Rebuilding underwater history…

Vivalgarve: Why Lagos?

Tiago Fraga: It is the best place in Europe! Since pre-Classical times, the only way from Northern Europe to communicate with the Mediterranean was through the Algarve. This is the birthplace of the Age of Discoveries – and this bay here is the best in the Algarve. Any ship that ever needed to stop for food or water would stop here. It is generally a very safe place, but when the wind is from the south, it can be treacherous – hence the number of wrecks we’ve managed to locate.

One reads in the book that you’ve located 77 ‘underwater sites’ and that you are this year hoping to concentrate on five of them. What are you hoping to discover?

Well, there are three major boats which would be very important to find. One is an Age of Discoveries vessel; the second an Arab vessel, and the third what’s called an Atlantic Roman vessel. I think we have at least two of them on these sites. Just today, we’ve located much more information thanks to special equipment loaned to us, for free (!), from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. The goal is to figure out how everything on these boats worked. People don’t realise that, as George Bass, father of nautical archaeology stated “sailors existed long before farmers”… They built these incredible machines that could withstand so much. Ships were responsible for everything in the past: progress, the dissemination of ideas – and yet we still don’t know how, for example, Columbus’ boat actually worked…We have never found a real caravela, for instance. Now, that’s something I want to find!

…Fraga’s Lagos team includes divers Alan Wilson and Christiana Kelkel from the local ‘Waterworld’ dive centre, as well as Felizardo Pinto from ‘Open Waters’. Their next work will be to further investigate the sites in the New Year. Almost all of these are buried deep in the sand “A good thing!” explains the archaeologist. “As long as a wreck is buried, it will last hundreds of years. Once it becomes stable, the decay rate is only about one inch every century.

But, once you’ve located a wreck, you have to excavate it from the sand?

With a gigantic vacuum cleaner! But we don’t bring it up usually - unless we can guarantee conservation – and that’s not so easy. The biggest problem with this type of archaeology though is that people have a tendency to do what they wouldn’t do on land…they like to take souvenirs! Once divers get wind of a wreck, things can get difficult. Then, we have to bring it up. But, if we can, we leave it where it is…for divers and virtual reconstruction.

…While Fraga and his team plan their programme for 2009, Lagos municipality are about to officially open the town’s Centro de Ciência Viva – a centre which includes a wealth of information about the area’s nautical heritage.

Fraga’s university professor Adolfo Silveira, director of CIDMar (the Centro de Investigação e Desenvolvimento do Mar) attached to the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, is particularly happy about this.

“It’s been an incredible year,” he told us as his pupil wound up the latest round of site investigations. “We’ve been so lucky with Lagos Câmara. They haven’t just financed this project – they are also financing post-graduate training experience here in the summer. The students will benefit so much. It is absolutely wonderful. Tiago couldn’t have done any of this work, without the backing of the Câmara, and all the local institutions that supported him.

“My involvement in this science has always been via the university. I am fascinated by technology – vital for this science. Students like Tiago will realise all the things we’ve been working towards for the last 20 years. They are the future.”

But, Lagos municipality’s involvement is also the future, and ‘practically unique in Portugal’ according to the preface of «Contos Inacabados» written by Filipe Vieira Castro, one of Fraga’s mentors working out of Texas A & M University in Texas (where Fraga took his Masters):

“In the last decade, central government’s power has limited itself to reactive politics. They’ve had no defined direction – and have never bothered to explain to people why construction is stopped, or where artefacts have been taken. This attitude … doesn’t help promote or publicise the historical importance of a site. Thus, it is difficult for most seaside municipalities to make people and property speculators – not to mention dredging businesses etc. – aware of the importance of discoveries and underwater archaeology.

“This project is an excellent example of enlightened, pro-active, responsible politics which will reflect well on Lagos. It’s also a practical example of what municipalities can do – and, as such, an example that may be repeated by other local authorities.” Vivalgarve hopes to bring further news of Lagos underwater archaeology as it unfolds.