A salvo from 20 cannons on your name day!

Today is Martin’s name day. We start the celebrations in the evening – on the vast wooden terrace overlooking the sea. It’s going to be fun! First thing in the morning, probably to celebrate his name day, we went to the remains of an absolutely wonderful wreck. The wreck was discovered last year by Greg, the owner of the only diving base in Sierra Leone and an accompanying diver from Ireland. Absolutely nothing is known about it. Neither the name of the ship, nor the flag it was flying, not even how many hundreds of years ago it went down. It ended its life at the southern tip of Banana Island, in a very difficult place to navigate, where currents change in a split second and winds drive vessels onto the rocks.

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– When I dived in, I felt that this wreck was a present for my name day! – jokes Marcin. At the bottom, between huge boulders, lay what was left of an old warship – about 20 cannons and three huge anchors. Big – that means about 7 metres long. The cannons are 3-3.5 metres long, although some are shorter – just 2.5 metres. – Their number and size clearly indicate that we are dealing with a large warship,” says Piotrek. Which one? Yes, that is the question!

Portuguese and English galleons sailed through the passes around Freetown (which is the best natural harbour on many thousands of kilometres of the African coast). The ships of the kings of Spain could also venture here.

Further exploration will help in determining which ruler from distant Europe launched his sailors into the difficult waters of Sierra Leone. We have already started it today. For the first time on this wreck we managed to find fragments of beautiful porcelain. A tea bowl, a bowl, and some bricks – perhaps from the ship’s kitchen, from under the hearth. Broken, covered with beads, but you can see that in their heyday they were very exclusive tableware. All the objects found today are still soaking in the sweet water. In a few days we will try to dry and glue them together.

Tomorrow Marcin and Robert are going back to the wreck, in the meantime Piotrek and Romek are going to Freetown – they have to buy a condenser for our compressor, oxygen and lead to cast the weights. Considering how wild the city of Freetown is and what kind of currents “blow” on the “armada wreck”, it’s not clear for which team to keep their fingers crossed tomorrow!

Source: Organiser