INA Projects in Central America
and the Caribbean
Columbus Caravels Archaeological Project
Highborn Cay Wreck
Molasses Reef Wreck
Monte Cristi Pipe Wreck
The Port Royal Project
Puerto Rico Project
Reader's Point Wreck
Rio Belén Survey
Rio Chagres Maritime Landscape Study
Sub Marine Explorer
Warwick Project
Western Ledge Reef Wreck
INA has conducted several projects in the Caribbean, many of them focusing on searches for and the excavation of the ships that date to the earliest European encounters with the New World. The fact that Christopher Columbus lost vessels at different locations during his voyages has inspired searches for his ships in Jamaica’s St. Ann’s Bay and off Panamá’s Río Belen. Jamaica was also the setting of a multi-year excavation of the fabled pirate city of Port Royal, swallowed by the sea during an earthquake on June 7, 1692.
Other important projects included the excavation of an early 16th-century shipwreck at Molasses Reef in the Turks and Caicos, and study of another 16th century wreck, at Highborn Cay in the Bahamas. Other significant projects have included the Reader’s Point Wreck, an 18th-century sloop in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, and the Monte Cristi Pipe Wreck, a 17th-century merchant trader that wrecked off Hispanolia in the Dominican Republic.
INA and its associates have conducted work in Mexico and in Panamá, most recently in 2008 with a survey of the historically important entrance to the Río Chagres, and in the archaeological documentation of Sub Marine Explorer, an 1865, New-York built craft that is the world’s oldest known surviving deep-diving submarine.
