Garner’s curiosity paid off, writes CTV News, when he stumbled on some 16th century pottery shards. “There it was, artifacts from the 16th century lying on the ground,” said Garner, a history buff whose discovery has made him a celebrity of sorts in Archaeology circles.
He took his finds to the University of West Florida, where archaeologists continued to research the site, confirming Garner had found the location of the first Spanish colony established in Florida by Don Tristan de Luna in 1559. This was six years before St. Augustine was established, and almost 48 years before the establishment of Jamestown in Virginia.
The historical site is within an urban neighborhood in Pensacola Bay, within view of two shipwrecks linked to the Luna expedition of 1559. For now, the exact location of the site is being withheld by the University of West Florida to protect the neighborhood and integrity of the site reports the Pensacola News Journal.
Shipwrecks from the doomed Luna expedition found
In the 1990s, archaeologists diving in Pensacola Bay came across a part of the expedition’s doomed fleet, including an anchor from one of the ships. But the site of the settlement where 1,500 soldiers and settlers, two Dominican fathers and a lay person had lived for two years was never found until 2015.
Many archaeologists and researchers believed the settlement had been washed away by storms or was buried beneath centuries of development. However, no one realized the settlement would be found so easily. “This gives us a whole new window on early Spanish colonialism here in the United States,” said John Worth, an associate professor of anthropology with the University of West Florida.
The hurricane that doomed the fleet hit during the night of September 19, 1559, just five weeks after the ships had landed, and lasted for 24 hours. The storm destroyed five ships, a galleon, the Andonquin, and a bark. The storm surge pushed one caravel and all its cargo into a grove, some distance from the land. Many lives were lost in the storm, and the settlement’s provisions were lost or ruined.
The Tristan de Luna expedition of 1559
Luna was given a mandate from the Viceroy of New Spain, sending the fleet from modern-day Mexico to establish the Atlantic coast of Florida. From previous exploration of the Florida coast, a bay named Filipina was chosen as the site for the settlement. But Luna’s expedition chose the Bay of Ochuse, today’s Pensacola Bay, about 10 leagues west of Fillipina, as the site for the colony.
“They were stranded. It took them months to get supplies. The first relief of expedition didn’t show up until December, so Luna all of the sudden had too many mouths to feed,” Worth said. “There were not enough Native Americans in the area to even remotely provide food, and by that time, when they didn’t want to be seen they didn’t get seen.”
Had Luna’s expedition succeeded, it very well would have changed the history of our country and quite possibly have prevented the French getting a foothold in Florida, according to Worth. But we will never know for sure. What we are learning from this archaeological find is adding to the information we have on early Spanish exploration of North America.
St. Augustine, founded by Spaniard Pedro Menendez in 1565, still holds its claim as the oldest “continuously occupied” European settlement city in the present-day U.S.
