Lecture will explore search for 500-year-old shipwreck pivotal to local, U.S. history

Lecture will explore search for 500-year-old shipwreck pivotal to local, U.S. history

As part of the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the 1526 Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón expedition, the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology’s Archaeological Research Trust will host a free public lecture in historic Georgetown detailing the search for one of the most significant shipwrecks in American history.

Discussion will focus on a shipwreck believed to have taken place in the waters in and around Georgetown County, the coastal county that’s also known under the registered trademark tourism moniker of “South Carolina’s Hammock Coast.”

Co-sponsored by the Georgetown County Chamber of Commerce, the program will be held on Thursday, Aug. 13, from 4 to 6 p.m. at Georgetown’s historic Winyah Auditorium, 1200 Highmarket St. The event is free and open to the public.

The evening has been organized by Lee Brockington, noted Georgetown County historian, author and member of the Archaeological Research Trust board of directors, and Beth Stedman, the Chamber’s president and CEO.

The featured speaker is James Spirek, South Carolina’s state underwater archaeologist, who will discuss ongoing efforts to locate the Capitana, the flagship of Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón’s 1526 colonizing expedition.

Departing Hispaniola with a fleet of six vessels, Ayllón’s expedition sought to establish a permanent Spanish settlement along the Atlantic coast of North America. The expedition, which included Spanish colonists, as well as Native Americans taken captive during earlier voyages, and enslaved Africans, was one of the earliest expeditions to what would become the United States.

According to Spanish accounts, the Capitana wrecked while entering a river dubbed the Río Jordán, known today as the North Santee River which flows through Georgetown County on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. The shipwreck resulted in the loss of critical supplies. The nearly 600 survivors continued south and established the colony of San Miguel de Gualdape, regarded as one of the oldest European settlements in what is now the United States. The settlement would predate the famous first-permanent settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, by 42 years and the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Mass., by 55 years.

Still, the survivors of the Capitana are known to have attempted to establish a colony, which only survived a few weeks before disease, food shortages, and internal conflict forced its abandonment. For generations, historians and archaeologists have sought to locate both the shipwreck and the settlement.

In a 2022 article in the Pawleys Island-based newspaper, the Coastal Observer, editor Charles Swenson wrote, “If found, the shipwreck would be the oldest in the continental U.S. It would be a clue pointing toward the location of the failed colony.”

In the article, Spirek was effusive in his hopes to find the shipwreck. “There would be worldwide interest,” he said.

Swenson’s article details the work researchers have been doing for years now in the quest to find the Capitana.

“Spirek and a crew of researchers,” Swenson wrote, “have been towing a cesium magnetometer over about 12 square miles of coast around the Santee Inlet. … They will continue the data with sonar scans to identify sites that warrant further investigation.”

According to Paul E. Hoffman’s book, “A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient,” Ayllón searched for a suitable site to establish a settlement and, for a time, considered Pawleys Island, a few miles north from present-day Georgetown but the soil was poor and little chance for trade with local tribes. Historians now believe the settlement moved much further south to coastal Georgia, but wherever it was, the exact location was short-lived and still unknown today.

If discovered, the discover of the wrecked Capitana would change U.S. maritime history.

In 2022, the South Carolina General Assembly approved a $250,000 legislative appropriation sponsored by state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch to support a comprehensive search for evidence of the Ayllón expedition. Since then, Spirek and his team have conducted archaeological investigations throughout Winyah Bay, the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center, and the Santee Delta using marine remote-sensing technology, aerial surveys, archival research, and underwater exploration.

These efforts continue to bring researchers closer to answering one of South Carolina’s oldest historical mysteries.

Part of the University of South Carolina, the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology was founded in 1963 to conduct archaeological research, preserve cultural resources, support heritage management, and provide public education throughout the state. SCIAA’s Maritime Research Division, directed by Spirek, administers the South Carolina Underwater Antiquities Act, maintains the state’s inventory of underwater archaeological sites, implements research, and promotes public awareness of South Carolina’s maritime heritage.

The Georgetown program will be introduced by Dr. Chester DePratter, research professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and one of the nation’s leading scholars of 16nth-century Southeastern archaeology. His research has focused on Spanish exploration and settlement, as well as French, English, and Scottish colonial activities in South Carolina. His decades-long investigations at Parris Island in Beaufort County helped confirm the location of the 16th-century Spanish colonial capital of Santa Elena. Together, DePratter and Spirek have worked to expand public understanding of South Carolina’s rich and diverse past.

While the lecture is free, participants are asked to register at StorehouseTours.com. The tour company offers several tours exploring the Hammock Coast’s iconic waterways.

Built in 1908 and located in Georgetown’s historic district, Winyah Auditorium offers free on-site parking.

For more information, contact Brockington through the Storehouse Tours website.

— By Mark A. Stevens for the Georgetown County Chamber of Commerce and South Carolina’s Hammock Coast®