Undersea explorer Barry Clifford believes he found the remains of Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria near the northern coast of Haiti.
“All the geographical, underwater topography and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that this wreck is Columbus’s famous flagship, the Santa Maria,” Clifford told the Independent. “I am confident that a full excavation of the wreck will yield the first-ever detailed marine archaeological evidence of Columbus’s discovery of America.”
If the remains from this site are confirmed to be from Columbus’s shipwrecked Santa Maria, it is likely to be one of the world’s most important underwater archaeological discoveries in history.
The Santa Maria, along with the the Niña and the Pinta, were the three vessels that left Spain with Christopher Columbus in pursuit of finding a shorter route to Asia.
The Santa Maria crashed near Cap Haitien in Haiti on Christmas Day 1492. Columbus told his crew members to build a fort nearby while he returned to Spain. This fort was known as La Navidad, and upon Columbus’s return from Spain, he found it to be destroyed along with its remaining crew members.
Clifford hopes that with cooperation from the Haitian government, they will be able to explore the site more in depth and then use the discovery to enhance and develop Haiti’s tourism industry in the future.
