"VOYAGE OF DOOM"

PBS Airdate: November 23, 1999

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NARRATOR: In the Age of Discovery, ships sailing to North America carried with t
hem the dreams of would-be conquerors. None was more daring than the 17th centur
y French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle. La Salle's destination was the mo
uth of the Mississippi River. From there, he would push inland to claim the vast
center of the continent for France, and bring wealth and glory to himself. But
La Salle would never reach his destination. And for over 300 years the fate of h
is final voyage was lost to time. In a shallow bay hundreds of miles from the Mi
ssissippi, La Salle's ship has at last resurfaced, uncovering a tale of bold amb
ition and tragic failure, the remains of an expedition stalked by misfortune and
foiled by the fury of nature. Now, brought to light after more than three centu
ries, are thousands of precious objects - for trade, colonization and warfare cargo meant to build an empire that could have changed the course of history.
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NARRATOR: In Matagorda Bay, off the Texas Coast, archeologists from the Texas Hi
storical Commission are on the trail of a legendary shipwreck. Somewhere in thes
e 400 square miles lie the remnants of a vessel sailed by the famed French explo
rer Robert Cavelier de La Salle. But La Salle's ship, lost since the 17th centur
y, remains elusive.
CURTIS TUNNELL: I've spent the last 20 years of my career looking for this shipw
reck. I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to find this old La Salle shi
p in my lifetime.
NARRATOR: It was 1995, and archeologist Curtis Tunnell decided to give it one la
st try, sending divers down to explore a few promising sites.
CURTIS TUNNELL: The first one the divers went down on, they began to find lead m
usket balls and fragments of wooden casks. And, while that wasn't conclusive, we
thought, this just might be it.
NARRATOR: It was an astounding piece of luck, and the divers quickly headed down
for another look.
CHUCK MEIDE: I was on the second dive of the day, and I was leading that team. A
nd we were down there searching around, and you have to understand, it's just bl
ack as midnight, I mean there's no visibility at all. It's just so silty. And yo
u feel around the bottom, and you can't see a thing. I put my hand on it, and I
knew it was something big.
And I put my hand right on the dolphin. You know, as soon as I put my hand on th

at, the first thing I thought was, "Oh, man, this is something."
NARRATOR: It seemed to be a dolphin-shaped handle - the telltale sign of a 17th
century cannon. But in these murky waters, appearances are deceptive. Only by ha
uling it to the surface can the Texas Historical Commission be certain of their
find. The massive crane needed for the job can't arrive soon enough. The cannon
likely weighs nearly half a ton, and must be raised with great care. Any false m
ove could destroy other precious artifacts hidden in the water below. The divers
move in to secure the crane's long cable to straps around the cannon. They know
that when it breaks the surface, no longer supported by the bay water, the cann
on will be at its most vulnerable.
CURTIS TUNNELL: Boy, that's a beauty, isn't it?
BARTO ARNOLD: Look at the decoration, highly decorated with the leaf, the acanth
us leaf stuff here. There's a band of lettering that's mostly obscured here. Ano
ther decoration here. The lifting handles are actually in the shape of dolphins
- cast in the shape of dolphins. There's a lot of decoration on the breach. And
this is just the style of gun that we would expect to have on La Salle's persona
l ship.
NARRATOR: While heavily obscured, the bronze cannon appears to have a noble Fren
ch heritage. But the archeologists can't be sure that this is La Salle's cannon
until they can decipher its markings. Back in a lab in Corpus Christi, centuries
of encrustation will be stripped away in an electrolytic bath. Months of cleani
ng reveals the crest of Louis XIV, the Grand Monarch of France in the late 17th
century. Another emblem narrows the window of time even further - the seal of th
e Comte de Vermandois, Admiral of the French Navy from 1669 to 1683. During this
time, there was only one French expedition to the Gulf of Mexico. This cannon c
learly belonged to La Salle. Robert Cavelier de La Salle was born in 1643 in Rou
en in northern France. Here, he is memorialized for his exploits as a young expl
orer. At the age of 23, La Salle left a cloistered life in the Jesuit order for
more worldly pursuits, hoping to make his fortune in the New World.
RAYMONDE LITALIEN [voice over translation]: La Salle was a very perplexing perso
n. He was both a man of religion - he spent nine years with the Jesuits - and an
adventurer, often accused of greed and treating his companions very badly.
NARRATOR: The young adventurer set off for the region of Canada known as New Fra
nce, where men could amass great wealth through the fur trade. Soon he had his s
ights on another goal - to be the first European to chart the entire course of t
he Mississippi River. It took years, but in April of 1682 he reached the Mississ
ippi Delta - and claimed it in the name of Louis XIV. It was an audacious move,
for Spain had already staked its claim to the region.
RAYMONDE LITALIEN [voice over translation]: With La Salle's expedition, France h
oped to gain a strong position for competing with the two other great powers alr
eady established on the continent, with England and with Spain.
NARRATOR: King Louis was so pleased by the Mississippi conquest that he agreed t
o back La Salle's next, more ambitious endeavor, to establish a grand French col
ony at the mouth of the river. At the Corderie Royale, built by the King to outf
it ships of discovery, preparations for the voyage got underway.
RAYMONDE LITALIEN [voice over translation]: Most of the people recruited for exp
editions were professional sailors. They were picked from among the cod fisherme
n who were used to this route westward into the Atlantic. And they wanted to obt
ain land. They were about 300 people in all, coming from diverse backgrounds.
CURTIS TUNNELL: La Salle's first voyage was a voyage of discovery and exploratio

n. He had a team of well-trained, tough men on that trip. The second voyage was
a voyage of settlement. And he had a town full of people who were not particular
ly trained or tough, and they had to have food and shelter and protection.
NARRATOR: At the port of La Rochelle on the west coast of France, four ships wer
e loaded with provisions. In July of 1684 they set off for a two month voyage ac
ross the Atlantic. The Jolie, a French naval warship, was to protect the expedit
ion. The Aimable, a large merchant vessel, carried most of its supplies. The St.
Francois, a small ketch, was packed with food and live animals. And the Belle,
designed to explore coastal waters. Its shallow hull would make the turbulent oc
ean voyage even rougher.
CURTIS TUNNELL: This kind of ocean voyage would have been difficult for trained
seamen, but it was especially difficult for the colonists. They were living unde
r incredible, cramped, miserable conditions. There were shortages of food and wa
ter. They were sick much of the time. There was fear about what lay ahead on the
ocean, and then when they made landfall in the New World.
NARRATOR: The voyage started well enough, as La Salle's young aide, Henri Joutel
, noted in his journal.
[READING JOUTEL'S JOURNAL]: "Only two of our men died among the more than 50 who
were sick. The ship's officers said it had been a long time since they had had
such a fortunate crossing."
NARRATOR: But as they neared the New World, their fortune began to change. The S
t. Francois, carrying food and livestock, was separated from the rest of the exp
edition and captured by pirates. The three remaining vessels continued their jou
rney into the Gulf of Mexico. The mouth of the Mississippi was clearly but erron
eously marked on maps of the period.
RAYMONDE LITALIEN [voice over translation]: These maps, although they measured l
atitude with sufficient accuracy, were entirely incorrect concerning longitude.
And this caused serious navigation problems for La Salle, trying to locate the m
outh of the Mississippi. The maps showed the river lying much further to the wes
t, several hundred miles further to the west.
NARRATOR: His flawed maps led La Salle toward what is now the Texas coast - near
ly 400 miles from the Mississippi Delta. It was his first and most fatal mistake
. Upon sighting land, La Salle directed his three ships toward a large bay, whic
h he believed was an estuary of the Mississippi. At least one of his ships would
never leave these waters. 300 years later, archeologists are trying to determin
e which of La Salle's ships lies wrecked in Matagorda Bay. The answer lies below
, if they can locate and measure the outer edges of the ship's hull. In these mu
rky waters, the divers can see little. The archeologists on deck see even less.
TONI CARRELL: It was really frustrating at times to be on deck rather than in th
e water taking the measurements myself. The divers and I had a good working rela
tionship, but still, it's - you just kind of want to get in there and take the m
easurements and deal with it and get the information. But we realized that it wa
s important to have the job divided into two parts. So the divers went down and
did probing and did measurements, came up and reported that information, and the
n I recorded it. And bit by bit we were able to begin to piece together the outl
ine of the ship. We've been able to go along the west side and determine that we
've got about 40 feet of articulated hull structure on that side, and about 25 f
eet of articulated hull structure on the east side. We're still trying to determ
ine whether we've got the bow or the stern at each end. But we do have good narr
owing of the hull, and we feel that we're very, very close to determining both t
he bow and the stern, although we're not sure yet which is which.

NARRATOR: Until the divers find both ends of the ship, they can't be certain of
its length, or its identity.
TONI CARRELL: Is it curving off at this radical angle?
____: It is curving off at that radical angle, I think it is because that's wher
e the hull is approaching the sternpost. And I tried to dig deep down right wher
e that screw eye is. So there's about three feet of the sternpost there.
TONI CARRELL: Excellent. Gosh, we couldn't ask for better than that. I'm just hot dog! All right, guy. Well, you were in the water for awhile. Let's get you o
ut.
NARRATOR: Locating the stern, and later the bow, the team finds that the wreck i
s roughly 51 feet long. It may be enough information to identify the ship, if th
ey can find this measurement in historical records. At the Corderie Royale, the
royal shipbuilding center, fragile documents from over 300 years ago are still p
reserved, including records of La Salle's sleek coastal vessel, the Belle.
MARC FARDET [voice over translation]: In this first register we find the records
of the commissions held in Rochefort concerning the construction of vessels, ra
fts and so on, beginning July 1st, 1682. In the register, we find a reference to
the Belle: "Proportions of a bark named 'the Belle' which was built in the Port
of Rochefort during the months of May and June 1684, shipping capacity 40-45 to
ns." We have the length of the keel with the entire description of the ship.
NARRATOR: The length of the keel is 51 feet, confirming that it is the Belle tha
t lies shipwrecked in Matagorda Bay.
CURTIS TUNNELL: The Belle was a small ship with shallow draft and La Salle inten
ded to use it for exploring all of the channels and bays and inlets that he knew
existed at the mouth of the Mississippi.
NARRATOR: Like the mouth of the Mississippi, Matagorda Bay is riddled by channel
s and inlets. It's easy to see why La Salle believed he had reached his goal. Th
e waters of the bay are also murky and dark, causing problems for the archeologi
sts exploring La Salle's wreck.
TONI CARRELL: If the water visibility in Matagorda Bay had even been a few feet,
we would have been able to proceed with the standard underwater archeological i
nvestigation. But a few inches of visibility makes that simply impossible. The o
ther options would be, of course, to try to clarify the water so you can do an u
nderwater excavation. But the great volume of water that would be involved made
that an unfeasible project as well.
DR. JIM BRUSETH: It is the oldest French shipwreck in the New World, in this hem
isphere. But more importantly, it belonged to a very famous French explorer, La
Salle. And because of that historical significance, we felt like we needed to do
the finest quality, most detailed excavation that we could do. And a dry land e
xcavation, inside a cofferdam, was clearly the way to go.
NARRATOR: A cofferdam is a 360-degree structure that isolates an excavation site
within two concentric walls. When the space between the walls is filled with sa
nd, the water inside can be pumped out. Over seven miles from the Texas mainland
, the shipwreck lies in only 12 feet of water. The shallow depth makes construct
ion of the cofferdam possible, but still not easy. More than 500 tons of loose s
teel pilings have been floated out to the site. They must be transformed into a
solid and watertight structure. A series of pilings will be joined together, usi
ng interlocking male and female ends. Each 60 foot piling is hoisted high above
the site and carefully threaded together with its partner. This technology was o

riginally developed for bridge construction. A specially designed machine called

a vibratory pile driver clamps onto the pilings and forces them through the sed
iment. Only if they reach at least 40 feet down will the walls of the dam keep w
ater from seeping under. Once the water inside is drained, the outer walls will
be under tremendous pressure. 11,000 tons of sand will reinforce the dam and pre
vent a collapse. The sand is transferred from floating barges to fill the space
between the cofferdam walls - one clam bucket at a time. After three months, the
construction of the cofferdam is finally complete, at a cost of one-and-a-half
million dollars. Now 385,000 gallons of water contained inside the walls must be
pumped out - and stay out. 36 hours after the pumps are turned on, the bay floo
r begins to emerge, opening a window that will lead 300 years into the past. The
stage is set for the excavation.
TONI CARRELL: You never know what you're going to find on an underwater site. Di
fferent weather conditions, different water conditions really do affect the pres
ervation of a shipwreck. But when the water was pumped out of the cofferdam, I w
as thrilled when we went down there and looked around. And right there, on the s
urface, was this fragile piece of rope, just exposed and ready for collecting. I
know that the students with me had no idea what a rare find this was. Because,
although I'd hoped to find organics, I just never expected something as fragile
and as unique as a piece of rope.
NARRATOR: The rope, peeking through a thick layer of mud, hints at what lies fur
ther below. If the bulk of the ship is buried and protected from the elements, i
t may still resemble a 17th century vessel. After a month of meticulous digging,
the sunken ship re-surfaces, its wooden hull remarkably preserved and intact. T
he fine silt of Matagorda Bay has enveloped the ship, blocking oxygen and the pr
ocess of decay.
CURTIS TUNNELL: I've been involved with archeological projects for 40 years, and
the excavation of the Belle was absolutely unique, and one of the most extraord
inary projects I've ever seen. Not only the excavation within the cofferdam, but
the things recovered. To find a big coil of anchor rope from that early time pe
riod.
DR. JIM BRUSETH: Rope typically doesn't preserve well in the warm Gulf waters. I
t just simply deteriorates away. On this shipwreck we found actually several tho
usand feet still coiled up the way it was probably loaded in the ship over 300 y
ears ago in France. The rope had never been used, and yet it was in great shape
today.
NARRATOR: Sailors in the 1600s needed rope for almost every aspect of their voya
ge, from rigging sails to loading and unloading cargo. But little rope from this
era exists anywhere in the world. Such everyday goods of maritime life are pric
eless. So as each new object is uncovered, it is precisely mapped. The archeolog
ists shoot a laser beam from a fixed point on the cofferdam to a prism below, wh
ich reflects the beam back to the base station.
TONI CARRELL: Using an electronic data system on the site really allows us to qu
ickly and accurately plot the location of every single artifact. Every single da
y we can download the locations of the artifacts. This makes it much easier to c
reate an overall map of the site, and to understand the relationship between the
artifacts.
NARRATOR: The picture that emerges at even this early stage of excavation is tha
t of a tightly packed ship, the top of the wreck crowded with wooden crates, and
rope stuffed into the bow. Outside the ship's hull, at the perimeters of the co
fferdam, thick mud may have trapped objects that spilled from the ship.
DR. JIM BRUSETH: All the sediments that we excavated - all the mud, all the silt

- we actually hauled up in buckets above the cofferdam and had a screening set
up on the wall of the cofferdam. And the purpose of that was to get the little s
mall artifacts that existed in those sediments and to recover them. And in so do
ing we found a number of very important things. We found artifacts such as glass
beads, little pins. But we also found a number of other things - such as the bo
nes of rats and mice, and the remains of insects such as cockroach egg cases. An
d all those were telling us a great deal about sanitary conditions on that ship.
It's quite clear that that ship was infested with rats and mice and various kin
ds of insects.
NARRATOR: The buckets of mud also contain small tools for use on ship and shore.
Brass dividers measure distances on maps. This one likely belonged to the ship'
s navigator. And once they reached land, La Salle's hunters might have used thes
e tiny bells, called hawk bells. They help track and train birds of prey. Within
the hull of the ship itself, signs emerge that some members of La Salle's group
intended to cook and dine with style.
____: There are three cauldrons with - inside this one, one of which is a coland
er with a very nice floral design at the bottom. Also, along with this box, we f
ound a ladle which would have been used with these kettles, and two very nice ca
ndlestick holders. Because of what they are, we are under the impression that th
ese are, probably would have been for the officer's mess or someone more importa
nt of the wreck. So this does give us an indication that there were more importa
nt figures on the boat, and that these features probably would have been kept be
low deck and used at certain functions that would have been happening on the boa
t. The preservation of these is amazing and this is just one small example of th
ings that we're finding on the wreck.
NARRATOR: Wine bottles and pottery, wooden halyards and leather-strapped knives,
all have survived through the centuries. But as the excavation brings these art
ifacts to the surface, exposed to oxygen and the stark Texas sun, they quickly b
egin to deteriorate.
DR. JIM BRUSETH: This project, because of the complexity of it
e basically have what is normally a marine archeological site,
heological site, that we made a dry land excavation because of
reated a numerous number of complexities and problems that had

- the fact that w

an underwater arc
the cofferdam - c
to be dealt with.

NARRATOR: One of the main problems was water seeping through the sand. A number
of sump pumps have to run continuously to keep the site from flooding.
TONI CARRELL: Keeping the water out didn't make this a dry land excavation. Ther
e is no way to make it a dry land excavation. In fact, we didn't want it to be c
ompletely dry. We needed the moisture in the site to help preserve and protect t
he artifacts that we were excavating. So it was challenging, and we had to adapt
our methods for excavating from being completely underwater, or to being comple
tely on land, to being something sort of in between. And as a result, we tried s
ome different methods. We used a wet vac to suck up some of the softer silts. An
d we used hoses to wet things down, and put things sort of in solution. So that
as we removed these layers of sand and silt, the artifacts would be uncovered in
a very gentle way. In some cases we ended up using potter's tools to help us ex
cavate, because they were wood and would be less likely to damage the objects.
NARRATOR: Such careful digging uncovers an unusual artifact. The archeologists r
ealize it's a last, a cobbler's tool for making shoes.
TONI CARRELL: Finding a shoe last I think is unheard of on a shipwreck site. It
certainly would be unheard of on a land site. The exciting thing about that find
is it really brought home the importance of having a lot of different people wi
th a variety of skills on this expedition. Certainly in Joutel's journal they ta

lk about the fact that they were very short of footwear, and they ended up using
buffalo hides, and how they would crack and chafe and tear at their feet. So ha
ving good footwear was really important.
NARRATOR: The carved initials may be those of the cobbler. All sorts of craftsme
n would be needed to sustain La Salle's colony. But at least one of the would-be
colonists never made it off the ship. Amidst the tools and supplies of the expe
dition, the archeologists find a complete human skeleton, enough to piece togeth
er evidence of who this emissary from the past might be, bone by bone. The skele
ton is roughly five foot four, the height of the average man in the 17th century
. The shape of the pelvis is that of a male. And the wear on one part of the pel
vis, the pubic synthesis, suggests that this man was about 40 years old when he
died.
TONI CARRELL: We know that this gentleman was at least 40 years old, which makes
him pretty old for a common sailor, but not necessarily too old to be a carpent
er, a cooper, or one of the officers on board the ship.
DR. DONNY HAMILTON: Physical anthropologists, when they look at skeletal materia
l, the skull for instance, you can determine a lot of characteristics about the
individual. Dentition is generally poor among almost everybody during the 17th c
entury. This person had a very, very bad abscessed tooth in the first molar. In
fact, the infection is so severe in the root that it's actually eaten through th
e bone. Most likely he was hit with a right uppercut, and he has a broken nose,
here along his left side. We also know that shortly, or sometime shortly before
his death, he had received a severe blow along the right side of his skull. Ther
e is a four inch crack in the skull that is partly fused, but then also the uppe
r part, two inches, have not fused together. Therefore, it's relatively recent,
but it was in the process of healing, so it was not the cause of his death.
NARRATOR: If forensic science can't determine how he died, it can offer a pictur
e of what he looked like in life. His skull is sent for a CAT scan, the first st
ep in building a facial reconstruction.
____: Here we go.
____: Here's the preliminary image. Perfect.
____: Perfect.
____: I'm amazed that the skull has been in water for over 300 years, and yet it
shows up as a perfectly normal skull.
NARRATOR: The CAT scan creates images of the skull in one millimeter slices. The
se cross-sections are then pieced together to build a three-dimensional picture.
The same data used to make this virtual 3-D skull on the computer can also shap
e something more tangible. On a stereo lithography machine, guided by the CAT sc
an, a laser traces a path through a light-sensitive resin. What emerges is an ex
act replica of the skull, detailed down to bone thickness and muscle attachment
scars.
TONI CARRELL: The forensic investigations have provided us something really uniq
ue. They've been able to give us a picture of what this gentleman looked like. I
t sort of brings the whole experience of La Salle and the expedition and the art
ifacts that we're finding on the ship to life.
NARRATOR: While he remains anonymous, this man is now the human face of La Salle
's tragic voyage. He left Europe for the uncertainties of a New World. His dream
s, like La Salle's, were never realized.

DR. JIM BRUSETH: I think that skeleton actually brought to life and made more pe
rsonal the excavation of this particular ship. When you see an artifact, you thi
nk about the artifact and where it was made. When you find a person, you start i
magining if you were that person, what kinds of feelings and thoughts went throu
gh that individual's mind just before they died on board La Belle, here in the N
ew World with hostile Indians on shore, and all the difficulties that La Salle a
nd his men were encountering on board this ship.
NARRATOR: With his ships anchored close to land, La Salle sent men ashore to hun
t and search for fresh water. They shot marsh birds, wild pig, and other game. T
he herds of bison that roamed here encouraged La Salle, for he had seen bison ne
ar the Mississippi. His young aide Henri Joutel wrote:
[READING JOUTEL'S JOURNAL]: "The news of the bison delighted him, for he reckone
d that the country he had earlier discovered could not be far."
NARRATOR: La Salle set out to explore the maze of marshes along the coast, the f
irst of many overland searches. As he moved on, he was disturbed to find that no
ne of the coastal Indians spoke languages he remembered from his earlier travels
. Hostilities soon broke out. And La Salle's expedition was prepared to fight. S
cattered throughout the cargo hold are thousands of lead castings, ammunition fo
r their weapons. The larger balls may have been cannon grapeshot. The smaller le
ad shot was for pistols and muskets.
____: Well, this is one of the muskets that we've found, so far we have two crat
es of muskets. It's a very exciting find for us, because we didn't really expect
it. Even though the barrel is no longer here, you can see where it would have s
at on the stock. This is the remains of the wooden stock. You have the butt comi
ng down here, and even though the remains of the stock are not preserved, it wou
ld have been held in this fashion. The hammer assembly would have been on this s
ide. It would have held a flint, of course, these are called flintlocks. And whe
n you squeeze the trigger, it would have dropped the flint, caused a spark, and
then if your powder wasn't too wet, it would have hopefully discharged. State of
the art weapons for their time, really.
NARRATOR: Near the muskets in the Belle's hold are crates filled with ceramic po
ts. They appear to be storage containers, sealed at the top. Further excavation
and archival research reveal that they are actually weapons called firepots. A w
ooden lid with a wick was fastened to the pot to ignite the flammable pine tar p
itch inside. Within the pitch was a cast iron grenade, to make the firepot even
more deadly.
CURTIS TUNNELL: The firepots were really horrible weapons. These were used in de
fense if another hostile ship came alongside, these would be tossed over onto th
e ship. They would immediately break open, and the hot pitch would be scattered
on the deck and onto the sailors. The grenade would explode, and angular fragmen
ts of iron would go in all directions. These things would cause terrible burns a
nd injuries to the sailors on the other ship. The injuries from the shrapnel, wh
ile they might not kill immediately, would cause terrible infections. And it mus
t have been a little bit comforting to the sailors on the Belle to know that the
y had these horrible weapons to protect themselves.
NARRATOR: The sailors onboard La Salle's three ships were constantly on the look
out for Spanish galleons. Spain and France were at the brink of war. La Salle or
dered his main supply ship, the Aimable, to be towed slowly into the safety of t
he bay. The captain of the Aimable, long annoyed by La Salle's brash directives,
instead hoisted sail in high winds. Uncontrollable, the ship blew fatally off-c
ourse. It hit a sandbar, broke apart, and drifted into the ocean currents. La Sa
lle accused the captain of mutiny and sabotage. His aide Joutel noted:

[READING JOUTEL'S JOURNAL]: "According to everyone who was aboard the vessel, th
e accident was of premeditated design, the handiwork of someone."
NARRATOR: Enraged and suspicious, La Salle loaded his warship Jolie with all who
questioned his authority, and sent it back to France. Now, only about 180 men a
nd women remained on the Texas coast. To survive, they built a temporary camp in
the marshy lowlands.
CURTIS TUNNELL: They exchanged the shipboard life for living in stick and mud hu
ts beside an alligator-infested creek. There were all kinds of snakes and animal
s that they were unfamiliar with. So they traded one kind of misery for another.
NARRATOR: Dozens of men and women died of small pox, malnutrition, and Indian at
tacks, as La Salle went off again, searching for his river.
RAYMONDE LITALIEN [voice over translation]: La Salle understood that he had made
a mistake, that he had not reached the mouth of the Mississippi. But he was con
vinced that it couldn't be that far away. So he continued to search for it by fo
ot.
NARRATOR: The dream of conquest was by now a dim hope. Of La Salle's four ships,
only one, the Belle, was left. A small crew remained on board with little fresh
water or food, waiting for news from La Salle. Joutel described their decline:
[READING JOUTEL'S JOURNAL]: "They began to fade one after another. The longer th
ey waited, the weaker their condition."
NARRATOR: The contrast
es ever more apparent.
launch his colony, and
ins what may have been

between La Salle's grandiose plans and grim reality becom

Deep in the hold of his ship are the goods which were to
help it thrive. One box, fragile but mostly intact, conta
the most important supplies of all.

DR. JIM BRUSETH: When we found this in the field, we partially excavated
an to see what we had, saw how complex it was, and decided at that point
d be easier to bring it back intact to the laboratory where we have more
excavate it more carefully. And I'm going to be curious to see what the
on is of the actual artifacts inside of the box and the condition of the
elf.

it, beg
it woul
time to
conditi
box its

____: I think what we do is, we cut the burlap down either side, fold the burlap
onto the top, and see if we can lift this plywood off in one piece.
____: So we want to cut the burlap as low as possible, is that what you were say
ing?
____: Correct.
____: Back here so we don't even have to cut it.
____: See I've got everything loose here, Donny.
____: OK.
____: Here's an extra layer put in here for protection. So we need to get ____: Remove this carefully.
____: Make sure it doesn't pull up anything with it.
NARRATOR: Beneath the final layer of burlap, the archeologists find hundreds of

brass rings, mirrors and combs - trade goods to buy favors and furs from Native
Americans.
CURTIS TUNNELL: Trade goods are found real commonly on Native American sites in
the historic period. You find a few glass beads in one site, you may find an iro
n knife in another site. But to find a whole box of trade goods intact is extrem
ely rare.
DR. JIM BRUSETH: You can see there's a large mass of brass pins right in here.
NARRATOR: La Salle needed a vast trove of trade goods to further his ambitions.
With them, he intended to build allegiances and raise an army of Indian soldiers
to attack Spanish strongholds in Mexico. And for the missionaries on La Salle's
expedition, these goods helped spread the faith.
DR. DONNY HAMILTON: And thus far we've identified 14 different patterns on the r
ings. They usually have some sort of religious significance. We find some that l
ook like they have Christ on them, then three Xs, and then IHS, and Hoc Sigma, a
nd then you find Eolus (sp?) and various saints. So they all have religious conn
otations of one form or the other.
NARRATOR: With hundreds of rings, and thousands of goods altogether, this box co
uld also have been the key to personal fortune.
CURTIS TUNNELL: These things were very important to the
ll brass ring that would be very inexpensive in Europe,
o the New World, it could be traded for a large, tanned
e of those hides, or a shipload of those hides, back in
wealthy.

colonists, because a sma

by the time you got it t
animal hide. And a bundl
Europe could make people

NARRATOR: But none of the members of La Salle's expedition would reap these rewa
rds. Near the end of the excavation, the archeologists see the final clues to La
Salle's downfall in the deepest parts of the Belle. Here lie barrels of gunpowd
er and weapons that might have saved his struggling party. La Salle was reservin
g this cargo for the Mississippi colony he still envisioned. The colony would be
fortified by elaborate bronze cannons, now encrusted to the Belle's hull. The a
rcheologists use the force of the cofferdam crane to pry the cannons loose. In L
a Salle's time, each of these weapons was as valuable as the entire ship itself,
and a fitting symbol of the grandeur of La Salle's dream of conquest. But he wo
uld never build his Mississippi colony, never expand French rule in North Americ
a, nor challenge Spain's dominion in the Gulf.
MARC FARDET [voice over translation]: "The Belle. 50 tons. Six cannons. Shipyard
where built - Rochefort. Name of the carpenter - Honore Malet. Draft - seven fe
et of water." Then we have this mention: "M. de La Salle has taken her to the Gu
lf of Mexico, from which she has not returned." And there is another mention abo
ut this voyage written in the margin. "No crew to be assigned to this vessel, be
cause the pilot, who has returned, has stated that the ship no longer exists." T
he Belle has sunk.
NARRATOR: Exactly how the ship sank has long been a matter of speculation. Joute
l describes a violent wind, but he was ashore and not there to see it first hand
. Was the ship capsized in a terrifying squall? Or did she simply run aground in
the shallow bay, and gradually sink to the bottom? The answer may lie in the re
mnants of the ship's hull.
Some of the wood - pieces of bulkhead, mast and bilge pumps - lies broken and lo
ose. Each unattached timber is carefully mapped, then removed up to vats on top
of the cofferdam. For the rest, careful tracings ensure that research can contin
ue even after the hull is dismantled.

DR. JIM BRUSETH: Well, we've excavated the contents of the ship out. And now we'
re looking at actually trying to bring the ship itself out. We've decided to tak
e it apart piece by piece in exactly the reverse order that the master shipwrigh
t built the ship back in France 311 years ago. And so what we're doing now is we
're actually beginning that process, taking off the planks one by one.
NARRATOR: Even after three centuries in the mud, the oak planks of the hull are
solidly attached. But once removed, the water-laden timbers are vulnerable. The
team takes care to ensure that this rare 17th century vessel can one day be reco
nstructed. And the mystery of its sinking, perhaps, can be resolved.
TONI CARRELL: Now that the hull has been completely excavated, we can finally be
gin to understand how the ship sank. It's clear that it wasn't some sort of dram
atic event that caused it to capsize, which is what we often think about when a
ship wrecks. Rather, it was a slow accumulation of situations and circumstances
that caused the hull to fill up with water. We can see that the ship is laying b
ow down, and over to the starboard. So that suggests that the starboard side of
the hull may have hit at some point and loosened the seams. And the more water t
hat the ship took in, the less maneuverable it was, and soon it settled on the b
ottom. And so, what happens is a result of something - as wonderful a circumstan
ce as this was for us, and as horrible it was for the settlers, we ended up with
tremendous preservation, and about 40% of the hull.
NARRATOR: The loss of the Belle forced La Salle to confront his failure.
TONI CARRELL: The wrecking of La Belle changed the entire tenor of the expeditio
n. They realized that they were trapped. They had no escape. There was no way to
get back home. Their only route of escape was to find the Mississippi and go ba
ck to Canada. That was their only hope. La Salle set out to do just that.
NARRATOR: But soon his search was abruptly ended. A group of his own men ambushe
d and assassinated him with a shot to the head. Then, according to Joutel:
[READING JOUTEL'S JOURNAL]: "They dragged La Salle's body into the brush, stripp
ed him of his possessions, even his clothes, and left his body to be ravaged by
wild animals."
NARRATOR: Joutel, still loyal to the fallen leader, barely escaped with his own
life. With a ragged band of six people, he eventually reached the Mississippi. T
hey made their way up to Canada, and back to France. On the Texas coast, all tha
t remained of La Salle's expedition was a camp of desperate men and women. Weake
ned by disease and with few weapons for defense, they soon fell victim to Indian
massacre. Their makeshift settlement was burned to the ground. But the record o
f their journey was preserved through time, in a shipwreck at the bottom of Mata
gorda Bay. The archeologists' tools are gathered up, the cofferdam will be disma
ntled in a matter of days. But it will take decades to fully understand the stor
y of this voyage of doom, its leader La Salle, and his bold but thwarted ambitio
n.
CURTIS TUNNELL: People may think that archeology is just the recovery of nice ar
tifacts. But archeology is not really the study of artifacts, it's the study of
people. The little bits and pieces that you find of the past, each one of these
things has a story to tell. And when you take all of these pieces and fit them t
ogether, it forms a mosaic that gives you a much better picture of the La Salle
colonists. This expedition was really geared for success. They had plenty of sup
plies, manpower, weapons, trade goods - all of the things they needed. This wasn
't a voyage of exploration. This was a voyage of permanent settlement, to make a
French stronghold in the Mississippi Valley. If La Salle hadn't encountered all
of the difficulties, and if he hadn't perished, I think that France would have

become a major player in the New World. And a lot of North America might be spea
king French to this day.