La Salle was a French explorer sent out to colonize the lands that touched the Mississippi river’s mouth. He became famous for this reason. But another item that was related to him became famous and it wasn’t because of La Salle, himself. It was because the item itself was remarkable to scientists across the USA. What is this item you ask? It is one of La Salle’s ship, La Belle.

La Belle was one of the four ships to sail across the seas to reach the Mississippi river, but she was the only ship to carry some of her passengers to their destination. Not safely though. La Belle shipwrecked half a mile north of the Matagorda Peninsula in Texas. Those passengers who knew how to swim reached land, and started building rafts out of what they could to sail closer to the Mississippi. Slowly, La Belle was sunk to the bottom, carrying all the French goods and treasures.

300 years later, the ship was raised from its watery grave and brought back to life by a team of archaeologists. To find the missing ship, the archaeologists attached magnetometers to the back of their boats. Sailing back and forth along the Matagorda Peninsula, in Southeast Texas, they finally found the ship in 1995. But finding the ship wasn’t all the work. They had to excavate the ship, which took over two months, but the discovery was worth it. The La Belle had over 1.6 million preserved artifacts including glass beads, swords, bronze cannons, and even a crew mates skeleton. “Everything they had on that ship served a purpose — especially the items they brought to trade with Native Texans. The diaries document personal experiences and tragedies. Survivors kept journals as well about how some of the Native Texans would adopt the white children into their tribe,” said Mrs. Sandlin.

After two and a half years of research and cleaning the timbers, the ship was sent to the Texas Conservation Lab in Texas A&M University called Riverside Campus. There, the parts of the ship were re-assembled. The Bob Bullock Museum website described the reassembly as “putting together a 600-piece timber puzzle”. When the reassembly was done, the conservers freeze-dried the hull to make sure it did not deteriorate over the time it would displayed in the Bob Bullock Museum. Finally after two years of continuously freeze-drying the hull, the La Belle was now ready for display at the Bob Bullock Museum.

The exhibit on La Belle and La Salle is now open to the public. Scientists are saying this discovery will shape the future of shipwreck discoveries. If you’re eager to see the 1.6 million artifacts or the ship itself, head on down to the Bob Bullock Museum in downtown Austin to see the “miracle ship”, the ship that stayed intact for 300 years. La Salle and his ship were important to Texas. “I think that the discovery of La Belle offers a snapshot in time of the French influence taking place in Texas,” adds Mrs. Sandlin. Maybe we wouldn’t be the way we are today if La Salle hadn’t made the trip.