Treasures beneath Cuban waters

The coasts of Cuba have a lot to tell about shipwrecks dating from the first period of the American conquest. The country's privileged geographic location, especially that of the Port of Havana, made it the main destination of all merchant fleets from the beginning.

Havana Harbour was established as the provisioning port for Spanish ships in 1519, the same year that Veracruz was made the port-of-call for the Spanish galleons picking up the treasures from the New World. From that time, and for a long period, thousands of vessels travelled throughout the Cuban archipelago.

Many of these old and silver laden ships, victims of tropical hurricanes or coastal accidents from inaccurate knowledge of the maritime region, capsized with their cargo and their remains lie on the seabed.

These valuable remains provide Cuba with an important underwater cultural heritage, significant for the knowledge they might provide for the study of societies from the Latin American region. Each of the treasured items is a piece of historic puzzle for scientists to ponder.

Cuban marine archaeology, the discipline heading such research, has had considerable development in the years since the first work developed by the Oceanographic Institute in the late 1960s.

Later, CARISUB, the state salvage company, studied more than one hundred colonial shipwrecks littering Cuba's northwest and southwest coasts until 2004, when the SERMAR company focused all the previous activities into its archaeology department.