Bay watch Shipwrecks give up centuries of sunken tales

Spanish archaeologists exploring the bay between the southern port of Algeciras and the Rock of Gibraltar have documented the wrecks of more than 30 ships that came to grief near the Pillars of Hercules between the fifth century BC and the second world war.

- By Sam Jones MADRID

A three-year project led by the University of Cádiz has now identified 151 archaeological sites in the bay, among them 134 shipwrecks. To date, the researchers and their colleagues from the University of Granada have worked to document 34 of those wrecks.

The oldest is that of a Punic era ship dating to the fifth century BC, while other finds include 23 Roman ships, two late Roman ships, four medieval ships and 24 vessels from the early modern period.

Between them, the sunken items - which include an agile and fearsome 18th-century Spanish gunboat and the engine and propeller of a plane from the 1930s - tell the story of war, trade, exploration and settlement in and around one of the most strategically important waterways in the world.

Felipe Cerezo Andreo, a professor of archaeology at the University of Cádiz who led the investigation, which is called Project Herakles, said that area has long been a watery crossroads.

"It's one of those bottlenecks through which ships have always had to pass, whether on commercial shipping routes, voyages of discovery, or due to armed conflicts," he said.