Excavating 300-year-old French ship.

Excavation of famed French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle's ship, the Belle, is under way off the Texas coast. The shipwreck site is the first in the hemisphere to use a cofferdam -- a watertight structure designed to keep liquid out of an enclosed area -- in deep waters. Once it was complete, seawater was pumped out so archaeologists could excavate on dry land. The cofferdam was essential for excavation due to the silty waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where visibility is less than a foot. Any movement including that required by excavation, would make visibility impossible.

The Belle is the oldest French shipwreck ever discovered in the Americas. ran into a storm and sank in 1686. La Salle is the French explorer who claimed the Mississippi River and its drainage for France, including much of the area that now is Texas.

First found in the summer of 1995 off the Texas coast by a team of researchers led by marine archaeologist Barto Arnold of the Texas Historical Commission (THC), the find represents one of the most significant underwater archaeological discoveries ever made n North America. "The shipwreck is extremely intact for a 3CO year-old vessel; we believe that the unique nature of the sediment found on the bay's floor helped to preserve the ship's organic material," indicates Curtis Tunnel THC executive director.

In July 1995, THC's marine archaeology team began their annual search for the ship, which they had been looking for since the early 1970s, by surveying potential sites in the bay with sensitive metal-detecting equipment. The first exploratory dive turned up musket balls, pottery, a brass buckle, and bronze hawk bells. An 800-pound bronze cannon decorated with leaping dolphin handles and the royal crest of King Louis XIV (the Belle was a gift to La Salle from the King) convinced the team that they had discovered the remains of the ship. Arnold had been looking for the Belle for 17 years.

In August, 1996, after extensive fund-raising, a $4,000,000 excavation project to recover the shipwreck began. Arnold expects to find personal possessions of La Salle and his officers as well as supplies from the 17th-century vessel. So far, the excavation has turned up a human leg bone, pewter plates, sword hilts, a box of muskets, glass beads, bronze rings, pottery (some containing food), and highly decorated bronze items. New artifacts are being discovered daily. The ship and its artifacts eventually will be incorporated into a major museum and various traveling exhibits.