Cauldron from rare wreckage will shed light on St. Augustine’s colonial heritage

Jacksonville.com: Cauldron from rare wreckage will shed light on St. Augustine’s colonial heritage

It sure didn’t look like the proverbial pot at the end of a rainbow as it emerged from an estimated 250-plus years of slumber 30 feet under the waves off St. Augustine.

Encrustations of century’s-old mud marred the cauldron’s shape as it was hauled onto the dive boat Wednesday by the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program team.

But there could be historical gold in the pot removed from a shipwreck within sight of the St. Augustine Lighthouse. Chuck Meide, Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program director, found what could be a spoon stuck inside.

See more photos of LAMP workers bringing the 300-year-old cauldron to the surface

Meide is hoping the cauldron will unlock a time capsule to a rare ship from St. Augustine’s bustling 1800s colonial period. He said only one colonial shipwreck has ever been found off Northeast Florida.

“This particular shipwreck was even harder to find because it was completely buried under the sand,” Meide said. “It makes it harder to find, but it also makes it a really great find because no one has ever dived it before and we don’t think anyone knows about it.”

Placed in an electrolysis tank to leach salt from its iron to preserve it, the cauldron could soon be on display at the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum as it undergoes up to two years of cleanup. More artifacts should be pulled up soon by the team and its high school interns in what lighthouse museum Executive Director Kathy Fleming said is another step in bringing the region’s maritime history to the community.

“It would be nice if it were a Spanish wreck. We don’t know. It might be British,” Fleming said. “We will find out more about the colonial period, engage more students and we will probably do more in the community.”

The Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program is the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum, seeking and preserving the underwater history offshore of the nation’s oldest city.

Archaeologist John Morris and his team’s first underwater survey in 1996 targeted more than 50 possible wrecks. One was the British sloop Industry, sunk in 1764 while entering St. Augustine’s harbor inlet, then just south of the current lighthouse. They recovered numerous artifacts including a cannon and tools that never made it to St. Augustine’s then British outpost.

State funding helped archaeologists do a more refined search on this ship last summer when a diver stuck a probe into the sandy bottom. Work exposed the cauldron and hundreds of lead shotgun pellets, a kind made only in the 17th and 18th centuries. Then there’s the 15-inch-high cauldron, a design dating from 1740 to 1780, meaning this might be an 18th-century merchant run afoul of a sandbar.

“A sea captain who has already waited two weeks for a good wind and tide to come together to get into the harbor might be impatient, and that happened a lot,” said Sam Turner, director of archaeology. “They took the risk.”

Cheers and champagne was poured when the cauldron was raised from the bottom Thursday morning. More dives this summer could uncover the ship’s cargo, even enough hull to determine when and where the ship was built.

The team also plans to dive on other promising sites targeted last summer near the original inlet site, a state-protected preserve.