Lisbon, Dec. 30, 2024 (Lusa) - There are wrecks of 141 ships in Cabo Verde; their location and characteristics are documented in a survey carried out by Portuguese underwater archaeologist Alexandre Monteiro, who identified most of the vessels near the island of Boavista.
Alexandre Monteiro, a researcher at the Centre for Functional Ecology (HTC) at the University of Coimbra and a consultant to the Cabo Verde government for the Margullar underwater archaeology project, identified the oldest loss in this survey: the Dutch ship Naarden, wrecked in 1623 on the island of Boavista.
Lusa consulted the ‘Inventory of historical shipwrecks in the Cabo Verde archipelago’, which the researcher prepared and which is in the possession of the Cabo Verde's government, and which shows the waters around the island of Boavista as having the most shipwrecks (49).
Of the 141 shipwrecks documented, three were in the open sea, four in Brava, two in Fogo, 22 in Maio, three in São Nicolau, 15 in São Vicente, 12 in Sal, 21 in Santiago and 10 in Santo Antão.
The survey found that eight losses occurred in the 17th century, 17 in the 18th century, 60 shipwrecks in the 19th century and 55 accidents in the 20th century (up to 1970).
The most recent loss was recorded in 1970 and concerned a Portuguese cabotage ship, the Mira-terra, which was lost in the shallows off the island of Maio.
Among the shipwrecks in Cabo Verde with georeferenced data is that of the ship ‘John E. Schmeltzer’, which ran aground on the island of Santo Antão while travelling from the port of Rosario in Argentina to Gothenburg in Sweden with a load of corn.
The corn was salvaged and distributed throughout the archipelago, meeting the needs of the great famine of 1947.
The Portuguese Navy hydrographic ship Dom João de Castro, which was lost on Penedo da Janela beach on the island of Santo Antão in 1947, is also duly catalogued. The Brazilian steamers Acary and Guahyba, sunk in 1917 by the German submarine U151 in the port of Praia de São Vicente, are also duly catalogued.
The Portuguese schooner ‘Livramento’, sunk with the Governor of Cabo Verde in the bay of Rabo de Junco on the island of Sal in 1868, and the anti-Negro Chalupa USS ‘Yorktown’, of the United States Navy lost in 1850 on the island of Maio are also included in the database.
In this catalogue are the Honorable East India Company ships ‘Hartweel’, lost in Boavista in 1787 with six tonnes of silver on board, and the ‘Lady Burgess’, lost with treasure in the João Valente lowlands, between Boavista and the island of Maio, in 1806.
The Portuguese galleon ‘Nossa Senhora da Conceição’, owned by field master António Moniz Barreto, weighing 430 tonnes and carrying 24 cannons, 200 soldiers and 100 gunners, can also be consulted in this database.
It is a ship that was lost due to a navigational error when it was being preserved by the fleet of the surrender of Baía, Brazil. Fifty people died.
SMM/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
