Chasing the elusive Angel Gabriel Search for lost galleon a primer in archaeology

ANGEL GABRIEL, The Elusive English Galleon: Its History and the Search for its Remains, by Warren C. Riess, 2001, 1797 House, Bristol, Maine, $15.

This is a wistful little book, a surprising trait since it is about archaeology. Wistful and archaeology are two words not commonly in tandem. It is to Warren C. Riess’ credit that he carries it off without compromising his considerable credits as a researcher, marine archeologist and writer.

Riess gets significant help from his hero, the good ship Angel Gabriel. (I use the term hero advisedly. Some of you might prefer heroine, but I have recently been informed that the long-held maritime tradition of referring to ships in the feminine has been voted out by the committee that makes such decisions.) Built sometime during 1616 as one of several ships assembled for Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to northeastern South America, Angel Gabriel began life as Jason, a ship of 240 tons that carried 25 cannons.

This proved to be an oracle of violent days to come. For although Raleigh had been warned by King James to stay out of trouble with the Spanish armada, Sir Walter, along with a fleet severely damaged by storms and crews decimated by illness, also ended up in the king’s disfavor because Raleigh’s son had ordered his ships to attack Spanish settlers.

Which was, to all intents and purposes, the end of Raleigh, who lost everything, including his head and the Jason, which ended up stripped and deserted in an Irish harbor.

In 1619, the ship was reborn as the Angel Gabriel and began her long voyage across the centuries that would lead her (oops) into the life and times of Warren Riess. After 16 years of work as a cargo and passenger ship, the Angel, which had just disembarked a few passengers from England at Pemaquid, was, so Riess and others are led to believe from their considerable research, at anchor in the harbor at Pemaquid when the ship was struck and sunk by the great hurricane of Aug. 15, 1635. As Riess tells us: “In the autumn of 1976 I was in the first semester of the new Nautical Archaeology masters degree program at Texas A&M University. One morning, while waiting for the student commuter bus, I decided to find Angel Gabriel’s remains at Pemaquid. I decided it would be a wonderful scholastic and high-visibility way to begin my career.”

Given all that has occurred since that rather blithely-taken decision, one must wonder what Riess might decide were he given a chance at revision. For what begins with much confidence as a modest search, with a definitely modest budget and volunteer help from his fellow students at the university extends over the years until more than a decade has slipped into history.

In the process, Riess and his readers learn much about the techniques of underwater archaeology, its challenges and many disappointments, as well the evolving sophistication of the various (and always expensive) instruments that can be used to probe the sea’s deep secrets. And we learn more and more about the Angel, how it was built, what might have become of those timbers had they been submerged in the specific geological mix that is Pemaquid Harbor’s bottom.

We learn all this and much more because each summer, after spending most of his winters recruiting help and finding funds, the good professor goes right back at the task of finding the remains of what is fast becoming a phantom ship. Some 15 years into the hunt, he casually encounters a pair of young scallop divers strolling the Pemaquid shore. “Oh yes,” they tell him, “we did come across some lead ingots on the harbor bottom, but they were too heavy for us to haul off without help, so we left them there.”

Lead ingots, as the professor’s years of research have confirmed, were often carried in the Angel’s hold, either as cargo or ballast. Would this be the clue so easily given that would at long last lead the dogged searchers to their sunken treasure? I shall not give up the secret. You must read this fine little book to find out, and to learn more than you ever thought possible about the challenges and satisfactions of undersea archaeology.

John Cole is a free-lance writer from Brunswick.