He funds his expeditions by running a marine salvage operation out of Miami. Hoisting the Cannonįrick is a tough-talking sea captain who has spent 25 of his 50 years searching for sunken treasure. Like this country's early space capsules, the caravels were small, no-nonsense ships constructed for exploring - unlike the 16th-century Spanish galleons that became the space shuttles of the New World.Ĭolumbus' logs show that the Pinta was a caravel - one of the clues that Frick and Gasque cite in a mountain of documents they have gathered during the past five years to prove the mystery wreck is the Pinta. The oldest Spanish shipwrecks found to date in the Americas sank in 1554, leaving a 62-year gap between them and the Columbus voyage.Įven if the shipwreck is not the Pinta, its discovery still is of major importance because archeologists believe its small size - less than 75 feet long - means it could be a Spanish caravel, and most of what's known about caravels today is based on artists' conceptions.
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Frick and his fortune-seeking partner, John Gasque, hoped to earn millions by putting the Pinta on exhibit, marketing Pinta T-shirts and a "Raise the Pinta" video game and by selling exclusive movie and book rights.Īrcheologists see the discovery of the ancient shipwreck as a major scientific coup that opens a window to the era when Spanish explorers first entered the Americas. If the shipwreck is the explorer ship, it might be more valuable than any Spanish galleon laden with gold dubloons and precious jewels. The possibility that the Pinta has been found has excited fortune hunters and archeologists. But the fate of the Pinta always has been a mystery, a sore point with historians since it was from the Pinta's decks that one Rodrigo de Triana first sighted the New World the morning of Oct. The Nina, which carried Columbus home, made at least two more trips to the New World with Columbus before being retired. The Santa Maria sank off the north coast of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) during the 1492 voyage. Of Columbus' three ships, the Pinta is the only one to have vanished from history. "What they have is a very real and valuable old wreck. Eugene Lyon, a Florida researcher hired by the National Geographic Society to investigate the wreck. "I don't know why they have to do this inject the Pinta claim ," counters Dr. "I'm 100 percent sure it's the Pinta based on the research and the experience I've had during 25 years at sea," says Olin Frick, one of two Florida treasure hunters credited with discovering the shipwreck. They believe it is the Pinta, one of three ships used by Christopher Columbus during his 1492 voyage to the New World. Treasure hunters claim it is something more. The reason for all the turmoil is that archeologists believe the shipwreck may date back to the 1500s or possibly before, making it the oldest Spanish shipwreck ever recovered in the Americas. There also has been a mysterious explosion at the shipwreck site. So far, that fight has pitted friends against each other, raised threats of a $100 million lawsuit and led to an armed confrontation at sea. Since its discovery in 1977, two groups of treasure hunters and an internationally known archeological institute have fought for control of the mystery shipwreck. OF ALL the fights over ancient shipwrecks, perhaps none has been as bitter or as tangled as a dispute currently being waged over the remains of a tiny ship that lies less than 50 feet beneath the azure surface of the Caribbean Sea near Molasses Reef, just south of the Bahamas.
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