday by jubilant archeologists excavating a ship that belonged to the French explorer Rene-Robert La Salle La Salle, city (1990 pop. 9,717), La Salle co., N Ill., on the Illinois River; settled 1830, inc. 1852. It forms a tricity unit with Peru and Oglesby. Corn, wheat, and soybeans are grown, and cattle and hogs are raised. . The 50-foot ship, The Belle, ran aground a·ground adv. & adj. 1. Onto or on a shore, reef, or the bottom of a body of water: a ship that ran aground; a ship aground offshore. 2. and sank 311 years ago in a storm in the Gulf of Mexico's Matagorda Bay, about 125 miles southwest of what today is Houston. Workers inside a cofferdam gently hitched a pair of cloth straps under the first cannon, then lifted it with a crane. Then, with several hundred people watching from above the rim of the excavation, the second 6-foot-long weapon was hauled up. ``This is the culmination of the excavation,'' said Jim Bruseth, the project's director. ``These are the prized artifacts artifacts see specimen artifacts. .'' In July 1995, Texas Historical Commission archeologists who first spotted the wreck - the second-oldest ever found in Texas waters - also discovered a cannon matching the two newest discoveries. ``These are in better shape,'' Bruseth said. ``There was very little deterioration probably because they were deep in the ship.'' The weapons bear the crests of King Louis XIV and Le Comte de Vermandois, admiral of France The title Admiral of France is one of the Great Officers of the Crown of France, the naval equivalent of Marshal of France. The title was created in 1270 by Louis IX of France, during the Eighth Crusade. At the time it was equivalent to the office of Constable of France. from 1669 until his death in 1683. They are likely the last major items retrieved from the wreckage of The Belle, a supply ship for La Salle's ill-fated 1684 expedition to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River. To get at the wreck, archeologists built a $1 million, twin-walled, oval cofferdam. The steel and gravel structure allowed workers to pump out the 12-foot-deep water and expose the sea floor. Over the past six months, the site yielded about 700,000 items, including timbers, guns, swords, ammunition, rat skeletons, cockroach cockroach or roach, name applied to approximately 3,500 species of flat-bodied, oval insects forming the order Blattodea. Cockroaches have long antennae, long legs adapted to running, and a flat extension of the upper body wall that conceals the eggs, thousands of trade beads and a human skeleton, believed to be a crew member or settler. The Belle was the last of four ships that carried Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle De La Salle is the name of several educational institutions affiliated with the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the Lasallian Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious teaching order founded by French priest Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle: La Salle led a handful of men inland in 1687, hoping to find the Mississippi, but instead was murdered. Details of The Belle are known because Henri Joutel, a La Salle lieutenant, kept a journal. |
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